Last week's blog had some fun sites/apps for kids in the 6th grade and younger.  This blog post is for the older set (middle school and up).  Here are some fun things you can do this summer:

Have you ever complained about how slow your Internet connection is? You might not, once you understand what really happens when you try and pull up a website.  Here's a video that shows what happens when someone in England requests the World Science Festival web page.  This video is an oldie, but goodie.  It was made in 2013 and it's still one of my favorites.

Click here if you want to really geek out and learn more about the Internet.  There are videos about:

• How the Internet Works
• The Cloud
• World Wide Web
• Address:  IP, URL, DNS, TLDs, gTLDs
• How a Search Engine Works
• Digging a Little Deeper - What is HTTP, HTML and Cookies?
• Data Centers
• Laying Undersea Cables
• Spooky Stuff - ​like "How Does Your Web Browser Know Your Location?",  "​How internet advertisers read your mind" and "How Google knows everywhere you go and how to stop it"

James was the winner of Ms. Lockwood and my auction item this year and he invited Emily to join us at the Artechouse today.  The Artechouse is a museum dedicated to showcasing experiential and technology driven works by artists who are forerunners of the new age in the arts and technology.  It is located at 1238 Maryland Ave SW.  The current exhibition is called "In Peak Bloom" and will be there until May 27th. In Peak Bloom showcases the collaborative efforts of five women artists. We spent about an hour exploring the five installations in this exhibit.  This museum is great for people of all ages.  Most of the exhibits are interactive, so it keeps the interest of children. In the evening it is "adults only" where they have a bar that serves augmented reality drinks. We had a great time and highly recommend it!

Here's a video we took of the augmented reality images in the Enchanted Garden exhibit.

Google announced at their Google Next event a bunch of new features that will be rolled out in 2019.  Here are just a handful I thought you might be interested in.  

Work anywhere with Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides in new offline mode.  It’s now possible for users to work on Docs, Sheets, and Slides files when your device is offline or have a bad internet connection within Google Drive. You can also preview which files are available offline with a new offline preview mode.

​You can now edit the theme colors for your presentations in Slides, making it easier to set up a new theme, or apply bulk color changes to existing presentations. Previously, we only supported custom colors that were not linked to the presentation theme.  Now, users can easily customize the color palette associated with a theme. To do this, go to any color picker dropdown and click the edit button for your Theme color palette. In the Theme color sidebar, select a color from the dropdown to begin editing.

Google is updating the creation flow for meetings in Calendar to help you save time with an easier way to schedule. For example, you can "peek" at calendars and automatically add guests: Now, when you add a calendar in the “Search for people” box, you can temporarily view coworkers’ calendars. Creating a new event then automatically adds those people as guests to your meeting and might suggest a title for the meeting.

Here are some features that are not new, but they are new to me.  I thought you might find them useful...

G Suite user Guide to Accessiblity

G Suite user guide to accessibility - ​G Suite is a collection of applications for online collaboration, organization, and productivity that provide powerful tools and access to content from the web. This page lists resources to help you get started with G Suite using assistive technology. We've included information for diverse needs and interests, but many of the resources are primarily for blind or low-vision users.

As many of you know, I have a long commute and I listen to a lot of podcasts.  The information on this blog post primarily came from the Google Teacher Tribe Podcast.  A big THANK YOU to Matt Miller and Kasey Bell for putting together such a fabulous podcast!

The tragic fire of Notre Dame Cathedral reminds us of the fragile impermanence of our World Heritage treasures.  I am so grateful that people have captured the majesty of this site and others in photos and videos.  It makes these places accessible by people from all around the world and even after catastrophes such as this. 

Google Expeditions is another great way to explore world heritage sites using virtual reality.  

Google has created two fun apps that use Artificial Intelligence.  They learn from people like you who use the app.  The more people who play it, the smarter it gets.  

Did you know iPads, cellphones, and laptop computers use lithium-ion batteries?  According to Popular Mechanics, most lithium-ion batteries have a rated lifetime of somewhere between 500 and 1,500 charge cycles where one cycle is one bout of discharging.  Don't let your battery completely discharge (let it run down to zero before recharging) because it can degrade to 70 percent of its original capacity (300 to 500 charge cycles). On the flip side if you plug in your device when the battery gets to 75% remaining, that same battery can be charged up to 2,500 times before it starts to seriously degrade. And good news, you can't overcharge your device, so keeping it plugged in is not detrimental to the battery.  Click here to read the full Popular Mechanics article: 8 Essential Tips to Keep Your Phone's Battery Health.