CESD Kami Handbook

CESD Kami Handbook

As questions arise regarding Kami, I have begun to assemble some of the ins-and-outs into a Printable “handbook” that includes screenshots to try to assist. The handbook will be updated as new questions arise, but will only be as lengthy as the questions posed within CESD.

The handbook has been created in Google Slides…. so here’s a tip you may have forgotten – – when you build printables in Google Slides, you can change the size of the “slide” to be 8.5 X 11 (file -> page setup -> custom size) and voilà! You can easily create a booklet or any other printable, with a thumbnail view on the left side of your workspace! So, if you were a Publisher user, this is a quick way to regain some of the control of your layout!

The CESD Online Field Trip Form

The CESD Online Field Trip Form

It’s been lagging for some people. This could be the result of a few different things.

1. Too many tabs open – if you have 10-kajillion tabs open, things will slow down. (Google Keep is a great place to store websites that you don’t want to lose track of – just a tip there – as a teacher I often had many tabs open… stuff I’d discovered while searching for something else but didn’t want to lose…)

2. The download folder of your Chromebook could be full. Especially if you use Teachers Pay Teachers to buy resources. If you do that, download them, copy them into your Google Drive, then remove them from the downloads folder!

3. Your browser history (cache for those of you who are more my age category) may need to be cleared. To do that, click the 3 dots up at the top right of your screen (Where your profile photo is) and choose history. You’ll be taken to a screen such as . the image attached to this commentary. On the top left you can clear the browsing history.

So, in general, the usual things that can slow a computer down could be impacting your Chromebook. Test out the above three things if you’ve been having challenges with the field trip form!

Photoshop Replacement

Photoshop Replacement

One of our brilliant tech EAs alerted me to the existence of Photopea today – https://www.photopea.com/ – The screen actually looks exactly like Photoshop, and while it lacks a few of the “bells and whistles” of photoshop (keyboard shortcuts, for instance), it would certainly be more than any student not enrolled in 30-level CTS courses would need!!

I want to Print Photos from a Chromebook

I want to Print Photos from a Chromebook

With the old Windows computers, the utility for printing photos grew familiar throughout the years that people actually did this (printed photos at home). But, printing photos at home is no longer something that -people do, and so this feature is disappearing.

If we can make our peace with the fact that printing photos from a Chromebook is going to be different, then 50% of the frustration evaporates.

You can set your smartphone to upload your camera roll into Google Photos automatically (Personally, I do this with my photos; the space in education accounts is unlimited, and the privacy policy of Google as it pertains to education is solid.). If your smartphone loads photos into your Google Photos account, it means they will be in a folder in your Google Drive (called Google Photos). Running them through this handy little website makes printing them a Breeze.

Here is a screencast I did today of this process.

CESD Kami Handbook

OCR Scanning for Read & Write and Kami

OCR = Optical Character Recognition – it means that the letters on the pdf represent letters to the software as opposed to “dots” (You know you don’t have an OCR scanned document when Kami reads “dot dot dot dot….” through the text to speech feature!)

A quick way to scan a poem, short story or other printed item for use in Kami is by using your smartphone. There are a number of other apps that can handle scanning to .pdf, but many are paid. https://mashtips.com/ocr-scanner-ios-apps/

 

OCR = Optical Character Recognition – it means that the letters on the pdf represent letters to the software as opposed to “dots” (You know you don’t have an OCR scanned document when Kami reads “dot dot dot dot….” through the text to speech feature!)

A quick way to scan a poem, short story or other printed item for use in Kami is by using your smartphone. There are a number of other apps that can handle scanning to .pdf, but many are paid. https://mashtips.com/ocr-scanner-ios-apps/