Mentor High School Shared Resources

"Lab Scheduler is a neat Google Sheets Add-on that enables you to easily create and maintain a lab or room reservation system for your school. Once you have added Lab Scheduler to your Google Spreadsheet it will walk you through the process of creating blocks of time and lab/room space in your spreadsheet. You can set your Lab Scheduler to maintain a preview of as many dates as you like. The preview is what people will see when they want to make a reservation. Share the spreadsheet with your staff and they can reserve a block of time in it.

With CheckItOut enabled in Google Forms you simply title the set of items that people will be checking out (iPads for example) then choose if you want people to choose from check boxes, a list, or multiple choice question. After making those selections CheckItOut will create the form formatting for you. Once created you can edit the list of items that being checked-out. When someone uses your form to check-out an item, that item is automatically moved from the check-out field to the check-in field of your form which makes it easy for everyone to see which items are available and which are not.

"Google Input Tools is a very good Chrome extension that allows you to type using any language you want.This is especially helpful for multilingual people who would like to navigate the web using languages not supported by their keyboards.With one simple click, Google Input Tools enables you to switch to typing in a different language and switch back just as easily. "

"Through TwistedWave you can create and edit spoken audio recordings from scratch. Your completed tracks can be exported to Google Drive and SoundCloud. If you have existing audio tracks in your SoundCloud or Google Drive account you can also import it into TwistedWave to edit those audio tracks. TwistedWave's audio editing tools include options for fade-in, fade-out, looping, sound normalization, and pitch adjustments. The editor also includes the typical track clipping tools that you would expect to see in an audio editing tool."

"When it is used correctly YouTube can be a good platform for spreading news about the great things that are happening in our classrooms and schools. It can also be a good platform for students to share their thoughts and projects. But before you upload videos to YouTube there are a few settings that you should be aware of. In the video embedded below I provide an overview of those settings."

Valuable tools for teachers and students.

"Chalk is an excellent web tool that teachers and educators can use to reduce their paperwork. Chalk allows users to convert any document into a form that can be easily signed or filled out online. As a teacher you can use this tool to distribute forms to be filled out and signed by others (e.g parents, students, school personnels…etc)."

Watchkin can be used in a few ways. You can enter the direct URL of a video into Watchkin to have the sidebar content removed. You can search for videos through Watchkin and have family-friendly results displayed (if a video appears that is not family-friendly Watchkin has a mechanism for flagging it as inappropriate). Watchkin also offers a browser bookmarklet tool that you can click while on YouTube.com to have the related content disappear from the page.

"Within YouTube there is a free tool for creating audio slideshows. You supply the images and YouTube supplies the audio track. You can pick from thousands of audio tracks to match to your slides. After adding your slides and selecting an audio track you can add speech bubbles to your slides. I demonstrate all of these steps in the video embedded below."

"Versal is a new way for anyone to create and publish interactive online courses - no coding required. The site provides a simple to use editor to add content, which it then publishes and hosts for you. For free. Versal uses a system of modules it calls gadgets to easily incorporate videos, surveys, quizzes, diagrams, and other tools to make your course more engaging. Gadgets are mini JavaScript apps that you drag-and-drop into into a course. The basics include text, video and images, but the real magic happens with customizable and interactive simulations, diagrams, timelines, flash cards and more."

"These extensions can be used to capture and jot down quick notes offline, record to-do lists, scribble notes, attach reminders, and many more."

"Some excellent educational content can be found on YouTube. However, many teachers cannot access YouTube in their classrooms. Therefore, I compiled a list of other places to find educational videos that don't rely on YouTube. "

he citing feature is by far one of the hacks we love the most about Google Scholar. The Cite button that appears under links in a Google Scholar search result allows you to generate citations of that reference with a single click. These citations are offered in 3 main formats: MLA, APA and Chicago. And if you use a citation manager such as BibTex,Endnote, RefMan, or Reworks, you will find links to easily export your citations to these managers.