FIRST THING: Macbook shortcuts –
As much as I love my touchpad, I am faster and more efficient the more I incorporate keyboard shortcuts. I’m going to include Keyboard Shortcuts in the first few weeks so hopefully everyone will learn something new. By the way, most of these work on Chromebooks for the kids if you replace Command with Control. Be sure to teach them these time savers as well. In the examples ⌘ stands for the Command key.
Week 1: The basics, but also the best. I use these all day, every day. I’m guessing most of you already know and use these regularly. If not, I’m glad you learned something new. Next week we Level Up with more shortcuts!
| Key Combination | What it Does |
| ⌘ + A | select everything in the active window |
| ⌘ + C, ⌘ + X, ⌘ + V | Good old Copy, Cut and Paste |
| ⌘ + B, ⌘ + I, ⌘ + U | Good old Bold, Italic and Underline |
| ⌘ + P | Print from the active window using the Print Dialog |
| ⌘ + F | Find or Search within the webpage or program window you are currently using |
| ⌘ + Z, ⌘ + Y | Undo and Redo (really can’t live without these) |
| ⌘ + Tab ⌘ + Shift + Tab | If you hold the tab key, then it shows a bar with all of your open programs. Keep holding the Command key and repeatedly hit Tab to cycle through to the program you want. When you hit it and release quickly it goes to your previous Active window (kind of like hitting the last channel button on a TV remote; for those of you who actually remember TV channels) |
| ⌘ + K | This adds a hyperlink to whatever you have selected (text, image, etc.). Combine this with the copy and paste shortcuts above to quickly add hyperlinks to all of your resources. |
SECOND THING: Ed Tech Lab – Pear Deck
Pear Deck is an Ed Tech Tool that integrates with Google Slides. It adds formative assessment tools and features that allow you to constantly gauge where your students are in the lesson. This year we plan to highlight a number of tools like this one and encourage teachers to try them out. Pear Deck has a 30 day free trial of premium features, so sign up when you are ready to take full advantage of those features. Here is a quick introductory video that shows some of the ways you can use Pear Deck in your classroom.
THIRD THING: Desmos for Math and Science Teachers (and the teaching power of sliders)
So some of you know I used to be a math teacher. I’ll do my best not to be biased with my 3 Things choices, but I had to squeeze a math one in on the first go. Desmos is pretty great and it provides many features that our graphing calculators cannot. This particular feature involves Sliders in Desmos.
Sliders are adjustable tools (similar to a sound mixing board and hundreds of other similar widgets you’ve seen on the web). In Desmos, you can drag these sliders to change the values of coefficients in common and standard equations and students can see in real time what the outcomes of these changes are. A great one that most students won’t predict correctly is to have them Slide the value of the leading coefficient of a 2nd degree (quadratic, parabolic) equation. When that number is greater than one, the graph narrows sharply; when it is less than one it widens; when it is negative the graph inverts.
It can be combined with data sets to see if kids can guess what numbers would match the data (hint, their first guesses are usually terrible, but they’ll likely work feverishly until they get it right). Here is a cool example from the world of sports. Students can try to figure out at what age most NBA players reach their peak (based on Average Points per game for all players who are that age). If you’re interested I have a full lesson plan based on this data set.
| NBA Player Age | Avg PPG |
| 19 | 6.95 |
| 20 | 6.69 |
| 21 | 7.39 |
| 22 | 6.89 |
| 23 | 6.66 |
| 24 | 7.01 |
| 25 | 8.62 |
| 26 | 8.56 |
| 27 | 9.37 |
| 28 | 9.26 |
| 29 | 9.09 |
| 30 | 8.24 |
| 31 | 7.81 |
| 32 | 8.21 |
| 33 | 7.35 |
| 34 | 6.90 |
| 35 | 6.45 |
| 36 | 7.23 |
| 37 | 6.43 |
| 38 | 6.07 |
| 39 | 5.72 |