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
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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