Group items tagged

"Now if you visit my PD site you will find a series of activities that you can use to introduce teachers and students to various Google tools including Google Sites, Blogger, Advanced Search, Google Maps, Books, Bookmarks, Google Docs, and Google Groups. Feel free to use and adapt the activities I've outlined the next time you're introducing teachers or students to these helpful Google tools." The site referred to has an amazing number of lesson ideas and links to tutorials on using Google applications for education.

" This video takes you through Googel Docs and Google Drive and shows you how you can use them with your students too. It also shows you some of the tricky things to remember and also how Google Docs and Google Drive link together." Google has changed a bit, but this video by R. Stannard should be very helpful. Shows how to convert docs from other formats and how to use the desktop G-Drive.

"If for any reasons you do not want to upload your classroom videos to YouTube and are looking for another free hosting video that can allow you to upload and share your videos Google Drive is one of your best options. Only few Google Drive users know that there is a functionality in Google Drive that enables anyone with a Google Drive account to instantly upload their videos and after the upload you can get an embed code to integrate your video anywhere on the web. Here is how you can do it." Since many schools/districts do not want their students on YouTube, this is a useful substitute. I'd try a wiki like PbWorks to see if you can embed from Google Drive.

"Google added two fantastic new features to Google Slides. First, Google Slides now has a Q&A feature that lets your audience submit questions to you. Second, Google Slides now has a built-in laser pointer that you can use to call attention to parts of your slides. I've already received some questions about how to use these new features so I made the following short video." t/h R. Byrne This makes Google slides very versatile for online presentations.

"Google Earth and Google Maps has always been a natural fit in social studies classrooms. But Google Earth and Maps can also be powerful tools in other content areas. The resources below represent some of my favorite resources for introducing Google Earth and Maps in areas outside of social studies." A great list of uses for a variety of subjects. And a link to how to get Google Earth Pro for free. T/H R. Byrne

"Google Slides is a great collaborative tool that creates slides rather like PowerPoint but online. I have used this tool extensively for groups to create slides at home but also in the class. I often use one set of slides and give one slide to each group of students to work on. In this video I suggest a few useful tips of how to work with this excellent teacher tech tool. It is a quick 5 minute introduction to working with Google Slides. I also recommend you watch the 5 minute videos on working with Google Docs. Google Docs is also good for collabaration and works in a similar way. "

"A quick introduction to why Google Docs. This is a really useful, free tool and only the teacher needs to have a Google account to create a Google Doc. Teachers can create a document and then students can immediately access it via the shared link. Students can then edit and add to the document, so this is ideal for group work and collaborative work both in the class and at home. It has countless uses and is an technology tool that is widely used in industry. This quick introduction takes you through the basics of working with Google Docs." By R. Stannard.

A great Add-on for Google Spreadsheets. Find the Save As Doc Add-on and it will be attached to all your spreadsheets in Google Drive. Select rows or columns to have the text saved to your Google docs account.

"Google's Drawing program is the perfect platform to practice orthography- the skill of writing characters and symbols to create words- in language classrooms with non-Roman alphabets, such as Arabic or Chinese. Students of these languages need lots of practice handwriting the new alphabet or pictographic symbols, which is difficult to do in a digital environment. In traditional word processing programs, typing pictographic languages, such as Chinese, requires the student to change the keyboard language and then phonetically type the syllables. Characters will pop out fully formed, which is efficient and useful, but bypasses the important orthographic practice! Google Drawing presents teachers with an opportunity to digital collect and monitor their students' orthography without having to scan in and email worksheets. The Scribble Tool in Google Drawing allows the user to create free form lines and by extension hand-drawn language characters. Couple Google Drawing with a pen mouse and Chinese language students are fully prepared to complete short answer or extended writing assignments online." You could also use Google Drawing for students from pictographic language to practice handwirting English.

Amazing and detailed explanation of how to incorporate Google Calendar for assignments -- and include parent participation. This really works, especially when combined with Google Docs to hold notes and assignments.

3. Google Tour Creator "A lot of teachers are already familiar with Google Expeditions, a virtual reality platform that lets users experience hundreds of places in the world in 3D. But what you might not know is that you can now create your own tours using Tour Creator. This tool enables us to create our own tours, using imagery from Google Street View or our own 360 photos, then publish them right into Poly, Google's library of free VR and AR objects. "Students can create tours as part of a research project, use them as a way to reflect after a field trip, or even as a supplement to a creative writing project. They can be used to create tours of your school, your classroom, or your town. If your school doesn't currently have much VR technology, start with an affordable Google Cardboard-just pop a smartphone into one of these and you now have one VR headset that can be used by a small group of students." T/h to Jennifer Gonzalez

"A super quick introduction into using the excellent Google Forms. You can quickly create surveys, questionnaires and even comprehension questions. You can then share the link or embed your questions. The data is automatically created into graphs and forms when the participants answer the quesitons. A really useful tool for any teacher or students that I have made massive use of. If you are looking to quickly collect together some data and then see all the results presented to you automatically, then this is great. Students can create surveys for other students in the class, teachers can collect feedback and even use Google Forms for formative assessment. if you are looking for more detailed videos on Google Forms then watch these other videos.

"Google Docs Templates Sharing templates through Google Drive is a great time saver for teachers. You could share a "view only" version of your file and require students to go to File>Make a Copy. Unfortunately, this often results in your inbox overflowing with requests for edit access. A Better Solution Use this simple trick to share Google Docs Templates. It works for essentially any G Suite file (Docs, Drawings, Sheets, Slides)."

A Google Search Education site with literacy lessons. "On this page, you'll find Search Literacy lessons and A Google A Day classroom challenges. Our search literacy lessons help you meet the new Common Core State Standards and are broken down based on level of expertise in search: Beginner, Intermediate, or Advanced. "A Google A Day challenges help your students put their search skills to the test, and to get your classroom engaged and excited about using technology to discover the world around them. "

Tips by R. Stannard on how to use G-Docs with your students. Includes how to create a Doc in your personal G-Drive. Students do not need a Google account to access your selected documents. For example, students can discuss a question with a table indicating which group students belong to. Students write their answers/discussion within the cell of the table. Once the doc is created, one student can access a computer to put in all the ideas generated by the group, using a shareable link. Google provides an area to shorten the link so it can be written on the board. [Remember, all students could type in the Doc simultaneously, and chat in the margin of a G-Doc.]

"The Google Docs collection provides a streamlined, collaborative solution to writing papers, organizing presentations and putting together spreadsheets and reports. But besides the basic features, there are lots of little tricks and hacks you can use to make your Google Docs experience even more productive. Here are 100 great tips for using the documents, presentations and spreadsheets in Google Docs."

Understanding and using Google+ in the Classroom and Beyond. Excellent and comprehensive discussion of how Google+ works and how it might be useful to educators. Mainly a huge compendium of links to blogs and tutorial videos about Google+, collected at livebinder.

"Google Drive is full of options that often go overlooked. One of those options is privately sharing videos. To share videos through Google Drive upload them to your Google Drive account, preview them, then share by using the sharing options at the top of the preview screen. The sharing options allow you specify who can access the video." Screenshots show how the process works. T/H to R. Byrne

"Google Slides is too powerful to limit its use to boring presentations. Create engaging learning experiences while promoting critical thinking and creativity with these seven Google Slides templates you can use in virtually any classroom. The sharing settings for all of these templates are set up so that users can create an editable copy by clicking "Make a Copy," or "Use Template."" T/h N.LaFavre Google Slides Templates include Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, et al. Students can use a variety of approaches from their favorite media, as suggested in Nick's article.

"The following cheat sheet is from Techno Streak and it touches on keyboard shortcuts, how to do the critical things you should know about, and more. It's worth knowing about and skimming in case you've been curious about diving into that 'other' social network known as Google+." The blog post also has a link to "50 Ways Schools Can Use Google+ Hangouts" and other interesting blogs.