April 2023 Fresh Tech Gazette Instructional Technology Newsletter

 April 2023 Fresh Tech Gazette Newsletter

In this month's edition of the Fresh Tech Gazette Instructional Technology Newsletter, we explore a variety of exciting tools and strategies to support your learning environment. Check out tips for feedback, encouragement, and classroom management from the free tool, Stickity, where you can create digital stickers, badges, signs, flyers, timers, and more. Take a sneak peek into the new accessibility feature coming to Chrome this summer: reading mode! Reading mode in Chrome includes color contrast options, font style and size options, spacing, line by line readers, and much more. We also cover some of the exciting new updates for Canva for Education, a graphic design suite of tools available to all K-12 school districts at no cost. New Canva updates include improvements to design and translation with artificial intelligence, including Translation of designs and PDFs into multiple languages, magic tools to help remove backgrounds, and generative AI art tools. How exciting! 

Be sure to also dive into the section of the newsletter covering Adobe Express. Like Canva, Adobe Express is a suite of graphic design tools available to K-12 school districts for free and accessible via your Google domain (depending on how your district configures access). Adobe Express has a number of visual graphic design tools, such as logo makers, poster makers, and flyers. However, two of my favorite tools in Adobe include the video creation tool and website maker. Both tools are great for scaffolding video editing, video creation, and website building for students from a variety of grade levels. The templates make a larger task much more manageable, and include self-guided tutorials for students throughout the creation process. Plus, Adobe includes a number of lesson templates that teachers can use to help build student capacity and comfort with Adobe Express throughout the school year! There are great, fun, relationship building lessons available for use where the teacher gives students access to the lesson template Adobe has built, and voila, that's it! The students can write in their interests, while also learning how to use the photo tools, media editing, and graphic design templates within the platform. 

There's much more to explore in this newsletter-be sure to check it out!

 

🔌Chrome Corner NEW Chrome Reading Mode for accessibility Fun stickers with Stickity for Docs, Slides Highlight, note-taking extensions	💻 Techie Tidbits  Canvas Monthly Tip: Templates, Commons Itslearning to Canvas migration tips Itslearning to Canvas tools: Quick reference
💡 Strategies & Sources EduProtocols: Learning in the Round Canva graphic design updates: Translation Canva graphic design updates: Magic tools Arab American heritage month resources	UDL 💚 Tech💜 Connect💙 Creative projects with Adobe Express EquatIO STEM visualization tools Collaborative planning with FigJam
🎉  PD & Prizes   Make and Take: Past sessions Indiana Learning Lab	How to access past newsletters Check out Fresh Tech  blog for more!

April 2023 Fresh Tech Gazette Instructional Technology Newsletter

 

Created by Brenny Kummer - @Brenny_Kummer

Badge designed using Canva

Photo by Ioann-Mark Kuznietsov on Unsplash