A Quick Tip for Sorting Gmail

Here's a little tip that I shared with a friend last weekend and I figured a few of you might appreciate it as well. When an email that you are expecting to appear in your primary tab in Gmail appears in another tab, you can simply drag it over to your primary tab. When you do that, Gmail will give you the option to have all future emails from that sender appear in your primary tab. Doing that is a good way to make sure you don't miss an important email that you're expecting. Watch the video below for a demonstration of this tip.

Video - A Quick Tip for Sorting Gmail

29 Google Sites Tutorials for Teachers

Yesterday afternoon a reader emailed me to ask if I had any resources she could reference while building a website with Google Sites. The first video that I thought to send her was this one covering all of the basics of creating your first Google Site. In looking for that video I came across a bunch of other Google Sites tutorials that I've made over the last few years. I then put all of those videos into one playlist of 29 Google Sites tutorials. Some highlights from the playlist are embedded below. 

How to Create Your First Google Site



How to Avoid a Common Google Sites Video Mistake



How to Put Physics, Chemistry, and Math Simulations Into Google Sites



How to Add a News Section to Google Sites



How to Link to Sections Within Pages of Google Sites

New Padlet Feature! Present Padlet Walls as Slideshows

Padlet has been one of my go-to tools for more than a decade. That staying power is due in large part to the flexibility of the tool and that the team and Padlet continues to add more and more helpful features for teachers. The latest feature added to Padlet is an option to present all of the notes on a Padlet wall as a slideshow. 

Now when you want to display the notes that your students have added to a Padlet wall you can simply click on the slideshow button on the righthand side of the screen to display each note in order in full screen. Take a look at my screenshot below to see where to find the Padlet slideshow button.

This feature is currently available to anyone who has opted-into the beta channel for Padlet and will be available to all users later today. 

Applications for Education
The new Padlet slideshow option could be very handy when you're trying to review with your whole class the contributions that they've made to a Padlet wall. I can see this being particularly useful when going through a set of KWL responses as it allows you and your class to focus on one item at a time without the distraction of other notes appearing in the background.

How to Set Expiration Dates for Google Docs

Setting access expiration dates is one of the many "hidden" or frequently overlooked features of Google Documents. This is a feature you can use when you want to share a Google Document with a person or group of people for a limited time. By setting an expiration date you can grant access for as little as an hour or as much as a year. In the short video that is embedded below I demonstrate how to set expiration dates for Google Docs. 

Video - How to Set Access Expiration Dates for Shared Google Docs

Much like you can set expiration dates for individual Google Documents, you can share your Google Drive folders and individual files for set durations of time. Watch How to Set Expiration Dates for Google Drive Folders & Files to learn how to place time limits on your sharing settings.



Applications for Education
Setting expiration dates for shared documents is helpful when you want to encourage your students to review a document before a specific time. It's also helpful when you want to publish something like a syllabus, but you don't want to have it published and live on the web indefinitely.

Learning About Languages and The Mysteries of Vernacular

Last week I wrote a blog post titled Two Lessons for a Wicked Cold Day. After publishing that post it occurred to me that readers who are not familiar with New England may be wondering why I chose the word wicked. Sure enough, someone emailed me last night to ask what I meant by "wicked cold." In New England we tend to use the word "wicked" as an adjective in place of extreme or very. For example, the Boston Celtics played wicked good defense against the Detroit Pistons last night.

The New England-style use of wicked originated is just one of many mysteries of vernacular. For more mysteries of vernacular lessons, take a look at TED-Ed's Mysteries of Vernacular series. Each of the 26 lessons focus on one word that is often used by English speakers. A history of the word's origins and evolution of its use is featured in each video lesson. The entire playlist is embedded below beginning with the word "yankee."



Words of the World. Words of the World is a collection of videos featuring historians and linguists explaining the origins of and history of the use of words in the English language. The videos attempt to put the words into a somewhat modern context. For example this video about the word "guerrilla" makes reference to Che Guevara. The video I've embedded below explains the word "coup."

Langscape is an interactive map created at the Maryland Language Science Center. The Langscape interactive map displays more than 6,000 markers representing more than 6,000 languages. Each marker represents the native language of that location. Zoom-in and click on a marker to learn more about the language. When you click on the marker you will be able to find more information about that marker through links to pages on Ethnologue, Language Archives, and Wikipedia. Those pages will provide information about whether or not the language is extinct and its origins.