Google Voice

Tip #12: Use Google Voice to text and call your students

No need to give your cell phone number to students. Giving your students your cell phone number can be risky. Once they have it, they have it forever. I get it; you want a quick and convenient way for your students to contact you and to get a hold of them. I generally use email to get a hold of students, but some students don't check their email regularly. They do, however, always have their phones on them. Google Voice is a free service that allows you to register a new phone number that you can use to contact your students, work…
Using Microsoft Polls

Tip #8: Use Polls in Outlook

Microsoft Polls allows students to answer questions without ever leaving their email.  The survey tool inside D2L works fine to collect answers from students in a single course. Microsoft Polls provides similar functionality but doesn't require you to use D2L. Polls stores each response in Microsoft Forms. You can access the answers using Sharepoint. To start using Polls, create a new email in Outlook, choose Insert, and select Polls from the top menu. Next, you'll see the default question and a couple of options. In my example, I asked the students where they would return their equipment at the end…
Tip #4:  Create video thumbnails for your lecture, presentation, and demonstration videos.

Tip #4:  Create video thumbnails for your lecture, presentation, and demonstration videos.

According to Youtube, 90% of top-performing videos use a custom thumbnail Sure, creating thumbnails for your videos takes a few minutes, but research shows that people (including your students) are likelier to watch the videos if they have a custom thumbnail. To streamline the process, I suggest sticking with one or two templates from Adobe Express and just changing out the text and maybe the colors each time. There is no need to start over from scratch. Keep your thumbnails consistent from one video to the next. Adobe Express has hundreds of video thumbnail presets you can use to get started.…