Situation: You find the most absolutely beautiful, perfect image/text/cartoon/advertisement to go with your unit on [fill in the blank].
Now to save it so you can exploit it! Don’t end up with a hot mess of saved images/texts/cartoons and advertisements. Here’s some tips.
- Try to locate the original or the source with the best quality. There’s nothing worse than finding the perfect image and then realizing when you project it on the board it’s so pixelated it’s awesomeness is diminished by the cries of “I can’t see it!” and “What does that say?” This may mean a few extra clicks to find the original resource. It’s worth it.
- Use the “Save to Google Drive” Extension. This is one of my favorites because you can right click on the image and choose save to drive as a link or image. But wait- you’re not done. Go immediately to your drive and put it in the folder to which it belongs. Even if you’re not going to use it immediately. Don’t let it hang out un-organized.
- While you’re at it, if it fits into more than one lesson use shift+z and move it to a second folder so it’s ready to go when you need it.
- Google Save (or Save to Google) is a new Google feature that allows you to save websites and photos and tag them like Pinterest. I don’t use Google Save a lot because it’s one more place to look to find my stuff. I prefer to have it live in my Google Drive with all of my lessons and slide decks, etc.
- If you save something in Pinterest on the mobile app you can save it directly to your phone or device and then upload it to your Google Drive through the Google Drive Android or iOS app. Click on the three dots and then save image. Then go to the Google Drive App on your device and choose File>Upload and find that picture. If you’re viewing your Pinterest page on the Internet follow the above steps.
But wait, what you want to save is a website? No problem.
For websites for which I am going to make a long and involved lesson I like to have a PDF copy of it so that when the website changes, I don’t end up with a beautifully crafted and engaging lesson with no website content or even worse, different website content. (I’m talking to you, www.petitnicholas.com.)
- If you only need a portion of the website, you can take a screenshot. (See my post on screenshots for more information.) I would do this for the weather report or a title of an article.
- You can save the entire website as a PDF by using Control + P and changing the printer. Click on “Change” and then choose “Save as PDF.” This will download it to your computer and then you should immediately upload it to your Google Drive so that it lives with all of your other information for that unit/lesson.