Use Gmail's Vacation Responder for Automatic Replies during Vacation

In my family we say the following phrase a lot as we approach a vacation: "We have ____ more days. Anyone can do ___ days." Every year I feel like I am crawling to Thanksgiving, but this year I really wasn't so sure I could make it! As a result, I'm planning to maximize my break. Part of that plan is to turn on the Gmail Vacation Responder.

Gmail Vacation Responder can be found in the General tab of Gmail Settings. It allows you to send out a canned response to everyone who contacts you during a certain period of time. It's a good day to let the emails pile up without feeling guilty for lack of responding, plus it is a good reminder that a break should be just that. I made a 90 second video that shows how to set it up and turn it on:

I'm wishing all my fellow educators a restful break. Happy Thanksgiving!

Fast, Fun, and Free: A Vocabulary Game

 

In a recent grad school class, the professor directed us to head to the UpGoer Five Text Editor website and use the tool to write a definition for the word "molecule" using only the "ten hundred" most common words in the English language. This gave me an idea for a vocabulary activity for my classroom.

When I started my recent AP Chemistry unit on thermochemistry, I wrote new vocabulary words on index cards and handed them out to my students. I challenged them to write a definition for the word using the UpGoer Five Text Editor. At first, they claimed this was impossible because, as so many kids do, they wanted to copy a definition as they see it in a textbook or online and pretend that since they wrote a definition, they understood the definition. Using the text editor forced them to convey the meaning in simple terms, and they had to really dig into the meaning to do that. I gave them an example ("endothermic" = hot stuff goes in) and then they rose to the occasion.

Once all the definitions were done, I collected the index cards. After a quick shuffle, I read the definitions to the class and asked them to guess the words. At first, I offered a word bank, but several students said this made it too easy (!), so we eliminated the word bank. This second use of the vocabulary words gave them the reverse challenge - guess the word from the simplified definition - with a gaming element. Trying to guess the word gave them additional practice in thinking about new concepts in simple terms. 

Here are some of the examples:

Temperature: how hot something is

Heat: thing that moves from one area to another (hot to cold) and is hot

Thermal Equilibrium: when two things share warm or cool stuff until they match

Exothermic: lets go of the warm

Thermochemistry: field using admitted warm taken in

I used a couple of these definition cards to start class each day. If I forgot, my students reminded me. As an alternative, I could also have typed the words and definitions into Kahoot or Quizziz for a whole class competition. This was a fast, fun, and free way to introduce new vocabulary and I will definitely keep using this strategy in my classroom.

Make a GIF with Keynote

A couple of days ago I posted about making GIFs with Google Slides. If you haven't checked out that post, it's a very easy process of using a slide deck like a digital flipbook -- create an image or scene, duplicate the slide and move something just a bit, and repeat until you have created all your images. Then use a second tool to export it to a GIF. My students did this as a culminating activity at the end of last school year. Many students enjoyed the project and their results were terrific.

When we completed this project in May, my students actually used Keynote because students use MacBooks as part of our 1:1 initiative. With Keynote, creating a GIF is even easier. The slides creation part of the project is the same. Make slides, duplicate them, move images and repeat. 

Here are some screenshots to show how to export to GIF in Keynote. 

Go to File and drag down to Export To. Select Animated GIF.

 

 

Choose the slides you want to export and the speed of the frames. Experiment here to get it to look just the way you like. Click Next.

Then name your GIF and save it. Once you have it saved, you can use it anywhere you would use an image. 

Give this a try. It couldn't be easier! 

Make a GIF with Google Slides

One of my favorite lessons from last year was when my students made chemistry GIFs using a slide deck. The kids were allowed to illustrate any process, concept, or problem solving strategy by using a slide deck like a flip book. Once the deck was created a second tool is used to convert it into a GIF.

 I prepared the video below for the SPARCC conference.  Take a look to see my student examples and the process we used to make the GIFs.

 

A New Habit for a New Year: Schedule your Gmails

I am a notorious late night worker. I get my second wind after 9 pm and can be very productive into the wee hours. For years, people have asked if I ever sleep because the time stamp on my emails betrays me. One of the new habits I am going to try to adopt this year is to schedule my emails for during business hours.

It's been almost two years since Google added the email scheduling feature, but I still don't take regular advantage of it. In the one-minute video below, I model how to use the feature. There is a small drop-down arrow next to the word Send. Click it to reveal the scheduling options. Some default dates and times will appear, but you can also pick a custom date and time.

Let's say you're an administrator getting caught up on work during a school vacation. Instead of sending out emails that probably won't get read or attended to during vacation, schedule their send for the first day back from break. Now you're crossing things off your to-do list and increasing the likelihood that your staff will add these items to theirs. Or you're a teacher sending out missing work notifications at the end of a day. Maybe try scheduling those emails to go out so they are seen first thing in the morning. A secretary who has to compose the welcome back message? Write it days or weeks ahead of time and schedule the send so you don't have to add the welcome message during the return to school craziness.

I've known how to do this for a while, now I have to develop the habit. When I go to click Send, I'm going to think about my timing. If timing IS everything, this easy feature could mean everything to my work.