Non Tech tip #54 - seasonal astronomy news

As we approach the December solstice on the 21st at 8:28 AM (http://earthsky.org/earth/everything-you-need-to-know-december-solstice) it might be good to know that the coming season is the shortest of the four! (http://earthsky.org/tonight/years-shortest-season-starts-with-december-solstice) due to the the earth being closer and moving faster than in summer. Our spring and summer are a few days longer than our fall and winter!

Another strange seasonal fact is that sunsets are slightly longer at the solstices than at the equinoxes (http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/longest-sunsets-around-solstices) due to the angle of the sun's path to the horizon. At our latitude the sun will take more than 4 minutes to set at the winter solstice. Where I have been for the past few weeks the sun has been setting in just over 2 minutes!

We had the earliest sunset a week or so ago and we will have the latest sunrise in early January about when we all return to school.

The shortest day in Victoria is still the 21st at 8 hours 18 minutes and 36 seconds! (almost 8 hours less than in June!) (https://www.timeanddate.com/sun/canada/Victoria)

Today's new moon is the beginning of the longest month (time from new moon to the next new moon) of the 21st century! (http://earthsky.org/tonight/longest-lunar-month-of-21st-century) due to the distances of the moon and sun from the earth.

Have a wonderful holiday season! Make the best of those brief daylight hours!
:)

Let me know if you have any questions, or would like more information.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca<http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca/>
You can see a list of all the tips here: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca/p/toc11.html

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

-------------------------
Mike Jackson, Science Teacher
Senior School Technology Coordinator
St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC

Tech Tip #53 - 5 Google search tips

Hello all,

I thought I would draw your attention to a nice blog article about “5 Google search tips”: http://www.alicekeeler.com/2017/11/28/5-google-search-tips/

This article has good tips on how to refine your search by:
using the menu
turning on “tools” to filter the search by time etc
search for images with the right rights
search by voice
and use advanced search.

By the way, in just over a week, we will have the earliest sunset of the year (December 7^th) – ater that the evenings will start to get lighter!
For more details, check out http://earthsky.org/earth/winter-solstice-and-late-sunrise and
https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/equation-of-time.html


Let me know if you have any questions, or would like more information.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca
You can see a list of all the tips here: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca/p/toc11.html

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

-------------------------
Mike Jackson, Science Teacher
Senior School Technology Coordinator
St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC



-------------------------
Mike Jackson, Science Teacher
Senior School Technology Coordinator
St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC

Tech tip #52 - Sharing calendars in Outlook/Google

Hello all,

Many of us use an on line calendar and need to share it with someone else or a group and this is quite easily done using our Office 365 Outlook system. This could be useful for a department or a boarding house team etc.

If you would like to have a shared calendar for a group, our advice is to create a calendar in your account for the group and then share it with the appropriate people using the appropriate settings. If you want others to be able to add/modify items in the shared calendar, make sure you allow “edit” in the sharing settings.

I have created a short (2 minute) video showing how to do this: https://www.screencast.com/t/jAk8azhFBii

One of the things we have discovered is that sharing a Google Calendar with our system does not work very well and is not recommended.

Let me know if you have any questions, or would like more information. If you need help, feel free to contact anyone of the Ed tech team folks.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

You can see a list of all the tips here: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca/p/toc11.html

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

-------------------------

Mike Jackson, Science Teacher

Senior School Technology Coordinator

St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC

Tech tip #51 - Google Classroom Updates

For those of you who are using Google classroom to manage your students’ Google docs, they have made a number of useful updates which are outlined in this blog post:

https://www.blog.google/topics/education/10-ways-were-making-classroom-and-forms-easier-teachers-school-year/

Some key features are:

• Single view of student work
• Reordering of classes
• Decimal grading
• Transferring class ownership
• Large display of class code – great for signing students up

Let me know if you have any questions, or would like more information.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

You can see a list of all the tips here: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca/p/toc11.html

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

-------------------------

Mike Jackson, Science Teacher

Senior School Technology Coordinator

St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC

Tech tip #50 - cloud storage (and some astronomy stuff!)

This should be the last tech tip of the school year. I plan on starting them up again in September! Let me know if you have any tips to share.

Astronomy:

Firstly, tonight at 9:24 PM is the June, or northern, solstice when the northern hemisphere of earth is most tilted towards the sun. The sun itself will cross from the constellation Taurus into Gemini (though astrologers would have us think it is entering Cancer…) tomorrow morning. In a couple of weeks on July 3rd, (1:11 PM) the Earth will be at aphelion, its furthest from the sun), almost five million kilometres further away than in January (152,092,504 km as opposed to 147,100,998 km on January 4th this year). For more information on the June solstice and aphelion, check out: https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/june-solstice.html  and https://www.timeanddate.com/astronomy/perihelion-aphelion-solstice.html

Cloud Storage:

Many of you are using various types of cloud storage for storing files and I thought it would be worth a few words to explain what this is. If you use Google Drive or Onedrive, then you are using cloud storage. (Other well-known cloud storage services include Dropbox, Box, and iCloud). Basically cloud storage is where your data is organized logically into pools, but physically may be stored on several servers in several locations. The data is then accessible from any Internet-connected device (phone, tablet, computer etc). Interestingly, Iceland is a popular location for cloud storage since they have very low costs for “green” electricity.

You can access files stored in “the cloud” via a web browser (such as going to http://docs.smus.ca)  or using a client program which downloads copies of your files to your local device. If you are running the google drive or onedrive program on your computer, or the apps on your phone, these can store copies of some or all of your cloud files locally. Files stored in the cloud are also easy to share (see http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca/search/label/sharing) .

Personal Microsoft or Google accounts come with 5GB and 15GB of free storage with options for you to pay for more. Our school accounts come with a lot more: we get half a terabyte in onedrive and unlimited storage with Google drive!

If you want some information on other free cloud storage services, check this page out: https://www.thebalance.com/free-cloud-storage-1356638 . There are even services which allow you to combine the free storage from different providers (for example https://www.odrive.com/) and others that make all your cloud storage appear like a local drive (https://www.odrive.com/ not free!)

Cloud storage is great for making files accessible anywhere and easy to share and can provide a backup of files stored locally.

If you need to move a bunch of files from one system to another, this article (https://www.howtogeek.com/202484/how-to-move-files-from-one-cloud-storage-service-to-another/) has several suggestions.

Let me know if you have any questions, or would like more information.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

You can see a list of all the tips here: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca/p/toc11.html

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

Cheers and have a great summer. I am off to be a naturalist in Haida Gwaii and south-east Alaska (as well as a trip to view the August 21^st eclipse!)

Mike

Tech tip #49 - Finding free usable images (and today's supermoon)

The article linked below shows you several ways to find free, usable, images. This is especially important since Google does not always make it easy to find images that match certain usage rights (such as Creative Commons). We should be encouraging and guiding our students to use images that they are legally allowed to use (as well as doing that ourselves!).

http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2017/05/5-ways-to-find-free-images.html#.WSc4a2jyvic This link has a 6 minute tutorial vide on searching for images that we are allowed to use.

On the Earth Science/astronomy front, it might be of interest to know that today is a super(new)moon, the closest in 2017. This is the first supermoon that is a new moon since 2009. Even though it is a supermoon (due to being relatively close to Earth), you won’t be able to see it since the moon is between the Earth and the Sun. About the only effect you may notice is that we are having particularly high and low tides today and the next couple of days.

http://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/no-proxigee-full-moon-in-2017

If you want to learn more about supermooons and such, check out http://earthsky.org/space/what-is-a-supermoon

Let me know if you have any questions, or would like more information.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

-------------------------

Mike Jackson, Science Teacher

Senior School Technology Coordinator

St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC

(Not) Tech tip #48 - The great American eclipse August 21, 2017

So this is not a tech tip! … J

I remember talking to my classes about this eclipse back in 1998 after I saw my first total eclipse. I was hooked! Experiencing a total eclipse of the sun is a truly amazing experience. A total eclipse is one of nature’s great spectacles.

Monica and I booked a year ago, to go to Idaho to camp in the path of totality, and this will hopefully be our third total eclipse.

The “Great American eclipse of 2017” basically runs from the west coast to the east coast on August 21^st 2017. If you have a chance to see this one, I highly recommend it as it is the most accessible eclipse in some time. The next one to come anywhere close is in 2045!

You can find lots of information about this eclipse and where to view it on some of the following sites:

https://www.greatamericaneclipse.com/

https://eclipse2017.nasa.gov/

http://www.eclipse2017.org/eclipse2017_main.htm

If you decide to stay in Victoria, you will see a big bite taken out of the sun (if you look through eclipse glasses!) as up to 89% of the sun will be covered by the moon.

Let me know if you have any questions, or would like more information.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

-------------------------

Mike Jackson, Science Teacher

Senior School Technology Coordinator

St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC

Tech tip #47 - Microsoft Office and Adobe Creative Suite software for teachers

In case you did not know, Faculty and Staff at SMUS are eligible to use the Microsoft Office suite for free on up to five devices and to purchase Adobe Creative Suite for $9.75 a year.

To access these deals or to see the instructions, go to SDS and look under “Staff menu” -“Teachers” – Software.

Direct links are here:

Office: https://sds.smus.ca/index.php?next_page=admin/mis/access_ms_office.php#

Adobe: https://sds.smus.ca/index.php?next_page=admin/mis/access_adobe_hup.php

We do also have access to Microsoft Dreamspark developer tools in case you want to create some software!

Let me know if you have any questions, or would like more information.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share! 

Tech tip # 46 - Off-line maps for travelling with your phone or tablet

In case you are travelling where there is no cell-data service available…

Many of us like to travel and quite often we can find ourselves in a place where we have no cellular data to use Google maps on our phones or tablets. Sometimes we can be on the road in areas with no signal and need access to a good map (PS, I still like paper maps too!)

To help here, there are some apps that allow you to download maps to your phone or tablet and then use the map while your phone is in flight/airplane mode. These apps make use of the crowd-sourced Open Street Map project data: https://www.openstreetmap.org/ . Basically these apps turn your phone or tablet into a full-featured navigation device like a TomTom.

To use these apps, your phone or tablet must have a true GPS (some tablets don’t have a real GPS inside, but use wifi and cell signals to locate you)

My favourite of all of these apps is OSMAnd (http://osmand.net/), which was originally designed for Android, but is now also available for iOS.

On Google Play for Android: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.osmand&hl=en

On the iTunes store: https://itunes.apple.com/app/apple-store/id934850257?mt=8

Another good one is Maps.Me (http://maps.me/en/home)

iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/app/id510623322?_1lr=1

Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mapswithme.maps.pro

Both of these apps are free for light use, but are not expensive to buy the full versions that allow you to download maps of any region.

I have used these apps successfully in the UK, Ireland, Iceland, Ecuador, several US states, France, Switzerland and more. OSMAnd has been one of my most used apps on my phone.

I am sure there are other good apps out there. If you know of one, please let me know!

Let me know if you have any questions, or would like more information.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

(PS, sorry for 3 tips in one day! I had a bit of a back log.)

	Michael Jackson MA (Cantab) MEDes (Calgary)
	Science Teacher Senior school Technology Coordinator
	Senior School, St. Michaels University School
	3400 Richmond Road | Victoria BC | V8P 4P5 | Canada Phone: 250-370-6182 | Fax: 250-592-2812 Cell: 250-888-8783 Twitter: @MikeJ_SMUS www.smus.ca
	.

Tech tip #45 - new photocopier tips

New photocopiers are being installed in the senior staff workroom and seem to be working well. Many of you may have noticed that the screens for controlling the copier have changed...

One useful tip: if you want to make copies, or scan, using the old-style interface, there are a couple of tabs up at the top of the screen with “(classic)” in the label. These basically take you to screens that are just like the old copier screens…

The two photocopiers will be available as “printers”, just like the old one was. The printer driver allows you to choose double siding, hole punching and stapling etc from the print dialogue. You will be able to release jobs sent to this queue by scanning your card or phone app at either of the copiers.

	Michael Jackson MA (Cantab) MEDes (Calgary)
	Science Teacher Senior school Technology Coordinator
	Senior School, St. Michaels University School
	3400 Richmond Road | Victoria BC | V8P 4P5 | Canada Phone: 250-370-6182 | Fax: 250-592-2812 Cell: 250-888-8783 Twitter: @MikeJ_SMUS www.smus.ca
	.

Tech tip #44 - Pro D day materials

Dear colleagues,

Many of you were able to attend the Educational Technology sessions at the Pro D day at the start of this term. The team has assembled many of the resources from that day and these are shared below in case you want to follow up on anything.

https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0B4y8vF5ZOb9vWEc5S0lJUlZyNkk

In this folder you will find materials from the 2d graphics, 3d modelling and data sessions as well as Dave’s slides and copies of the big round chart.

Let me know if you have any questions, or would like more information.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

	Michael Jackson MA (Cantab) MEDes (Calgary)
	Science Teacher Senior school Technology Coordinator
	Senior School, St. Michaels University School
	3400 Richmond Road | Victoria BC | V8P 4P5 | Canada Phone: 250-370-6182 | Fax: 250-592-2812 Cell: 250-888-8783 Twitter: @MikeJ_SMUS www.smus.ca
	.

Tech tip #43 - Google Classroom

Google Classroom:

This blog post came into my inbox recently and has a good list of things to do with Google Classroom:

http://alicekeeler.com/2017/02/27/11_things_google_classroom/

From the first paragraph:

In a nutshell, Google Classroom is Google Drive Management. It allows you to assign assignments and collect work from students. If you are just starting off with Google Classroom here are some things you will want to try first…

Another thing you can now do is to extend Google Classroom assignments for some students in the class:

http://alicekeeler.com/2017/02/26/google-classroom-extend-due-date/

If you would like any help with any of this, please let one of your EdTech support teachers know, and they will be glad to help.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

.

Tech tip #42 - Some Google slides features and updates

Google Slides – a good alternative to PowerPoint

Google slides was recently updated to allow one to insert videos into a presentation. This is one PowerPoint feature that was previously missing.

A brief overview:

http://alicekeeler.com/2017/02/09/insert-google-drive-videos-into-google-slides/

and “5 things  you did not know”:

http://alicekeeler.com/2017/02/13/5-things-google-slides-not-know/

including “slash create”, voice typing speaker notes, Q&A feature, and autoplay video

Alice Keeler also has many handy tips about using Google slides. Here is a link to all her posts on Google slides:

http://alicekeeler.com/category/google/presentation-google/ or http://alicekeeler.com/tag/slides/

If you would like any help with any of this, please let one of your EdTech support teachers know, and they will be glad to help.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

Tech Tip #41 - SDS updates

In the most recent SDS we introduced two features related to the calendar, and one for test booking:

1) Announcements in SDS can be visible to parents too, but many of us were not giving parents that option. There is now a brightly-coloured checkbox to let you know whether the announcement you are creating will be visible to parents on the SDS. The default for this setting is No (not visible) so that we don't embarrass ourselves accidentally (we have to choose to do this). However, please consider whether it might be useful for parents to see the announcement and set the checkbox to Yes (visible to parents) whenever appropriate.

2) We have created a page to highlight which students are in danger of being over-committed in the future. This can be found at Staff menu->Attendance->Student Event Forecast. The page uses the student filter functionality, and can be adjusted to bring up a specific group of students, such as those in a particular class. The page estimates the hours of class time that have been and will be missed by each student, based on events (calendar items) and absences (entered by the Data Centre). Clicking on the student name will bring up a detail page for the student, showing the specific classes that were/will be missed.

3) when scheduling a test, you can now indicate the length of the assessment. The times default to the full period, but this can be adjusted to be longer or sherter as needed. This can be useful for the folks in LR so that they know how long to give a student for a test as well as determining how loaded a student might be. This is also particularly relevant if an assessment is being set over a double period.

If you know of any SDS features that you think colleagues should know about or be using more, let me know, and I will try to incorporate that in a future tip.

If you want to scan through all the changes that have happened to SDS (it typically has at least one update a month, checkout the “changelog” page at: https://secure.smus.bc.ca/wiki/index.php?title=SDSHOWTO:SDS_5_Series_Changelog

If you would like any help with any of this, please let one of your EdTech support teachers know, and they will be glad to help.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

 

Tech tip #40 - filling in PDF forms (and some sunny stuff!)

Hello all and Happy New Year,

Sunny news:

As of today (January 4^th),  the mornings will start getting brighter as the sun will start to rise earlier than the 8:05 it has been for the past few days. (Sunsets (today 4;32 PM) have been getting later since the 10^th of December (4:18 PM). This morning also marks the time when we are closest (by almost 4 million km!) to the sun (147,101,082 km instead of 152,093,163 km on July 3^rd). You can find out a bit more about this here: https://bobs-spaces.net/2017/01/03/earth-at-perihelion-2017/

Fillable PDFs:

If you need to complete a fillable PDF form you may find that it does not work well in your browser. To properly fill in most of these forms, you need to use the actual Adobe Acrobat program and not the web browser plugin. In general, you want to download the file, work with it in the proper Acrobat program, save it and then send it back. This applies to, for example, filling out the Sodexho food request form.

To fix this, you can just right-click and then download the file, but your best option is to go into your browser settings (see instructions below for Chrome) and make sure that it uses the “system viewer

Instructions for Chrome:

Go into the settings menu (from the three dots in the top right corner of your page)

Choose “show advanced settings

Click on the “Content settings” button

And then check the “open PDF files in the default viewer application” checkbox

For this to work, you will need to have changed the system default application from Edge to Adobe Acrobat. These instructions were sent out at the start of the year, but can be found on the SMUS wiki: https://secure.smus.ca/wiki/index.php?title=SMUS_Windows_10_FAQ#How_do_I_open_PDFs_in_Adobe_Acrobat.3F

If you would like any help doing this, please let one of your EdTech support teachers know, and they will be glad to help.

These tips are now being archived at the following location in a blog format: http://smustechtips.blogspot.ca

Also, please let me know if you have any tips you would like to share!

-------------------------

Mike Jackson, Science Teacher

Senior School Technology Coordinator

St Michaels University School, Victoria, BC