Choosing a School Information System- A Webinar and Discussion
Category: Helpful Tips
These posts are just helpful, not really a review or a how-to, just some helpful tips
Google Calendar – Tips & tricks
Ahhh – Google Calendar – I do enjoy using you. I know that are a lot of different online calendars out there to chose from and many are free, but this has been my mainstay for well over a decade. It is simple to use, you can cram a lot of info into an event, but what I like most about it, is how easy it is to navigate and that’s what this post is all about.
Enable shortcut keys
The first thing you need to do is make sure that you can use shortcut keys. To do this head over to your settings by clicking on the gear near the top right hand corner of your screen.
Then you should see Keyboard shortcuts as an option on the left hand side. Click that and then tick the box to enable shortcuts.
Now when you head back to your calendar, if you type the ? you will see a whole list of them. There’s not a ton, which is good, it makes it a lot easier to memorize. Here are all of them.
My favorites
My personal favorite keys are the navigation keys. You can switch between day, week, month and even year view just by pressing the right key. Check out the video below to see it in action.
Creating a new event
If you’re in Google Calendar go ahead and hit “C” to create a new event. Of course you can just click on the day (and time if you’re on Day view) to create one as well, but what if you’re not in Google Calendar. There is a URL you can type to create an event.
You must be signed into your Google account for this to work and I’ve tested it on Chrome and Firefox and both worked. You just type “cal.new”
That’s it and it will create a a new calendar event for you.
I know it is a short post, but I figured it would be a good one to write since we are getting pretty close to back-to-school time 🙂
Notion.so – Shortcut keys
Notion is great for taking notes and it works even better when you know some basic shortcut keys. This helps you keep your hand on the keyboard and focused on the discussion, lecture or meeting you are in. Check out the short video above for some beginner tips.
List of Shortcut Keys:
- ctrl (command) + 1 = Heading 1
- ctrl (command) + 2 = Heading 2
- ctrl (command) + 3 = Heading 3
- ctrl (command) + 4 = To-do list
- ctrl (command) + 5 = Bullet point
- ctrl (command) + 6 = Numbered list
- ctrl (command) + 7 = Toggled list
- ctrl (command) + 8 = Code/syntax block
- ctrl (command) + 9 = Create a page block
If you’re looking for a more comprehensive list – check out usethekeyboard.com – https://usethekeyboard.com/notion/
Google Forms + Form Ranger = Event Signup
Google Forms is pretty great. It’s easy to use, it presents the results in easy to digest graphs and it stores all the raw data in a spreadsheet so you can then organize and display however you want. Despite all this is does fall short in a number of areas. One of those is for event registration.
Our situation
What we are doing at my school is offering After School Activities (ASAs). These are not free and there are limited spots to each activity. In the past we used online form services such as Wufoo or Cognito Forms as we can add those limitations, but then outputing the data didn’t always look great and you are also paying for a service.
As for parents paying, that is handled by our business office individually with each family, so our form does not need to collect and process payment and we can always shut down a Google Form whenever we need to, but the form must be able to limit how many people can be signed up for a particular activity.
Continue reading “Google Forms + Form Ranger = Event Signup”iPad Mini, Surface Pro 8, Surface Go 3 and Surface Studio Laptop – Are they good buys?
Recently Apple and Microsoft held events and unveiled some new products. Looking through my educator glasses I thought I’d write about them and try to evaluate if they are good for schools. When I say that, I mean, are they good to buy a whole bunch and give them to teachers, staff and/or students. So let’s dive in.
iPad Mini
No. There you go. The iPad Mini looks great. It probably has good battery life, the screen looks bright and the build quality is solid. In the past the iPad Mini was the “cheap” iPad, so schools bought them and teachers/students liked them. The landscape has now changed. Now schools can buy an iPad Mini for $449 (education discount) but the “cheap” iPad is $309 (education discount).
Chromebook – Sign into two accounts at the same time
I was working on a review when this came across my desk. Here is the short story. A teacher noticed that a student had another person’s email open while on their Chromebook. At first, the thinking was that they had signed into that Chromebook as that person (which is not a great idea). Upon further investigation, it turns out that the student in question was properly signed into their own Chromebook but somehow was able to open up someone else’s Gmail next to their own.
Before I go and detail how this happened, this is simply wrong. I cannot think of having a student log into another student’s email account as a good thing. Whether they’re friends and share passwords (another bad idea) or not that should be squashed.
I am going to detail how this works and what you or your Google Admin needs to do to fix it.
Continue reading “Chromebook – Sign into two accounts at the same time”Laptop recommendations? Check with your school
Back in June I wrote this same article. You can read it here. Basically it was in response to an article written by Monica Chen of The Verge. The article “recommends” the best laptop for students at all levels by students.
Well, they just republished the article again and I thought I’d just remind parents and students out there to use these articles as a jumping off point. A place to start your research not as a definitive source.
Remember that all of these sites are powered off of ad revenue. All of them, so I wouldn’t be surprised if some of these recommendations were actually paid for. For example, no way I would recommend an iPad Air for a high school student where I live. I know that all the surrounding high schools are either Google Workspace schools or Office 365 schools. There are much better options at that price point for those students than an iPad. An advertisement that looks like an actual article is a native ad and it may be what is happening here.
Again, check with your school. They will have recommendations and can help you narrow down your search much better than a tech journalist or a blogger like myself 🙂
Google Drive – Make a template
It is back to school time! I thought I would start this school year with a pretty simple tutorial on how to create a template that you can reuse over and over again. If you have ever used Google Classroom then there is a type of version of this already there. When you make an assignment and attach a Google Doc, Sheet or Slideshow then you have the option to make a copy for each student. That way the original stays untouched and each student will have their own copy to play with!
Well in Google Drive you can make a template that you can use over and over again without the original getting sullied. Be aware though that the template will be accessible by the whole organization. If you cannot do this from your school account, you should reach out to your IT team and reference these instructions so they can turn this on for you.
Continue reading “Google Drive – Make a template”Streaming events #2 – Update
We have the goods!
We have done some quick testing and this looks pretty promising. Right now my family and I are moving into a new house so I’m a little strapped for time between that, work and posting to IT Babble. So instead of a long detailed post (that is coming) I’ll give some quick thoughts and recommendations.
ATEM Mini Pro
This thing is awesome! When you hook it up to a monitor you get to see all the cameras (up to 4) and switching between them is super easy and literally just a press of a button. Setting up our live stream test (we tested Facebook Live and YouTube) was crazy easy. We did have to plug the ATEM Mini Pro into our network via an ethernet cable. Once we did that we used the software on the computer to configure the live stream.
If this is set up and you are using the same service over and over, then you do not need a computer connected to the ATEM Mini. You simply hit the On Air button and then from your computer turn on the the live stream and that is it!
One concern that we found was that an HDMI input stopped working for a little while. We tested it one day and the HDMI 2 input just didn’t work. We plugged the camera into the other inputs and it all worked fine. It was just HDMI 2. The next day it worked fine with no issues. Not sure what happened. It wasn’t the camera or the cable it just stopped
Continue reading “Streaming events #2 – Update”Streaming events – An ongoing experiment
This is going to be an ongoing series. Here I am talking about what we currently do and are planning. In future posts I will talk about the testing of the equipment, the use of the equipment and finally changes that we’ve made.
Streaming school events (concerts, athletics, presentations) has always been a bit of mystery for me. In theory it is pretty simple. You need cameras that feed into a computer and that computer then encodes and feeds the video to a streaming service. In practice it is pretty complicated and there are lots of questions:
- What cameras do I use?
- Do I have to wire the cameras?
- How do I manage multiple camera feeds?
- Can I brand or add graphics?
- How do I capture audio from the event?
- How do I encode the video feed so it streams properly?
- Does it have to be 4K?
- What service do I use?
- What programs do I use?
What we do now
Right now, we have it super simple. We use a Mevo Plus camera. They have a newer version but here is what ours looks like.
Here is how you use it. You turn it on (it has a battery) and it connects to your smartphone via its Mevo app. Once they connect you control the camera with your smartphone. You can zoom in, out, and even pan all digitally. It can stream from your phone to YouTube, Ustream, Facebook and others live or you can record it to its micro SD card and then edit the footage later. The camera is a wide angle lens so it does a good job of covering a large area and the output can be up to 4K.
The quality is very good and while the camera we purchased was $400, outside of a tripod we did not need much more. We did buy some accessories, but we have figured to run audio from a soundboard or mixer into the Mevo for greatly improved sound. Overall, we have been very happy with our Mevo and will continue to use it.
There are some issues though. The Mevo is a single camera. There is no way to integrate it with other cameras. It is its own singular solution for streaming. You have one camera and that is it. It is simple and straightforward and that is the beauty of our Mevo, but as we look at covering athletic events, having more than one camera is desirable to cover more of the action. This has led to some good conversations and more importantly a plan.
The Plan
We are looking to stream with multiple cameras but as you add complexity to any solution, it usually requires more equipment, training and of course – money. We are looking for this equipment to be managed by middle school students (with appropriate teacher/administrator supervision – of course) so the solution has to be pretty easy. Easy to set up, use and tear down. All of this is important.
The first part is the BlackMagic Design ATEM Mini Pro ($499). This is going to be the brains of the operation.
This thing looks expensive but it offers a lot of flexibility and power when it comes to streaming. You can have 4 HDMI inputs, professional switching between the inputs as well. You can have two microphone line ins and if you hook it up to a monitor you can view all four inputs at once. Great for producing. Also, you can attach a hard drive to it to record if you don’t want to stream. There is also powerful software you can download and use to get even more power out of this thing. Best of all, it is pretty easy to use. I’ve watched a few demo videos about it and I think that middle school students could be up and running with this deck with some minimal practice and training. This video by Zebra Zone is particularly good. He shows the set up and goes through all of its features one at a time. Just great!
Now on to cameras. We don’t want super expensive prosumer cameras. We are looking to save a little money and through my research we are going with the Canon Vixia HF r800. Yeah that name just rolls right off the toungue there doesn’t it? Here it is from BH Photo.
Now here is the expensive part. We don’t want to be running HDMI cables all over the place, especially if student athletes are going to be walking or running in those areas. We want to do this wirelessly if possible and so an HDMI wireless transmitter/receiver set is in order. This starts expensive and can get really expensive. We decided on the Hollyland Mars 300.
Broadcasting live!
Another piece I would like to add into this setup is the ability for people (ideally students) to announce the games. Rather than just have coaches and athletes talking to each other, it may be a nice touch, but how do you do this?
The ATEM Mini Pro does have two mic inputs and so we were thinking of just adding them that way. Perhaps purchasing some “cheap” broadcasting headsets. The problem with that is that many of them are only XLR and we need a 3.5mm input instead of XLR or 1/4″ inputs.
Another issue is the price. The cheaper headsets are starting at $50 and they quickly go up from there.
What’s next?
The equipment has been ordered. Once we set things up and try it out we try to find a workflow that works for us.
Technology in the Classroom 