Create Location-based Reminders in Google Keep Notes

Google Keep has been my favorite bookmarking and reminder tool ever since Evernote made their free plan worthless earlier this year. I use it on a daily basis to bookmark interesting links and to write notes to myself. One of the neat features of Google Keep is that you can set reminder alarms for your notes and bookmarks. Today, for the first time, I noticed that you can set those reminders based on location as well as time.

To set location-based reminders in Google Keep you will need to have location services enabled on your phone. With location services enabled you can choose to have a location-based reminder alarm added to any of your notes. To do this, just tap the reminder option on your note then choose "place" and type in the location you wish to associate with your reminder.

Applications for Education
Google Keep's location-based reminders could be great for reminding students of meetings that they have after school. I can also see teachers using the feature to remind themselves of things like morning bus duty or lunch duty.

Click here for ten other ways that students can use Google Keep.

Great Google Drive Add-ons for Teachers - An Updated Handout

Last year I published a free PDF handout that highlights great Add-ons for Google Docs, Forms, and Sheets. The handout also included a few of my favorite Chrome extensions. A year passed and it was time to update that handout for the 2016-17 school year. The updated version of that handout is now available to download here or view as embedded below.

The handout highlights my favorite Chrome extensions as well as my favorite Add-ons for Google Docs, Forms, and Sheets. Please feel free to email it or print it and share it with your colleagues.


Please note that the file is hosted on Box.com. If your school blocks Box.com you won't be able to see the document on your school's network.

Padlet for Halloween and Thanksgiving

Earlier today Jennifer Casa-Todd asked me if I had a video tutorial on how to use the new version of Padlet. I do have a tutorial about the new version of Padlet. You can see it on my YouTube channel or as embedded lower in this post.

Coincidentally, I received an email from Padlet today. In that email I was reminded of the idea to use Padlet to have students share thoughts about holidays. Halloween is just one week away. You could use Padlet to have students share trick o' treating safety tips.

Thanksgiving (the American version) is just a month away. You could use Padlet to have students share what they are thankful for or to share their favorite Thanksgiving traditions and recipes.

Learn how to use Padlet by watching the video embedded below.

A Good Place to Find Free Sound Effects for Multimedia Projects

Whether it is for a podcast, a video, a slide presentation, or some other multimedia project, there will be times when your students need to download sound effects. SoundBible is a good place for students to find all kinds of free sound effects recordings. Students can download files as MP3 or WAV files. And best of all, students don't need to register on the site in order to download the files. But they do need to remember to cite the source of the sound effects as most are labeled with a Creative Commons license. Learn more about SoundBible in my short video embedded below.

Two Helpful Tips for Navigating PDFs

One of the search tips that I often remind students about is, "search within your search results." In other words, open up a webpage, a PDF, or a Word file and search within it before dismissing it as not relevant to your search. There are two simple ways that students can quickly search and navigate through PDFs. I demonstrate both of those methods in the video embedded below.


For more search tips, download this free hand-out that I made last year.