Gooru - free site for k-12 learning materials

Don't spend hours looking for the right video, lesson plan, or interactive.  All of these and more can be found in one spot, all for free!  Plus there is the added bonus of student assessment.  This is a great tool to get your start into the world of blended learning.  You can set up your classes and add assignments, or just use it for it's great resources.

Easy Research in Google Drive

Within Google Drive you can conduct your research and locate image for your projects without needing multiple tabs open on your computer.

When you are in a Google Document, click on Tools in the top toolbar. Then click on Research.  Box will open on the right side of the screen. You can research many ways. The 'Everything' category is a general Google search. You can also search Images, Google Scholar, Quotations, use the Dictionary or Tables lets you pull up data in table format.

 

After you conduct a search in this Research box, you have a few options. Cursor over the result you are interested in and some buttons appear. You can Preview the webpage. That means it opens in a box on your screen. You can insert a Link right into your Google Document (where every your cursor was at). The greatest option here is to Cite your work. Pressing the Cite button will put a citation in MLA format at the bottom of your page as a footer. You can also choose to have the citation in APA or Chicago format.



 

Along with searching for websites, you can also search for images. Drop down the menu above the search results and you can choose to filter images that are "Free to use, share or modify, even commercially."



Logging into Google Chrome

When you use the Chrome web brower, another great thing you can do is log into Google Chrome to get access to your books marks and great Google Apps. Follow the easy steps below to log into Google Chrome. Your students have access to these too!


1. Open a browser window in Chrome by clicking on the Chrome icon.



2. Click on the button with 3 lines in the top right corner.

 

 

3. From the menu that appears, click on Sign Into Chrome.

 

4. Log in using your school email username and password.

 

5. If a box appears on the screen with Advanced Sync Option, choose Sync Everything and click the OK button.

 

6. Now next to the 3 lines in the top right corner is an icon you can click on to access apps. Also you now have access to your bookmark.

Here are the apps you have access to. Click on AppJump to see even more (image of them is below).