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Yesterday afternoon Google announced a ton of updates and one big new thing - a new name for Google Apps. It is now "G Suite". They also changed the name for all of their services to Google Cloud. It is a name change to better align with all of their offerings and products and the services and apps are still the same. Different name, same great products. The name change has already gone out in the Admin help page, Google+ community and more. For Google for Education , there are now 4 areas - G Suite for Education (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, Sites, Gmail, Calendar, Drive), Classroom, Chromebooks, and Content (Creative Apps). There were also some announcements with product and feature updates: Introducing Google Cloud  - Today we’re announcing Google Cloud, Google’s unique and broad portfolio of products, technologies and services that let our customers operate in a digital world easily and at peak performance. All together now. Introducing G Suite.  G Suite is a set of ...

It's  National Preparedness Month , and start of the Hurricaine Season. With all of the crazy weather we have seen, it's good to be prepared. It is important to consider three scenarios when planning for an emergency: 1) an escape route and meeting point if everyone is in the house; 2) what to do during a school day; and 3) how to handle an emergency during the weekend, when family members might be scattered. Although many people are familiar with the concept of developing a family plan for emergencies, most fail to take the time to sit down and actually come up with one. One great resource is the  FEMA -sponsored website:  http://www.ready.gov/ . Check out their kids section too:  http://www.ready.gov/kids Schools need to be prepared themselves, as well as teach their staff and students how to be prepared. Each household, business, and school should have an emergency plan, emergency kits and people trained in emergency preparedness and response. I started my trainin...

This Back to School Guide, is a free resource for helping students achieve greater success in school. The new guide offers tips for efficient scheduling, how to maintain a budget, creating good study habits and more using office productivity software. The guide is available here for download: http://blog.wps.com/2016/09/26/pdf-back-to-school-guide/ . The guide includes these topics: • Back-to-School Basics: Tracking Tools Can Help You Prepare for Fall • Getting Back in the School Mindset • Templates, Style Trends, and More • Good Study Habits and Why They Help Students • The Importance of Scheduling for Students • Additional Resources for Students • Helping Students Start Thinking Ahead to College • Summer Assignments to Prepare for the Next Year Ahead To download the full Back to School Guide, visit https://goo.gl/UO4rBr. Other resources for students: 10 Great, Free Apps for Students for Notetaking and Class Planning Successful Studying Tips and Resources for Students Study T...

Epson announced the availability of the Epson iProjection™ App for Chromebooks , enabling students and teachers to wirelessly display content from Chromebooks on Epson BrightLink ® interactive projectors and most PowerLite® projectors. With the Epson Multi-PC Projection with Moderator function1 and the Epson iProjection App for Chromebooks, the teacher has the ability to display up to four Chromebook notebook computers simultaneously from a maximum of 50 connected devices for an engaging collaborative classroom experience. This is a huge feature that many teachers have been asking for. Imaging being able to move around the classroom, projecting from your Chromebook, or having your students share their work with the class, all wirelessly! I wish I had this when I was a teacher! More info below: LONG BEACH, Calif. – Sept. 27, 2016 –  Epson, the number-one selling projector brand worldwide, today announced the availability of the  Epson iProjection™ App for Chromebooks , enabling...

Mojo Networks Introduces Mojo Enforce for the K-12 Education Marketplace Mojo Enforce is the First Cloud Managed WiFi Feature to Integrate Directly Into Google for Education to Automatically Enact Policies on the School’s WiFi Network This is a great option for schools to control access to their wireless networks and works with Chromebooks. Mountain View, CA, September 7, 2016 – Many K-12 schools and districts have challenges in controlling what devices connect to their WiFi networks because of the limitations of current WiFi authentication techniques. With the continued growth of connected devices – iPads, Chromebooks, smartphones and tablets and more – in schools, there is a growing need for school IT administrators to control WiFi device connections. Mojo Networks, a leader in secure cloud managed WiFi for the K-12 educational market , announces Mojo Enforce. Enforce takes policies for network access and device management from third party systems and applies them to the WiFi netwo...

Planning for the first month of school can take on average 16 hours of prep, research, practice and refinement for every one hour of actual teaching time. In the hopes of giving teachers some hours back this month, here are 5 digital tools that teachers can use to lifehack their course planning. #1 BRAINSTORM IN THE CLOUD: Always forgetting great coursework planning ideas you have outside of class? Jot your brainstorms on your phone’s Evernote app. Your ideas will be synced to a central location automatically, so you can have all your great ideas in one place. #2 HAVE A DIGITAL PROJECT HUB Are you a visual brainstormer? Trello mimics your wall of Post-Its so you can drag and drop course ideas and to-do’s, big questions or due dates for projects. Teachers can also create projects for students, and ask them to add writing tasks, encouraging classroom collaboration. #3 TEACH VISUALLY Course Hero has just launched an Infographic Study Series ( coursehero.com/lit/ ): a collection of ove...

With www.learnclick.com you can easily create online cloze tests like fill in the blanks, drag & drop and dropdowns as well as traditional multiple choice quizzes. It is an ideal tool for asking questions in context as you can ask your students to fill out the missing words in a text. Create logins and assign your quizzes to a class in order to track progress. Or share it with anyone and embed the quiz into your homepage for the purpose of practicing.  Learnclick offers the option to add pictures, sound files and embed youtube videos. Other features that make the life of busy teachers easier are: generating PDF files, import/export questions as well as an export to Excel for given answers.  Disclaimer - Learnclick is a paid advertiser of Educational Technology Guy. .

CK-12 , one of my all time favorite, free resources for teachers, has a very cool new feature called "Concept Maps".   "Concept Maps"  uses visual concept mapping to show connections between different concepts in math, science and connections between math and science. It is very easy to use and is a great way to help students see these connections, make their own connections, and see why learning these different topics is so important. Just search for a topic and suggested items appear. Select one and see the concept map. Math and science are color coded so you can tell which is which. Here is one on Bio and Forensics: Here is one on Newton's 2nd Law of Motion: This is an excellent resource for helping students better understand concepts and connections. Make sure you also check out all of the other great resources CK-12 has to offer. More great resources on CK-12 and what it has to offer for teachers and students.  Digital, interactive textbooks, simulations, ...

Consider this: Bill Gates has poured billions of dollars into what he calls the “future of learning” - and Mark Zuckerberg just announced a new $50M ed-tech investment. Both with a big push towards personalized learning. Course Hero, now led by a new CMO - former Google Play Marketing chief, Patrick Mork - wants to also bet on students, by democratizing access to study materials: its 12.5M users, to be exact. By tackling the “The 4 Ls” - crucial problems that students and educators face today - this college student favorite wants to change the way students learn, study, and succeed in the “workplace of the future”. What are the 4 L’s? It’s lack of: #1 TIME: Students today have less time than ever before to master their course material because of more classwork, homework, multiple study groups, extra-curricular activities, and even side jobs to pay their ballooning student bills. #2 MASTERY: Students learn the same material at the same pace but are often not mastering the full conten...

The Microsoft Education Community is a great, free resource for teachers. It has free web courses on using Microsoft tools and on best practices for using technology in education. There are discussion groups, resources and training tools available. You can earn badges and certifications through the site also. The site is easy to navigate and has some excellent resources. The training goes from the basics of using email, to Office 365 to new products like Sway. It also includes 21st Century Learning, Accessibility and more. Teachers share resources here, as well as providing support and feedback to each other. There are even some great virtual field trips. Check it out! Related: Microsoft Education Resources, including Office 365 .

I was in EMS for 22 years before retiring due to a back injury. One of my most memorable  experiences was responding to New York City as a Paramedic in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11 . I will never forget that experience. What I saw and did are still with me, as is a type of asthma from breathing the dust.  My Experience as a Paramedic on 9-11-01   As the years have gone by, I've noticed that people are not remembering this terrible event like they did the first few years after. I know that my EMS, Fire and Police colleagues all do, as do the brave men and women of our armed forces who fight every day against terrorism. I've also noticed less being done in schools lately. Most of today's students weren't even born when 9/11 occurred. Please teach them about it (facts only please) and make sure they understand what it means. I will never forget that day, my experiences, and the EMS Brothers and Sisters lost on that day: United We Stood, United We Stand To...