Welcome to the Technology Design Team Weekly Lessons Learned! This is a recurring feature on Friday afternoons where the Technology Design Team will share top of mind resources and learning. Each week, we will post a few key things we hope you may find useful. We look forward to sharing our learning with you. We look forward to sharing our learning with you.
Some of the content may be specific to the realities of Austin ISD though, we hope, much will be useful to viewers worldwide. The Weekly Lessons Learned Archive contains a list of topics from and links to previous updates.
What can you tell me about The Hour of Code?
It’s almost that time of the year when millions of students, teachers, administrators, and parents will take part in the Hour of Code. The Hour of Code runs December 6-12 and its coding activities span anywhere from lessons for non-coders to coding, design, and creating original products. Whether you and your students are beginner coders or experts, everyone can participate in Hour of Code. The Hour of Code icon is in the AISD Portal.
Note that no student login is required to participate in the puzzle activities. Are you starting with the basics or are you challenging yourself and your students in this year’s Hour of Code? What resources, games, or lessons will you be using?
How can I update Chrome? Why should I?
Updating Chrome ensures your browser has the most recent security, compatibility and feature updates.
To update Google Chrome:
Open Chrome.
Click the three dots at the top right .
Click Help. About Google Chrome.
Click Update Google Chrome. Important: If you can’t find this button, you’re on the latest version.
Click Relaunch.
What features have been recently added to Chrome?
Sharing a link? Skip to the good part.
Try “Copy link to highlight” when sharing links. When a recipient opens your link, it will send them right to the part of the page you selected, instead of the top of the page.
Highlight the text you want to share.
Right-click and select Copy link to highlight.
Paste the link to share it in an email or message thread.
See the short demonstration below.
Pick a new background and color for Chrome
Want a new look for your browser? Check out Chrome’s backgrounds and colors. If you use multiple Chrome profiles, you can even use a different background for each one.
Open a new tab.
At the bottom right, click Customize Chrome.
I love tabs! What options are available to help me manage tabs in Chrome?
Use tab search to find your tabs faster
Have a lot of open tabs? If you have trouble finding your tabs quickly, try Chrome’s tab search feature.
At the top of your Chrome window, click the tab search icon to see a list of all your open Chrome tabs. Start typing your search terms to find your tab. It even shows recently closed tabs.
See below.
Organize your tabs with Chrome tab groups
You can group tabs to keep related pages together in one workspace. To create a tab group, just right-click any tab and select Add tab to new group.
Right-click (ctrl-click on Mac) a tab.
Click Add Tab to new group.
Click New Group or click the name of an existing tab group.
This simple yet powerful feature is demoed below.
Bookmark all your tabs at once
There is no need to click on individual tabs to bookmark them. With Chrome you can bookmark all your open tabs just by clicking Bookmarks in your menu and selecting Bookmark All Tabs.
At the top right, click the three dots.
Click Bookmarks.
Click Bookmark All Tabs.
You can also use Ctrl-Shift-D on Windows or Cmd-Shift-D on Mac to bookmarks all your open tabs.
Reopen your last closed tab
Have you ever realized a split second too late that you shouldn’t have closed a tab?
Chrome lets you bring it back with a few simple key strokes.
Windows & Chromebooks Ctrl-Shift-T
Mac: Cmd-Shift-T
When will there be another Evening With…webinar?
So glad you asked!
The Technology Design Team’s December webinar is presenting “Your First Student Lesson With Adobe Spark” on December 8th from 5p-6p. This session is designed to not just be an app overview, but instead provide direction and appropriate structures for a teacher’s first use of Adobe Spark in a classroom lesson. Strategies shared will represent learning spaces from elementary to high school.
The webinar can be accessed from the Tech Design Team’s virtual office in Zoom. For more information about the Evening With… sessions, drop by our home at bit.ly/tdthome . The session is PLED credit-eligible and HCP registration will be handled by the TDT. (For additional PLED-eligible training, including this Spark session as an asynchronous session, enroll in our PL Course, bit.ly/aisdtdtpl .
Apple Virtual Conferences
Beginning December 1, Apple has an exciting lineup to support educators with 16 virtual conference sessions at no cost with 6 of the sessions celebrating Computer Science Education Week.
These virtual conferences are designed to be hands-on to explore resources, practice new skills, and reflect on ways Apple technology can support great learning and teaching.
All sessions are offered twice daily, Tuesday through Thursday and after school hours, to meet the demands of busy educators.
You are encouraged to share out these exciting offerings and highlight that the APL team are educators supporting other educators to grow in their practice.
To learn more, and register, visit apple.co/apl.
Technology Design Team Virtual Office Hours
The Technology Design Team is hosting virtual office hours to help provide real time instructional technology support in the first weeks of school. Virtual Office Hours with the Technology Design Team will happen on Monday-Thursday from 10:30 am to 1:30pm.
Please check the Global Announcement in BLEND for the Zoom link.
If you have a technical support issue (device repair or setup, access to systems, etc), please create a ServiceNow ticket to have a technician address your concern.
Connect. Design. Learn 