How to Manage Browser Pop-ups - Not All of Them Are Bad

Yesterday morning I answered a question from a reader who was having a little trouble accessing the sharing function on a website. From the description she gave me, the solution was to enable to pop-ups for that particular website. I sent her a screenshot of how to enable pop-ups and then created this short demonstration video.

In the following video I demonstrate how to change pop-up settings in Chrome, Firefox, and Edge.



The default setting in most browsers these days is to automatically block all pop-up windows. That's generally a good thing. However, there are times when pop-ups are necessary. For example, some websites' sharing menus (like mine) utilize pop-ups for sharing blog posts to social media sites. Some websites' log-in screens utilize pop-ups as well. So if you're experiencing problems with a site not working exactly as you expected, try enabling pop-ups for just that site and see if the problem is resolved.

Actionable Insights for Reading Progress in Microsoft Teams

Last week Microsoft added some new aspects to the Reading Progress tools in Microsoft Teams. One of those new features is called Actionable Insights. As the name implies, it provides you with information about your students' reading progress and lets you create assignments based on those insights. The means that after you have reviewed the reading progress data for your students you can create differentiated assignments based on that data. 

As I expected, Mike Tholfsen created a video that highlights the features of Actionable Insights and other recently updated features of Reading Progress in Microsoft Teams. Watch the video on his YouTube channel or as embedded below.

For those of you who are not Microsoft Teams users, check back on Monday for a blog post about a cool tool that does a similar thing as Reading Progress but works without the need for a Microsoft account.