Category: google

  • Beware of Facebook Event Bad Actors

    Beware of Facebook Event Bad Actors

    Scammers and bad actors are not new. The methods which con artists use to try and trick people into giving away their money or sharing private, personal information continue to evolve, however. It can be valuable to learn about some of these new scam techniques, especially in our increasingly DIGITAL world. In this post, I’d…

  • Import Blackbaud Class Calendar to Google Calendar

    Today I created a revised version of a video tutorial I created in August 2021 and shared in the post, “Import Class Schedule Into Google Calendar.” Our school uses “Blackbaud” as our student information system (SIS), but our teaching schedules are not automatically synced with Google Calendar. As I mentioned at the end of this…

  • Harry Potter Style Live Photo Albums

    Shelly and I love watching our photo memories with our kids and family, as well as now just with our dogs (as “empty nesters”) on our living room television as well as our kitchen Google Nest Hub. I wrote about this a couple weeks ago in the post, “Digital Picture Frames.” This weekend we’ve had…

  • Digital Picture Frames

    My wife and I derive considerable pleasure these days from watching a variety of old family photos on our living room TV, thanks to the “Ambient Mode” of Google’s Chromecast as well as the screensaver feature of AppleTV. In my mother’s last four months of life, as she faced terminal brain cancer, she also was…

  • 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.…

  • Smart Home Outside Christmas Lights (with Google Home)

    I love having our outside Christmas lights automatically turn ON at sunset and OFF at sunrise! In this 10.5 minute video, I share how I’ve set this up at our house in North Carolina using Google Home compatible “WiFi smart plugs” and the Google Home app. Referenced Amazon products in this video include: More ways…

  • Favorite Chrome Extensions (Nov 2022)

    Google Chrome continues to be my preferred web browser in late 2022. For the past couple years, I’ve been using a school-provided MacOS M1 MacBook Air laptop as my “daily driver” computer. Back in June 2015, I wrote the post, “Seven Indispensable Google Chrome Extensions.” This is my update for November 2022, seven years later!…

  • Tips for Using Jamboard

    Jamboard is a useful and free collaborative, digital whiteboard which is now included as part of the Google Workspace tool suite. (Google Apps.) This is a 5 minute tutorial video I recorded today. Here’s the description and video! Some tips for using Google Jamboard with students. In this video I demonstrate how to save a…

  • Media Consumption Boundaries

    What boundaries do you have for media consumption in your life? We’ve heard a lot about “screen time” in the past few years, as both Apple and Google / Android have added built-in tools for tracking screentime. But what comprises your “media consumption” or “media diet” within your weekly screentime? The channels you watch and…

  • GeoMap Job Hunting

    As a geographer and teacher, I love the way maps can help us better understand information and data geo-spatially in rich, meaningful contexts. My wife, Shelly (@sfryer) and I, will be moving to Charlotte, North Carolina, this summer, to start a new adventure together as “empty nesters.” I’m looking forward to teaching and collaborating with…