Soft Technology

By: Dustin Hodgson Title: Co-Owner of MyCreativeShop NOTE FROM AMY: I'm super excited about MyCreativeShop because they offer thousands of some of the highest quality templates available online. It’s important to note that MyCreativeShop is a paid service. However, If you’d like to avoid the membership fee, you can print your project with them during your trial, then they’ll waive the design fee and cover the cost of your stock images, thus making it a free design to print service. If are searching for a FREE solution, try Lucidpress or Canva  (with your own images). Consider this a warning… Not everyone is creative, but YOU can be! Before I get into my top 5 list, I’d like to explain what I mean by my statement above. You see… I've been in graphic design for several years now and the number 1 thing I heard from co-workers regarding design was, “... but I’m not creative, so you do it”. There are plenty of designers documenting what not to say to a graphic designer , but that...

If you've been wondering what Google Classroom is (or is NOT), this video from moi is for you! Should you get ready for implementation? Can you replace your current system with Classroom? This video will help you answer those burning questions. Then, join the discussion below this post on Google+ to share how your school is using Classroom to improve instruction. Also, don’t forget to install the free Synergyse training for Classroom by visiting https://www.synergyse.com/ and clicking the large green Install button!

Animated Gifs have returned to the scene as a GREAT teaching tool. You can email them, post them on a website or on social media, add them to a document or slideshow, but any way you put them, they're a powerful, succinct way to get across the steps of a technology process. Easy, fun, and FREE! Thanks TechSmith for the great addition to the Chrome browser! Install the App here and you also need the extension, available here . Video here if you don't see it below.

by Brian McLane Twitter: @brian_mclane Website: techmantraining.com Secondary Educator - 32 years, Ed-Tech Junkie, MA Teaching & Learning with Technology, “Head in the Cloud; Caught in the Web” Chromebooks for Graphic Design? I teach a high school desktop publishing class which includes graphic design, page layout, image editing, and more. We can use Chromebooks for almost everything we do. And we use completely free cloud software to do it. No Adobe Creative Suite, no Microsoft Office, no expensive, high-learning-curve software. Should I be teaching industry-standard software? Why ? I teach the concepts; the tools don't really matter. My students can learn the basics in the numerous free Google Apps and Web-based applications that are available for graphic design. Let's take a look! Image Editing One of the first things my students need to learn is image editing. Google Apps offers more image editors than we will ever need! Our go-to app is Pixlr . We use the Pixlr Editor,...

Guest Blogger Charly has been a camp counselor, K-12 math tutor, and collegiate print and digital journalist. She’s currently enjoying writing and snowboarding in Utah. Have you ever wished there were an easy-to-learn design tool which would let you and your students fry up print and digital documents in the cloud? What if it were completely free and ran from your browser? Lucidpress leverages a powerful yet user-friendly interface to bring image and text editing capabilities to your fingertips. Both beginning and advanced teachers and students can jump into Lucidpress and learn the tools the first time they use it. The best part is that unlike other programs, Lucidpress allows for real-time collaboration: between teachers, between groups of students, and between teachers and their students. Lucidpress is a web-based design tool that is ideal for making posters, flyers, and digital yearbooks and newsletters. You can create professional-looking documents—both print and digital—withou...