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During this pandemic, many teachers have turned to video recording to aid in their online instruction. From recording directions for activities to friendly messages to send to students, I think teachers enjoy having this as a tool. I personally used video recording a ton when I was IN the classroom. Especially when we were doing projects, it was nice to record myself going over the directions and rubric, that way students could re-watch as needed. It also was easier to get absent students up to speed. In March, one of our teachers shared that Screencastify was offering their premium version free for teachers through at least April 30th. I love Screencastify because of it's Google Drive integration. However, when it expires, you'll be stuck at a 5-minute per video limit. I am sure there are a lot of teachers who will continue to use screencasting in their instruction. Lucky for us, Loom, very similar to Screencastify, is offering its premium version, Loom Pro, free for teachers and students FOR-EV-ER. That's right! Free for life! Click here to learn more about it. I have used Loom, and while it doesn't have the Google Drive integration, it's easy to use and it has great editing tools!
Anyone else's eyes reaaaalllly tired of staring at a computer? Mine sure are. As tired as they are, I am SO thankful to be able to continue working during this uncertain time. I am also thankful to be able to connect with friends, family, and coworkers through video chats, which brings me to today's topic: Google Meet. I sent out an email to my school staff about Google Classroom and it's new Google Meet integration (PS - Google recently changed the name from Google Hangouts Meet to just Google Meet). If you missed it, here is the video with the details:
In our district, teachers and students using Meet for video conferencing may have noticed some extra features this past week. Our technology coordinator pushed out two extensions to enhance the Google Meet experience: Nod and Google Meet Grid View.
Nod is a cool way for students to interact during a meeting using emojis, and it also gives teachers the much-needed "raise hand" feature. I've created a quick slide show with details on Nod below (click the little box icon to go full screen): The Google Meet Grid View extension gives Meet more of a "Zoom feel" in that it allows you to see more participants on the same screen, a la Brady Bunch style (Am I dating myself? Do kids even know who that is?!). While the extension is helpful, Google VP Javier Soltero told Reuters in this article that Meet will be rolling out a 16 participant view later this month. So stay tuned! It's great to see tech companies being so responsive to user needs during this time. In particular, I think they are really trying to help educators meet the needs of students in the best way possible, and for that I am thankful!! Stay well, be safe! ​Christin My last blog post was in February. A LOT has happened since then. We are facing a global pandemic. We are grappling with the heavy weight of social distancing, infection rates and death tolls, and everything else that COVID-19 brings along with it. As educators forced to change the way we reach students, I want to thank you for your adaptability. We pivoted, and while it may not have felt graceful, and there were and are still kinks, and we know that we are not reaching all of our students and that weighs heavy on our hearts, we pivoted in a direction we never thought we would have to. We did it, we are doing it, and you are amazing. All that being said, with this change in how we instruct there has been SO. MUCH. TECH. STUFF. A necessary part of all this, but overwhelming nonetheless. I have struggled with how to proceed with my blog. Do I focus on things that I normally would? Or do I focus on distance learning only? I decided I will just focus on things that I think will benefit you guys, no matter what that topic may be. So today, I have something pretty simple, not COVID-19 related, but very helpful nonetheless. Google Drive is rolling out shortcuts. This is helpful to those of you using Shared Drives and running into the annoying feature where you can only have stuff in a Shared Drive and not in your Drive. Here's an example of how a shortcut works: my principal creates a document and shares it with our School Improvement Leadership Team. I can now create a shortcut to the document in the school improvement shared drive, allowing everyone on the team to easily get to the file.
Man, oh man, have January and February just FLOWN by?! I don't know about you, but I'm ready for warmer weather and abundant sunshine. In the meantime, I've got a blogger you should really check out if you haven't already: Jennifer Gonzalez, and her site cultofpedagogy.com. I have been following her for several years, and her content is SO good. She's the type of person who doesn't mind calling us educators out when something in our instructional practice is amiss. She is constantly bringing to the forefront solid teaching practices, and she has made me a stronger instructional coach through all that I have learned from her posts. She introduced me to the single point rubric, and now I am a huge advocate for them. She's taught me more about culturally responsive teaching, restorative justice, and taking care of yourself as a teacher. If podcasts are more of your jam, all her posts are available as a podcast. She interviews experienced educators from all over, each providing their own knowledge and insights. Check her out!
One of the main reasons educators love Google is the ease in which they can manage students' work. Version History is a tool that many teachers use in several of the Google Apps to help them monitor student progress. Version History allows editors of a file to revert to previous versions of a file, restore information that has been deleted, and view who has made changes (and what the changes were) to the file. I have used Version History in various capacities over the years. I once sorted a data spreadsheet wrong and all my data was lined up incorrectly. I didn't realize it until I left and came back to Google Sheets, so undo was not an option. Version History allowed me to go back and find the version of the file before I messed up. Crisis averted!
I used it often in the classroom as well. For collaborative activities, it's nice to be able to see who contributed what so you can provide individualized feedback. Also, students sometimes accidentally delete things they didn't mean to, and Version History lets you get it back. The most memorable time I used it was when I was doing a writing reteach one day. A student, who admittedly did not want to be working on his essay, called me over and told me he didn't know what happened, but his whole essay just up and disappeared. I went to the Version History, and said, "Hmmmm...it looks like you *accidentally* deleted it 3 minutes ago!" I restored the essay and he was able to keep working, much to his dismay. The new version of Google Sites has been sans Version History since it came out, but in 2020, this feature will begin rolling out! According to Google, by March 2020 all newly created sites will have the feature, and by the end of 2020, most existing sites should have it as well. I know educators use Sites quite a bit for group projects, so having this feature will be very handy in helping to determine who did what. For more information on Version History, click on the buttons below! Last April, I wrote this post on the rollout of a great new feature: Google Slides Audio. Fast forward several months, and some people had access to the feature, and some didn't [raises hand and rolls eyes]. For whatever reason, Google paused the rollout. However, it's finally available to those of us who didn't have it! Rapid Release domains should have it immediately and Scheduled Release domains should see it by the end of November. Just in time for holiday party photo slideshows, amirite? I take a lot of screenshots (digital images of the computer screen) in my role as an Instructional Facilitator, but even in the classroom, screenshots were handy in my slide decks or on handouts. They are also really great to take pictures of students' digital work and paste into emails to parents. Now, most of my topics on this blog surround the Google-verse, and if you are Chromebook savvy you may know about the CTRL + ALT + Window Switcher keyboard shortcut. This shortcut allows you to select a section of the screen in order to take a screenshot (hello, alliteration!). I didn't know such a thing was available on Windows. There are Chrome extensions out there, but all of them I'd tried had too many steps. I always ended up switching over to my Chromebook or doing a Print Screen on my Windows laptop and editing the image in Google Drawings. {Have I lost you yet? Don't worry, the Snipping Tool is so simple and can solve all your screenshot problems!} To find the Snipping Tool, click on the start menu (bottom left corner) on your Windows PC (laptop or desktop). Then, start typing Snipping Tool in the search bar, and it should show up. You can right-click it in the list and select Pin to Taskbar, which will put it in the bar along the bottom of your screen for easy access. If you click to open the Snipping Tool, it's fairly straightforward. A little dialogue box pops up and tells you to drag the cursor around the area you want to capture. The default is Rectangular Snip, but you can change it to different options like Free-form. Once you drag the cursor around the area you need and release the mouse, a new window will open with the screenshot. From there, you can use the drawing and highlight tools to markup the image, you can email it out, you can save it, or you can copy it. I typically just copy it and paste it wherever I need it. Close the window, and you're done!! See the video below to see it in action. I hope you find this tool as helpful as I do. For more tips on Snipping, go to the Microsoft resource page here.
In the post, I reference Super Teacher Tools' random name generator tool to help teachers facilitate Cold Calling digitally. While a great tool, it can be rather cumbersome for secondary teachers, because you have to manually enter your rosters. Well, about 8 months after I wrote that post, Google Classroom came out with their Student Selector. The Student Selector is a bit of a hidden gem, because it is only available on the Google Classroom Android and iOS apps. I know a lot of teachers don't even have the app on their phone, but I encourage you to put it on there solely for the Student Selector. Once you download the app and log in, you will click on a class, then click on People. From there, you have an icon with squares and a diamond (on the iPhone it's at the top right) - this is the Student Selector. Tap it, and you are ready to roll. Below you can see it in action (sorry Android users, this is what it looks like on the iPhone; I imagine Android is very similar). It's simple to use, but helps you keep excellent track of students. You can mark them absent, so they don't pop up again that day, or you can select them to be called later if the student is in the restroom or if teacher-judgement tells you that student may need to be skipped.
I would have loved this tool in the classroom. I always used popsicle sticks, but they were numbered to be easier to use from class to class. This is easier to keep track of and it's more personal. A win-win!
Today I'm sharing a rundown on some of the updates from Google for this fall. Many of these updates you may already know about. Google does a great job in giving you a little automatic tutorial whenever they tweak something, but if you are in a hurry (because, again, teachers are the busiest people on earth), you may X out of those tutorials so you can get going with what you need to do. So without further ado...the updates. Grade Book The sad one first. If you follow Google's updates at all, you may have seen that Google Classroom has launched a beta program partnering with Infinite Campus. This partnership allows Google Classroom to sync grades with Infinite Campus. When I saw this, I did a happy dance, as this is a HUGE feature that teachers need to make Google Classroom more functional. My happy dance was halted abruptly when I found out we couldn't do it because we are not a hosted customer. Now, my background is not IT and I'm not sure of the logistics of what that means; however, I was given a glimmer of hope that eventually we will get it. Google is rolling it out with hosted customers to have better control to test it out. So in essence, stay tuned, don't lose hope. Forms Import Questions Quick and simple, you can now import questions from other Google Forms into a new Form. This is a handy option to have. I can see this being used for aligning assessment questions with learning objectives. You could create a form as a template, and just create blank questions with the learning objective written as a description for each question. Then, when you are creating an assessment, you can pull from the template and not have to rewrite the learning objectives each time! Rubrics Beta and Originality Reports Beta
These two really deserve posts of their own, so I will probably post on them again. Both Rubrics and Originality Reports are in beta testing right now. Google is great in that they really listen to educator feedback, and so they open up their beta programs for us to try things out. Our district currently has access to the Originality Reports Beta, and I just asked to see if we can get it for Rubrics, although you can request access individually here. Both of these tools work within Google Classroom. The aptly named Rubrics allows you to attach a rubric to any assignment. There are several Add-ons that teachers have been using to do this for several years, so it's nice that Google is finally making it an integrated feature. Originality Reports lets students cross reference their work against billions of webpages and millions of books. It will then point out if they are missing citations or plagiarizing. In the beta program, teachers have unlimited access. Once the beta window closes, teachers can attach the Originality Reports function to three assignments per class. Let me know if you need more details on any of these features! |
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April 2020
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