G Suite: Google Classroom Top 10 Web-Based Tips

Google Classroom Top 10 Web-Based Tips

Updated list of Google Expeditions

This is the updated list of Google Expeditions. It's huge, so I recommend searching (Ctrl-F). We now have the ability for you to run the classroom expedition from an iPad. Students would need to download the app to their smartphones. 

You can also choose expeditions in the Google Cultural Institute. Categories include vr experiences, historical events, and artists.

Please let me know if you're interested! 

Add Voice Notes in Google Drive

A Chrome extension called Talk and Comment that it works in Google doc comments. The extension also works perfectly in Google docs, sheets, slides, and drawings. Teachers and students can now leave voice feedback in the comment section of other people's papers. 

Here is a quick video showing how it works. 

Note: make sure students set their papers to 'anyone with the link can comment,' so other people can leave the voice comments for them. 


#yhstechtips

Great Google Drive Add-ons for Teachers

Download this .PDF for suggestions of new add ons for Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides from Richard Byrne

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New time-saving features in G Suite for Education

New time-saving features to Docs, Sheets and Slides designed to speed up and simplify the way teachers and students work, so they can focus on what’s really important—teaching and learning. These apps still have all of the same functionality that students and teachers love, with the addition of these new features. I think you will love these! 

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Super Quiz

This was posted in email by Marita:

I just found this add on connected to google dorms (after your workshop yesterday, Mike!).  I might use it for vocabulary or introductory stuff for novels.   Thought the tutorial was really clear and easy to follow as well.

Give feedback faster with Quizzes in Google Forms

Google launched Quizzes in Google Forms on Monday to help teachers quickly create, deliver and grade assignments or assessments. With Quizzes, teachers can select correct answers for multiple choice and checkbox questions to reduce repetitive grading. They can also enter explanations and review materials to help students learn. And to make sure students understand the lesson material, teachers can prevent students from sending themselves a copy of their responses. Read the full post.

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Discover Great Typography

Google's font directory places typography front and center, inviting users to explore, sort, and test fonts for use in more than 135 languages. We showcase individual type designers and foundries, giving you valuable information about the people and their processes, as well as analytics on usage and demographics. Our series of thematic collections helps you discover new fonts that have been vetted and organized by our team of designers, engineers, and collaborators, and our default sort organizes fonts based on popularity, trends, and your geographic location. You can also create your own highly customized collections by filtering families, weights, and scripts, plus test color themes, and review sample copy. Collections can be shared, making it easy to collaborate on projects and ensure typography is optimized and streamlined throughout the design and engineering process. These fonts are free.

How to manage your shared Drive folders

This video has some great tips for managing files and folders in Google Drive such as setting expiry dates, searching for files and file control.

Also check out the searchable library for more videos: https://goo.gl/SK6ENo

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Evaluating Project-Based Learning

by Michael Hernandez via Edutopia

Last year I took a group of students to Cuba to produce documentaries about the island nation's culture and history. The main objective was learning how to produce documentaries, but one of my students learned a much more powerful lesson through the process. After completing her project, she posted it publicly to YouTube and received critical comments from someone living in Cuba. The feedback from an audience member in another country profoundly affected her, making her aware of what she was missing in her piece, and the impact that her work can have on others.

No test, grade, or teacher evaluation could have come close to helping her learn that deeply, and it made clear to me how important it is for teachers to reexamine why and how we grade our students if we truly care about their success.

As collaboration and project-based learning become preeminent ways of teaching and learning, many teachers struggle with how to evaluate these types of lessons. Traditional methods of evaluation, which have many flaws on their own, are not well-suited for interdisciplinary, multi-modal learning. Teachers need ideas for encouraging students, providing meaningful feedback, and setting students up for success. Read the rest of the article.

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20 YouTube Channels for Educators

YouTube = Learning at Your Fingertips!

There are so many ways to learn with YouTube channels for teachers and students! When you want to learn something new these days, most of us head over to YouTube. You can learn just about anything on YouTube: how to fix your dryer, how to create a blog, or how to use Google Docs. For students, YouTube is often their first stop when learning a new skill. Did you know you can also get notifications when new videos have been added by your favorite channels? Or that you can use YouTube as a curation tool to create playlists for your students? 

Kasey Bell shares with you some of her favorite YouTube Channels. Just about all of your favorite educational organization and bloggers have a YouTube channel. When you subscribe, you can set up notifications when something new has been posted. This is a great way to stay up-to-date with innovative tools like Google Apps. Below are 20 YouTube Channels to get you started!

Google Forms: Do NOT Duplicate Forms

Alice Keeler gives tips on how to recycle a Google Form for each class & keep data separate.

Extensions vs Web Apps vs Add-ons

The Google ecosystem provides a wide range of powerful programs to help you do pretty much anything you need. This includes browsing the web, typing a document, creating a slideshow, sending email, collecting data, and so much more.

However, even with all the features in their tools, Google knows they can’t do everything. There is probably some task you wish you could do, but can’t.

To help address this, Google allows third parties to create tools to extend the functions and features of Chrome, Docs, Sheet, Forms, and more. Read @ericcurtis post on some helpful tools and apps. 

Taming Twitter for Time-strapped Teachers and Techies

If you are an educator, and you are not using Twitter, you need to be. It is a powerful way to connectwith other educators around the world to share your ideas, learnfrom others, discover resources,build relationships, and be inspired to transform your teaching and your students’ learning.

However, if you are an educator and you are using Twitter, it can still be quite a challenge to use it well. Twitter has over 300 million active users (and many more inactive) sending over 500 million tweets per day (about 6,000 tweets per second). Trying to get useful information from Twitter has often be compared to trying to take a sip of water from a fire hose.

For many years, I found myself in just that situation. I was a Twitter user but didn’t feel like I was making the best use of it. Just like any educator, the one thing I don’t have is spare time. I was miserably failing to keep up with the flood of tweets, or to pull out useful information from it. Watching the Twitter site felt like staring at the computer screen in the Matrix movie, trying to process the constant flow of cryptic symbols. Link to @ericcurtis full article

Bio Digital Human

The BioDigital Human is a virtual 3D body that brings to life thousands of medically accurate anatomy objects and health conditions in an interactive Web-based environment. The interactive 3D map of the human body makes it easy to visualize data, anatomy, disease and treatments in any web or mobile application.

Teach with Movies

Lesson Plans and Learning Guides based on more than 425 feature films. 

The Library of Congress Is Uploading 75 Years of Poetry and Literature Recordings

Yesterday selections from the Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature at the Library of Congress became available to stream online for the first time — the launch of a project digitizing some of their 2,000 recordings from the past 75 years of literature.

4 Ways to add Clipart to Google Docs

Eric Curtis shares options that are great for students creating stories, reports, projects, posters, and more, as well as teachers making instructional material, hyperdocs, templates, and such. In addition, all of these options allow you to respect copyrights and teach students about the proper use of media.

Let Your (Google) Voice Be Heard . . .and Translated

Post and short video about how to use both voice typing and translate in Google Docs

5 Fantastic Fluency Tools for Speaking World Languages

One of the great powers of technology is breaking down the barriers between people regardless of language or distance. One way to help achieve this is by using technology tools to develop, practice, and improve our students' spoken fluency in a world language.

See the rest of the post to learn about five fantastic Google tools, features, and extensions to help with improving your students' world language fluency.

Science Journal - a new app

Science Journal - a new app that is a digital science notebook that allows students to record data from sensors on an Android phone or connected device, take notes, observer, interpret, predict, create graphs and much more.

Addressing student cheating in Google Apps

Modern technology provides schools with amazing options for the "4 C's" - Creativity, Communication, Collaboration, and Critical thinking.

Unfortunately it also provides new opportunities for a fifth "C" - Cheating.

21st century technology gives students new ways to plagiarize or share work. As more and more schools embrace technology, Google Apps, Chromebooks, and more, what are we to do to address the issues of academic integrity?

Eric Curtis recently recorded a one-hour webinar on this topic. In the video training we take a look at cheating as well as possible options to help address the issue. These include non-technology options, as well as technology tools and resources that can help prevent or investigate cheating.

22 Powerful Closure Ideas

What Is Closure?

Closure is the activity that ends a lesson and creates a lasting impression.

Teachers use closure to:

• Check for understanding and inform subsequent instruction
• Emphasize key information
• Tie up loose ends
• Correct misunderstandings

Students find closure helpful for:

• Summarizing, reviewing, and demonstrating their understanding of major points
• Consolidating and internalizing key information
• Linking lesson ideas to a conceptual framework and/or previously-learned knowledge
• Transferring ideas to new situations

Like contracting your bicep at the top of a dumbbell curl, closure squeezes an extra oomph into a lesson. See my favorite closure strategies below!

Creative Closure Activities

20 Instant Google Searches your Students Need to Know

Google strives to make their search as useful as possible, bringing back the most

appropriate results for the terms you entered. Sometimes though Google goes above and beyond the normal list of search results by providing instant search cards at the top of the page.

These cards contain the information you searched for, but often also include interactive controls to let you dig deeper, branch off, or experience the information in a more engaging manner. As students learn to become better at searching and researching, many of the instant search cards can be useful to them in a variety of their school subjects.

Eric Curtis shares 20 examples of instant searches students can do, the interactive results they get, and ideas for how these could be used to improve learning in school.

The Question Matrix

Deeper questioning – asked correctly from the outset – anticipates a deeper response from students. When lesson planning, is it useful to pre-plan your key questions for the class/students by keeping in mind lesson objectives and success criteria. Every teacher should ask themselves, do we want students to develop critical thinking skills or to deepen their subject knowledge? More on the Te@cher Toolkit

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GOOGLE CLASSROOM: Scheduling Posts

This new Google Classroom feature makes it incredibly easy to stay organized and plan ahead in your lessons. Previously, teachers were required to manually go into Classroom and ‘release’ work to each class at the exact time that they wanted students to access them. The new scheduled post feature eliminates the need for that! Teachers can choose a date from a drop down menu and then type in a specific time for release on any assignment, announcement, or question. 

NEW Google Image Search Save

From the Daring Librarian:

Google has quietly unveiled a super handy new way to search...and Save Google Images!

Balloon Debate

“You are in a hot air balloon that is losing height rapidly. It will soon crash into the side of a mountain because it is overweight. To prevent the certain death of everybody on board, only one person will be allowed to stay in the balloon!” 

Balloon debates are a great way of promoting research and presentational skills, and invariably make for a very lively lesson! This site has a template and teacher information for the activity.

Talk with your audience — not at them — with Slides Q&A

Read the full blog post

Giving thanks (and time back) to teachers with new updates to Google Classroom

Starting today, teachers can plan ahead by scheduling announcements, assignments and questions to post at a later date or a specific time (great for the early birds who want to get a head start on school planning during the summer ;). Just look for the scheduling option when posting new assignments, questions and announcements. You can find scheduled and draft posts in the “Saved posts” section of your class stream, and you’ll get email and mobile notifications when your scheduled posts go live.

See the full post

Formative Assessment with Google Tools

This  video had some really good ways to use Docs, Forms, and Slides for formative assessment.

Historical Selfies

@willkimbley shared a Google Drawing Instagram template for students to create Historical Selfies. Make a copy or it can be posted in Google Classroom.

Google Drive: Moving one file to multiple folders

You may have noticed that Google Drive has changed the way you file items.

Clicking the little folder in a Doc lets you file the doc. But you can no longer add it to multiple folders. Instead, you open Drive, click once on a file and then Shift-Z on it. This pops open an small window. Choose the next folder you want to put the document in and click Add.

A full set of directions is here.

Google Classroom Comments: All You Need to Know!

Google Classroom has become a powerhouse for teachers and students! Some teachers are beginning to wonder how they survived without it! As teachers, we need to help guide students on a flexible learning path that will help them reach learning goals. Feedback is a crucial part of the learning process. And with Google Apps and Google Classroom, giving feedback on digital assignments has never been easier. The only question is where? We now have several options for leaving feedback and each can serve their own purpose. Let’s explore all the ways you can use comments to enhance the learning in your classroom!

The New Google Forms (2016) Tutorial

2 creative ways to use Google Slides in education

Greg Kulowiec shares 2 ideas for using Google Slices, including Choose your Own Adventure

10 engaging Google Drawings activities for classes

Google Drawings is like a digital poster board. Or sheet of paper. Or a blank slate waiting for your great ideas.

Drawings is under the “more” tab.  As versatile and powerful as it is, there are bound to be lots of uses for it. Here are the top 10 from Ditch That Textbook, and if you use Google Drawings in your classroom or educational setting, please share how in a comment!

4 ways to use polling in Google Classroom

Google Classroom helps teachers and students communicate and learn together. We’re making the learning process even easier with a new polling feature that helps teachers quickly check for understanding, gather feedback or gauge interest. Here are four creative ways teachers are using polling in their classrooms.

Quizlet Live: Introducing our first collaborative learning game

Teachers--are you looking for a fun, engaging game for your classroom where students can learn from each other? That’s why we built Quizlet Live. It’s designed to bring fresh energy into classroom. Teams of students work together, racing to learn the material in a Quizlet study set. Correct answers move teams ahead, but wrong answers send teams back to zero. In order to win, students need to communicate with each other to make sure they pick correctly.

8 Fantastic Ways to Find Anything in Google Drive

From Kasey Bell at Shake Up Learning: 

My Google Drive is not the most organized, and I frequently rely on the search tool to find what I need. I have never been good at keeping all my digital files inside perfectly organized, color-coded, nested folders. It’s a good thing that I don’t have to worry about organization inside my Google Drive. The search inside Google Drive is very powerful and helps me find any file that I need. Even with the thousands of files I have accumulated over the years, the Google Drive advanced search is like my personal assistant, digging around and finding each and every file that I need.

23 Awesome Apps that Integrate with Google Classroom

23 Apps that Integrate with Google Classroom, making it even easier to create lessons and announcements with your favorite apps and resources.

Set expiration dates for access to Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides files

Introducing the ability to set an “expiration date” for specific user access to files in Google Drive, Docs, Sheets, and Slides. One tip: You must add the people you want to share with first. Then you can go back in and set the expiration.

Save the images you love...now on desktop

You can now save images directly from Google’s image search in your mobile browser. It's easier to stay organized across more devices: now, you can save images to Google from your desktop.

To try it out, make sure you’re logged into your browser with your Google Account; then you can start image searching and saving.

Fun with Photos

An online photo editor - Pho.to lets you add effects, edit and add animation to your pictures. Want to see a face in a photo change expressions and emotions? Upload a portrait photo and create a gif animated face online. Use picture to cartoon effect to get more fun!



This site has been added to the list of Tools for Digital Creations

Statistics add-on in Google Sheets

The Statistical analysis add on called XLMiner Analysis ToolPak was recently added to in Google Sheets, with functions matching the Analysis ToolPak in desktop Excel and has been featured in large numbers of textbooks, videos, statistics courses and the like.

The add-on provides all 19 interactive functions included in the Excel Analysis ToolPak, plus a 20th function often requested by users, logistic regression.  Sidebar input fields and output on the spreadsheet will be very familiar to Excel Analysis ToolPak users.

The 20 functions are:

• ANOVA: Single Factor
• ANOVA: Two-Factor with Replication
• ANOVA: Two-Factor without Replication
• Correlation
• Covariance
• Descriptive Statistics
• Exponential Smoothing
• F-Test Two-Sample for Variances
• Fourier Analysis
• Histogram
• Linear Regression
• Logistic Regression
• Moving Average
• Random Number Generation
• Rank and Percentile
• Sampling
• t-Test: Paired Two-Sample for Means
• t-Test: Two-Sample Assuming Equal Variances
• t-Test: Two-Sample Assuming Unequal Variances
• z-Test: Paired Two-Sample for Means

Results will generally match the Excel Analysis ToolPak, as seen in many textbooks, screen images and videos.  The add-on's Random Number Generation function uses the Mersenne Twister algorithm.

To get an Add on, open sheets then Tools > Add Ons. Search for XLMiner

Google Cardboard Resources

Presentation

Getting Started

More Places to Visit (updated frequently)

Organize your Google Drive

Create graphs and complex math directly from the sidebar in your Google Doc.

You can now use Speech to Math in Chrome to talk directly to g(Math) to create the expressions or use Handwriting recognition for expression entry!

You can use LaTeX commands or the prebuilt codes to create complex math that is not possible using the built-in Equation Editor. Some examples include Geometric signs, custom characters, and formulas (like the Quadratic formula). 

With the graph creator, you can type in functions and inequalities and it will create the graph associated with the functions and inequalities. You can also plot points in the same graph, find the line of best fit of those points, and specify a viewing window. As a new feature, you can select a table in a Doc and import the data into g(Math) to create a plot!

This will be an invaluable tool for any math class or math teacher. Now creating math digitally in a collaborative document has become slightly easier. 

The 100th birthday of the National Park Service

To mark the 100th birthday of the National Park Service in 2016, explore its locations, stories, and thousands of artifacts. From America's "crown jewels" of breathtaking parklands to cultural sites and historic treasures, the National Park Service museum collections provides a window into the United States: past, present and future.

https://goo.gl/7cfgT5

Random name Generator

A simple but powerful tool. Paste the names of your students into the list.

Learn More about the new Google Forms

Google has officially made the new Forms the default version, and they have added a lot of the features that we have been waiting for, including Add-Ons. The new Google Forms has a purple icon instead of green. You still have the option to run back to the old version. For all the details from Google, click here. Here are some new features to check out in the new Google Forms:

10 Google Docs Hacks Every Teacher should know

Google Docs Hacks

Essential Classroom Tool: The Selfie Stick

From Alice Keeler's Blog: A selfie stick is a telescoping pole that allows people to put their phone at the end and take a picture of themselves. The selfie is a modern form of art. Selfies are part of the modern culture. Ask a student to show you their photo roll (do not really do this, you probably do not want to see their pictures) and likely it is full of selfies.

We have selfie sticks and smart phone tripods in the Library that you can check out.

New templates in Google Docs: designed by experts, made for you

Google launched a collection of templates in Docs, Sheets and Slides in September to give your documents, spreadsheets, and presentations the extra polish they deserve. 

Today, they’re adding to that collection with new templates designed by five experts in their fields. All templates are available on the web and on Android and iOS.

Doc to Form: Create a Google Form from within a Doc

Doc to Form is an Add on that allows you to quickly and easily create a Google Form from within a Google Doc. Simply select text and click a button to add your questions. You can choose from a variety of question types - ideal for converting traditional worksheets to Google Forms.

Hyperdocs: Should Native Americans Be Mascots?

An example of a hyperdoc for students working on defending an argument. You can make a copy of this template

4 Updates to Google Forms You’re Going to Love

Google announced a list of new features for Google Forms. Boasting templates that come pre-populated with suggested questions based on your use case and the ability to see who has completed your form and who hasn’t, these new features not only make it easier to create forms, but also provide insight into how your forms are completed.

Keyboard shortcuts for Google Docs

To open a list of keyboard shortcuts in Google Docs, press Ctrl + / (Windows, Chrome OS) or ⌘ + / (Mac).

You can also use menu access keys. Open any application menu using the keyboard, then type the underlined letter for the item you'd like to select. For example, to open the Insert menu on a Mac, press Ctrl + Option + I. To select "Image," type the underlined letter i.

The Best Highlighting Tools for Students

@ericcurts put together his recommendations for 3 tools for highlighting web pages and Google Docs. He has thorough documentation and a video on how to install and use them.

Image: https://pixabay.com/static/uploads/photo/2014/05/02/21/53/highlighter-336379_960_720.png

TWITTER 101: Links, Tips And More

A collection of resources from David Theriault on getting started with Twitter for professional development.

Super Quiz

Super Quiz adds brilliant functionality and assessment tools to a quiz made with Google Forms. It works as an Add-on in Sheets

Super Quiz adds brilliant functionality to a quiz made with Google Forms. By completing the quiz once with an answer key, all future submissions are automatically graded correct or incorrect. What’s more - you can get a break down of class understanding and a list of incorrect students for each question - perfect for intervention!

By filling out a few cells of information, you can also generate personalised differentiated written feedback emailed to students as soon as they submit a response. No need to monitor and ‘re-grade’ - just set-up and go!

You can split your quiz in up to 4 different topics, and provide specific feedback on each. If you don’t want to email students, you can choose to print feedback on a 2x2 array, too.