Ninja Notes

Let us help you teach like a ninja!

Educational Technology

How to Fix Your Forced Copy Google Glitches

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Are you having trouble with Google glitches because your forced copy links aren't working? Come read through our list of possible solutions when the link you received doesn't work.

If you have been using a forced copy to receive Google files, you may have noticed a glitch that can cause problems. To be clear, when we allow for a copy of our Google files to be made in your drive, we should never have to share or give you access. We’ve already done that step to automate it. However, there have been lots of problems with Google glitches lately so we gathered up all the knowledge we could find online and put it in an easy-to-use format so that you can get your files as quickly as possible. Many teacher authors like ourselves use these forced copy links because sharing folders isn’t possible (yet).

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More Advanced Tech Skills You Should Teach Your Students

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Once your upper elementary students are using technology in the classroom or for distance learning regularly, you might need to teach them some more advanced tech skills to help them be more productive. Come check out this list of skills your students will need to use technology efficiently and effectively.

With more and more students having to complete their schoolwork online, there are some advanced tech skills you should teach your students to help make both your life and their lives easier. Technology often comes quite naturally to the generation that can usually set up a device or figure out a new video game within minutes, but the technology we use in the classroom is often more related to productivity tools and isn’t as intuitive.

What skills do you find you have to teach over and over again? We made a list with our students and then made list for you.

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Find the Fake News and So Much More

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We need to teach students how to think critically about what they see online. Check out these tips and lessons you can use in your clasroom to help turn your students in to responsible digital citizens. Digital citizenship and online safety should be a priority in every upper elementary classroom.

We realized the importance of teaching critical thinking and fact-checking one day on Facebook. One ninja-mother-in-law posted an article about an actor that had died-but the actor had died FIVE years earlier. Yet, there she was just reposting like crazy. A dog with a piece of ham on its face was her next post and that was when we started writing our digital citizenship and online safety resource. Clearly, digital citizenship is a skill to be learned by many these days.

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How to Use Google Meet to Run a Book Club

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If you like to run Book Clubs in your upper elementary classroom, then you should try using Google Meet to run them. Come read through our post to see how we put these in place and get yourself some useful tools to make it all go easier.

Are you looking for a twist on a Book Club to help spice up your reading instruction? Using Google Meet can be just the twist you need to get students reading, writing and talking about books. If you’re teaching reading, you need to give this a shot!

The point of book clubs is to have students (or people) read the same book together and then discuss the book. It is not about reading a book and then doing comprehension questions. No one wants to do that (or mark that). It’s about fostering a love of reading for life.

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Use Google Classroom to Make Your Life Easier

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Do you use Google Classroom for your everyday lessons? If not, you might want to consider trying it to get your in class or online learning organized. Learn some of the basics to set it up and get started with this post, which includes some must know tech skills for yourself and your upper elementary students.

When the pandemic hit and classes needed to jump online, we were so thankful that we’d been spending the past few years teaching our students how to use the technology in our classroom and at home through Google Classroom.

If you haven’t tried it yet, you should. There are other Learning Management Systems out there, but Google is relatively easy to use, and it’s free. If your students already know how to use other Google Tools, it’s really not much different.

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How to Avoid Device Disaster

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Are your classroom devices supposed to be saving you time, but they are a disaster and you spend all your time organizing them? Check out these time-saving and practical tips to keep those devices in order once and for all!

Great! You have a brand new set of devices to use in your classroom. That’s awesome, but there are some things you’re going to have to do in order to keep those devices in top-notch condition and avoid device disaster.

Now, we are fortunate enough to work in a school where a technician is the one who sets up all the student accounts and installs all the software. We actually have no ability to alter these things, so this post will focus on looking after the hardware (not using the devices).

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