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!
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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? Happy April, everyone! Today I wanted to let you know about an exciting update to Google Slides. In Google's official G Suite stream of updates, they announced that Google Slides is finally getting audio! It's a slow rollout, so we don't have access yet, but hopefully it will be soon (I'm hoping by the end of April). Much like inserting an image into a slide, you will go to Insert > Audio and select a file (MP3 or WAVE) from your Google Drive. You can use music that you already have (be careful with copyright, though), or you can use free stock music. YouTube has a great library of free stock music that you can download, or if you just Google free stock music, there are many sites you can visit to find audio. Once inserted, you have options to play the audio for a specific slide, or have it run through the whole slideshow. You can adjust the volume and also have it play automatically or upon a click while in presentation mode. This feature will be a great addition to Slides. I have had a lot of teachers ask me about how to do slideshows with photos and music toward the end of the year, so they can showcase all of the fun things that have happened throughout the year. Before, PowerPoint was a better option, but now Google Slides can be the way to go! If you pair it with the Photo Slideshow Add-on in Slides, you can easily upload photos you have saved in Google Drive or Google Photos. Each photo goes to its own slide without you having to do it manually! When you are ready to present, you can go to File > Publish to the Web and use the link they provide to have your whole slideshow playing on an automatic loop. This way you can have the music and slides play without you having to click through it! Below is a screenshot of the options you have for publishing. You could also have students utilize this new feature and use a screencasting tool like Screencastify or Loom to have them record their own narration along with their slides and music.
Have any other ideas of how to use this upcoming feature? Comment below! A HUGE part of teaching is classroom management. This, of course, starts with building solid relationships with your students. If this is an area you struggle in, www.smartclassroommanagement.com is a great site that centers around relationships as the foundation for classroom management. Aside from this, organization and daily expectations are vital as well. Students (and the teacher) need to have a routine so that they know what to expect from day to day. When I was in the classroom, students had to be in their seats when the bell rang, and there were always directions on the interactive whiteboard for what they needed to do to get class started. Now they didn't always do this perfectly, but it set the stage for the rest of the class. If students start rowdy and bouncing off the walls, it's hard to get them back. Classroom Screen is an awesome tool - no...toolbox is better - an awesome toolbox to help teachers with this aspect of classroom management. It is a simple concept really, but the creator, teacher Laurens Koppers from the Netherlands, couldn't find a toolbox out there that did what he wanted, so he created his own. Here is a screenshot of a Classroom Screen I created: When you go to classroomscreen.com (and the site recommends using the Chrome browser), you are automatically brought onto your own Classroom Screen. There is no log-in or anything. The downside to this is that it won't save your screen from day to day, but the site maintains that it only takes about 30 seconds to setup your screen, and I can vouch that it is SUPER fast and easy.
Let's look at the toolbox:
I think this toolbox is fantastic. Obviously, you wouldn't want to use all these tools at once on the screen, but with one click you can turn them on and off. If you turn something back on, during that sitting it WILL save your customizations. I turned off the text box with my learning objectives and when I turned it back on, my text was still there!! Some explicit instruction with students on the different features would be necessary, but once all of you get the hang of it, it could be a useful daily toolbox! I have to start by apologizing for my two month hiatus. *Oops*. February flew by and the next thing I knew, it was halfway through March. Luckily, I have been very busy, which I prefer, but unfortunately I put blogging on the backburner. During this time away, I got accepted into the Google for Education Certified Trainer program, which is a dream come true, so look forward to seeing more about that soon! In the meantime, I have a cool opportunity that I saw in blogger Matt Miller's newsletter. At WRMS, we do Mindful Minute at the start of each day to help students focus and get ready to start school in a positive way. Each teacher can do it how they want, and some utilize the Calm app. I've seen it in action, and it's very cool. The company has launched The Calm Schools Initiative, which offers teachers free access to the paid version of their app. You can download the app on a device, or you can just use their website. To get access to the paid version, go to https://www.calm.com/schools and fill out the form. Teachers should receive access within a couple of days. Calm will also provide onboarding resources and tips. Happy almost Spring, everyone! I've got another cool new Google feature for you today. This one is only in beta right now, though, so it's not available to the general public yet. Read on to see how you can request early access! Google Forms Locked Mode allows teachers to give an assessment during which students are unable to navigate away to other sites. It works on managed Chromebooks, and it's easy to do: just click a checkbox!
Now our school has a monitoring program for our Chromebooks, but to lock students into a Google Form, it's a few steps. This Locked Mode option makes it super easy to do! If you are interested in trying out Locked Mode, you can fill out this form and Google may grant you early access. The form also allows you to request access to Google for Edu's other new beta feature, an updated gradebook in Google Classroom. Both features will roll out to everyone eventually, but if you're eager to try it out, fill out the form! Happy almost Thanksgiving, everyone! I hope you truly can take a break and enjoy some relaxation with family and friends. This can be a stressful time of year as a teacher and a human in general. Make sure you are taking care of yourself! For today's Digital Tool Tidbit, I've got two Google updates for you. My good friend and amazing science teacher, Kathryn, gave me this first one (thanks, Kathryn!). Google has released shortcuts for creating new files. Just type in any of the following URLs, and you will open up a new, blank file:
The other update is on the Android version of the Google Classroom app. They have updated the app to include a random student selector. Last year, I wrote this post on Cold Calling and how, when used effectively, it can increase student engagement. I included a digital random student selector that teachers can use. While the tool is good, it's not the best for secondary teachers because you have to manually enter each student's name. That's not an issue with Google's student selector! Since it is housed in Google Classroom, it already pulls in your roster. Then, according to Google, you can "randomly [pick] students from your class roster. You can call on a student, skip a student to call on later, or mark a student as absent." Go to Google's Support page here to see step-by-step directions. Also, I'm sure they are already working on this for iOS, but it never hurts to click on that handy question mark at the bottom left of Google Classroom and submit feedback requesting it. Remember, they listen!!! Thanksgiving Photo from Pexels.com
Google Shortcut information from Leswing The other day I was super excited to see this email in my inbox: In this earlier post about the new Google Classroom updates, I mentioned that the Announcements option was now only available in the Stream. You couldn't organize it within your Classwork page, which made posting things like videos and links that accompany assignments or units very difficult. I thought Google should bring Announcements to Classwork, so I put in feedback using the little question mark at the bottom left of Google Classroom, and apparently I wasn't the only one, because Google came up with the Materials feature this last week. Now, you can post links, documents, videos, etc. that you want students to use but you don't necessarily want them posted as an assignment. You can organize it by topic so that the materials stay with your other content.
This just goes to show that Google really does listen to your feedback. So if there are features that are missing, let them know (like the Move to the Top feature??). I did this same thing a couple of years ago with decimal grades in Classroom, and it took them a while, but they did fix it. It's always so nice to know there is a person on the other end of the tech. Happy Almost End of the School Year, ya'll! Today's Digital Tool Tidbit is on Google Forms. I know everyone is in final countdown mode, but Google Forms will be updating soon to include some really cool changes that can help you for next year. This article released by Google earlier this month details the changes coming. Here is a brief outline of what you'll see: 1.-2. Quiz Answer Suggestions / Autocomplete Answers: Using machine learning, Forms will now suggest answers for questions that you type in. If you're like me, you hate figuring out distractors for your questions. This will help you out a ton on that front! 3. Answer Key for checkbox and multiple choice grid questions: I've had several teachers ask me about this feature, so I am stoked it's coming! Forms will now auto-grade these types of questions. 4. Give partial credit in decimal form: This is a manual grading feature, but you'll be able to assign half or quarter credit to questions if a student only misses part of an answer. 5. Improved feedback: I honestly didn't know this feature even existed. When looking at your Responses tab, there is an Add Feedback feature that has been there for a while. If you click it, you can add a link or a YouTube video for students to use as a reteaching or extension tool. You can include text as well. The YouTube feature is what's new! 6. See your total points while creating a quiz: As you add questions and assign point values to those questions, Forms will tally the total number of points at the top of the page. Hopefully you see something on this list that will help improve your instruction and efficiency. Gotta love it when Google is responsive to teacher requests! Shout out to Mr. Heilman for passing on the info! Forms icon above from Wikimedia Commons.
Sharma, Akshat. (2018, May 10). 6 ways Quizzes in Google Forms are getting smarter. Retrieved from https://www.blog.google/topics/education/6-ways-quizzes-google-forms-are-getting-smarter/
So what is stop motion? Basically, it's taking a lot of pictures of something and manipulating that something just a teeeeennny bit for each picture. Then you run all the pictures together and it becomes an animation. Think the old Rudolph Christmas movie. It was done in stop motion. There are two stop motion Chrome apps that Sarah showed me: Stop Motion Animator and Clap Motion. Both essentially do the same thing, except Clap Motion lets you take photos by clapping - a really cool feature, but I'm not sure how it would work with a whole class working on a project in the same room. Both use a technique called onion skinning, which allows you to see a faint ghost image of your previous photo so that you know how much to move your object before taking another photo. It's very helpful. It also helps to use a small document camera or a webcam if you are using a Chromebook to take pictures. The forward facing camera makes taking photos for stop motion a challenge, but it's super easy to use a webcam or document camera. Our librarian, Brian, suggested the document camera - a big thank you to him for the idea! My (very) amateur stop motion video using Stop Motion Animator So what can you do in the classroom with stop motion? There are loads of possibilities, really! Hatten (2014) suggests, "Stop animation is ideal for helping students learn about concepts that involve processes and progressions — anything that benefits from including an element of movement to explain how it works." Her article on using stop motion in the classroom, while elementary focused, gives some really great suggestions that apply to all levels. This article from Discovery Education gives some excellent examples by subject area. YouTube can provide you with hours of stop motion entertainment. However you decide to use it, the level of student engagement is bound to be high, and stop motion gives the the opportunity to really use their creativity! Hatten, S. (2014, Aug. 15). Engage elementary students with stop animation! Retrieved
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