Ah yes, Tony and Patrick are back after a week off. It is now time to talk about ed tech again. Be sure to subscribe to our podcast with your favorite podcasting app and check out or show notes below.
That is a good picture of Michael Dudikoff – famed action star from the 80’s, 90’s, 2000’s and beyond. Want to know why he is our artwork? Listen to find out! Also, be sure to subscribe to us on your favorite podcasting app.
After a short break – Tony and Patrick are back! Not only are we talking about some ed tech goodness. Check out all the talking points below and be sure to subscribe to us on your favorite podcasting app.
Welcome back basketball fans!
What am I drinking?
Beeracuda from Abita
Bells Black Hearted Ale
It’s time to start over- EdTech is dead – Tony’s quantlet to the world or Elon Musk, or anyone with a lot of cash…
Tony and Patrick are back for another tight show! We talk about weather, an upcoming project and of course some quality talk about educational technology. Sit back, relax and enjoy and don’t forget to subscribe to us on your favorite podcasting app.
What am I drinking?
Tony’s Spring Audit- Hardware, Accounts (G-Suite, SIS, JumpCloud and IXL)
Audit hardware (anything in asset inventory)
Check the classrooms for display systems
Don’t mess with facilities and maintenance people during summer – do you
inventory during the spring
Data audit – Checking the backup
Archive on Bluray DVD
Missing Items
Try not to lose things we buy (chargers, mice, keyboards, etc.)
Hotglue?
When to onboard new families into your SIS?
Do the incoming students need to register for classes/buy textbooks?
GoGuardian Question
Adding parents is kind of a pain – 2 uploads!
Students have to sign in first before you can associate parents and students
I’ve seen this news story a few times this week and thought I’d weigh in. These are articles and videos about a video horror game known as Poppy Playtime. It is developed by MOB games, you can get it on Steam and it’s pretty popular right now. The gist of the game is that you are trapped in a toy factory and the toy Poppy is hunting you. You need to solve puzzles to escape. There is tension, poorly lit rooms, eerie music and noises and, of course, jump scares. Check out the trailer below.
There’s not a lot of blood or gore and I don’t think there is any real language either, but parents.com is sounding an alarm. They are saying that it . . . is . . . scary for children.
A horror game, designed to scare the player, may be scary for children. Hmmm.
Why do I care?
I think parents should know what games their kids are playing and decide if it is appropriate for them or not, but articles like this is plain old fear mongering. We’ve seen this before with Slenderman, Five Nights at Freddy’s and many, many more.
With a little bit of research (watching some YouTubers play the game) parents will know if it is appropriate for their kids or not.
The bottom line is do your own research and sit down and talk with your children or students about this game and see what they say. One thing I can be sure of, is that this game will not be the downfall of humanity or even the education system.
Tony and Patrick are back again! Here we talk video games, new dogs, passwords and how not to get your school smacked down by copyright claims. Check out the show notes below and as always please subscribe to us with your favorite podcasting app.
Let the poop jokes fly as everyone in your party gets dysentery and die on route to a better life in Oregon. All joking aside – this is a classic game of people seeking. Click the “power button” and play a little retro game that helped students learn the hardships and the difficulties of traveling westward in 1848.
Thanks to archive.org for hosting and keeping this gem alive and available for all to enjoy!
Tony and Patrick are back with another great episode. Learn the many names of Bumpercar Crumplezone amongst some other fantastic info as we talk and rant (a little about technology.
Welp that was quick. Not too long ago I wrote about the Choice Eliminator 2 add on for Google Forms. This Add on allows you to put limits on how many times a choice can be made and then it will eliminate that choice from the form. Think about people signing up for appointments, you only want one person at a time – this (in theory) could achieve that.
The bad news is that Choice Eliminator 2 is no longer available 😦
I am not sure the reason and the developers website doesn’t really have any info about it as well. My thought is that Choice Eliminator 2 has been replaced with Choice Eliminator Lite (also made by the same developer). So I thought I’d take a quick look on how that works and whether you can count on it.
Installing the Add-on
This is pretty easy. First, open up a new Google Form (this only works in Google Form, not Docs, Sheets or Gmail). In the top right hand corner you will three dots next to your account icon, click that. A drop down menu will appear and you select Add-ons.
A new window will appear and form here you will srarch for Choice Eliminator Lite. When it comes up click on it.
After you click on it, you can read its description and scroll through its images and more. Most important of all you can click the Install button and this will make the Add-on available to all of your Google Forms. Don’t worry though, it is not active until you start using it with specific forms, so it is not going to mess up anything you’ve already made.
When you install it the first time, it will ask for permission to do some actions. Go ahead and approve those and now you are ready to start using it.
Using Choice Eliminator Lite
Before you start using Choice Eliminator Lite, go ahead and create your form. Here is a sample form I quickly threw together.
Then select the question with the times by just clicking on it and now it is time to start using Choice Eliminator Lite. Go to the Puzzle piecec near the top right hand corner and click on it and then select Choice Eliminator Lite.A little box will then pop up, click Configure.
Just like Choice Eliminator 2 you will get a Take Note!!! box that pops up. This basically tells you to use drop down menus instead of Multiple Choice questions. More on that later.
When you close it, you will see the editor on the right hand side as its own pop out window.
You have very limited options here. You can either till it to Eliminate Choices or not. I imagine if one choice is selected it will disappear from the form. So, there is no way to assign a limit to each choice, for example if you wanted to allow three choices for my 4:00 meeting, then this Add-on will not work for you.
OK – now that is done, let’s test it out.
Always, always test
The heading says it all. Don’t just trust it is set up and working, always test it out before opening it up to the public.
To test it out I had it loaded the form link in a Chrome browser and then another in Microsoft Edge and finally another in Firefox. I wanted to test how long it would take to remove an option.
The good news is that it is pretty quick to process and remove the option. It only took a few seconds. Even if the someone took a time and another person picked that time, it would return an error for the second person and ask them to pick another time.
On the other hand, if they made the same choice within a second or two, then it is a good chance that it would allow both of those answers through. The only service I’ve ever seen that reliable limits is using the Form Ranger Add-On but that is not as easy to set up.
Conclusion
If you used to use Choice Eliminator 2 because you could allow certain quantities for specific questions, this cannot do that. This will let someone make one choice and that is it. For that purpose it is fine, it works well enough. For something more robust that lets you put different limits on different questions, then you need to use Form Ranger. I made two posts about it (Part 1 and Part 2). It does take a little bit to set up but it will absolutely work.
Tony and Patrick are back for another great show. We talk about snow, printers, and a bunch more. Check out the talking show notes below and as always, you can subscribe to us with your favorite podcasting app.
Technology in the Classroom 
