Moving at the Speed of Creativity

Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Eric Curts Shares Google Tools at #NCTIES23

This is a ChatGPT-generated narrative summary (minus hashtags) of the Twitter thread I created during Eric Curts‘ (@ericcurts – @ericcurts@mastodon.world) workshop today in Raleigh, North Carolina, “Google Tools to Support all Learners.” This Google Doc includes all the resources from Eric’s FANTASTIC session! I’ve also inserted my tweets which include images of resources Eric shared. I used PingThread to convert the Twitter thread into a text document, which I pasted into a Google Doc and then into this WordPress blog. This blog post includes ALL of Eric’s NCTIES 2023 session resources. INCREDIBLE! Eric is one of the most knowledgable, generous, and effective workshop presenters I’ve ever seen / known / learned with on all things Google Education!

At the NCTIES 2023 educational technology conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, Wes Fryer shares his takeaways from Eric Curts’ morning session on “Google Tools to Support all Learners.” Wes Fryer praises Curts for using an open Google Doc during his workshops to solicit asynchronous questions from attendees, which he believes is a best practice. He notes that Curts uses “Read&Write for Google Chrome” on the web and in Google Docs, which is great for student self-editing.

Curts’ demo of “Immersive Reader” extension for ChromeOS impresses the audience, with parts of speech color coding, picture dictionary, translation options, and other features. Fryer finds this powerful and a great way to use phones to make the world understandable via text-to-speech. He wonders if museums encourage its use in exhibits.

Curts also uses “Chrome Remote Desktop” to share his live Chromebook screen on his presenter Windows laptop. Fryer finds this feature so useful for live demos of ChromeOS settings changes. Curts uses the free “Extensity” ChromeOS extension to manage all the extensions he likes to use, which Fryer considers a best practice.

Curts’ demos also include DOGOnews: News for Kids, which Fryer finds powerful and effective in supporting learners. Curts shares his advice on where to start with ChromeOS extensions for elementary students like 4th graders: start with built-in ChromeOS accessibility tools, then add something like Postlight Reader. Another new tool Fryer discovers is “Beep Audio,” which is an extension for adding audio recordings to Google Slides/Docs.

Curts also introduces the audience to “Simple Blocker,” an extension that blocks distracting or annoying websites and boosts productivity. Fryer also shares Curts’ shout out for “Lofi Girl’s YouTube channel,” which he finds great for instrumental background audio when working.

Overall, Fryer finds Curts’ session informative and engaging, and he is grateful for the new tools and ideas that he can use in his classroom.

Links to the resources mentioned in the Twitter thread:

“Wes Fryer and Eric Curts at #NCTIES23” (CC BY 2.0) by Wesley Fryer

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