Archives October 2022

Phone Directory (ClassLink)

Perhaps, like myself and others you have recently been frustrated by the phonebook system on our new school telephones. One day while expressing my frustrations to the phone, Mrs. Pappas informed me that there was an online phone directory that was far faster and easier to use. “Where might this super secret principals only phone directory be located”, I asked? “It’s no secret, it’s in ClassLink”, She replied.
Please enjoy this dramatic reenactment of a similar story.

(No employees were harmed during the filming of this video)

Canva for Email Signature

I have previously created a guide for changing your Gmail signature which you can review here. Let’s go a step further and examine how to use Canva to create a custom email signature graphic which you can upload through the settings detailed in the link above.

Why would you want to create a custom Gmail signature? To communicate standard information to your recipients that you might not have included in the body of your email. You can also provide other contact and information options that parents and colleagues could use such as your phone extension, Campus, Grade level taught, Important roles you fulfill that someone might need to know.

Canva (which you can get a free premium teacher account for) offers 1,300 templates for a custom email signature. You can also search for business card templates which will work equally as well. There are over 11,000 of those templates available.

Choose a template and then have fun customizing it to include your contact information and more. When you complete your sweet new email signature you can download it as a PNG image to upload in Gmail.

Check out this video walk through below for a more detailed tutoring.

Quick Tip: Chromebook 45

Here is a super simple but hugely effective Chromebook Quick Tip for you.
When you need to address your students while they are working on their Chromebook you need to peel their attention off of the device and on to you. Instruct your students to “45 their Chromebook”. This indicates that they need to close the screen to a 45 degree angle. This way they can’t see and be distracted by the screen but it does not close and put it to sleep.