Author: PCCS TIS

Did you know that 76 percent of teens use Instagram? By contrast, only 47 percent use Twitter, but what about Facebook you say? Once the bastion of cutting edge social media, well, never mind, Facebook is for old people. Your students aren’t there. Get with the times people!

If you want to really connect with students, the fastest way to connect is to create an education only Instagram account for students – only classroom posts of course, and education posts – nothing personal, save that for FB or Twitter, or Snapchat. Wait, you know how to use Snapchat? Like, wow!

The fact of the matter, is that we are living in a picture and video based world and fluency in those mediums matter. It’s a digital literacy skill to be able to communicate in video and picture formats! Why not take advantage of this for the benefit of your students and their learning in your classroom?

Instagram is where students are, and it’s the quickest way to connect with them, whether for homework reminder, test reminders or anything related to the classroom. While Google Classroom is great, the Instagram feed is with them constantly, just like their cell phones. As much as you’d like them to, they are not scrolling their Google Classroom stream like they are scrolling on Insta.

But sorry elementary and middle school teachers, students need to be at least 13, so really this is only for high school students, well, maybe 8th graders too in the second half of their year…but that’s at your discretion and we would definitely recommend running this past your building admin before getting started!

But don’t just take our word for it, try it out! Use it to promote what is happening in class, use it for reminders, entry events, and teasers. For example, before starting Romeo and Juliet, post a picture of them, post a fight between men in the two feuding families, etc. Anything to activate prior knowledge or get kids interested in the upcoming topic in a creative way! Music teachers, you can even include videos of in class drills can be posted for student studying and reviews (in music, drills on learning a song, measure, etc)

The possibilities are endless! If you are unsure of how Instagram works and want some help setting it up, brainstorming classroom ideas, please submit a service request for Technology Integration and Matt Smoot or Rick Coughlin can get you Instagram savvy! Trust us, it’s on fleek, it’s rad. Bet!

Want to learn more and get more ideas? Here’s five simple ways to get started. Happy Instagramming!

1. Top 5 Apps to Add Text to Photos for Instagram
2. 10 Surprising Ways to Use Instagram in the Classroom
3. How to Use Instagram in the Classroom
4. How to Use Instagram (Video)
5. How to Use Instagram (The Cheat Sheet)

In short, the APs (or Access Points) are the white 10 inch square, 2 in thick boxes mounted in the classroom ceilings and hallways.  The APs are all labeled on the outside roughly using the following format   “AP-School-RoomLocation”. APs help create our wireless network by broadcasting a Wi-Fi signal in their designated areas. Wi-Fi enabled devices such as ipads and Chromebooks connect to our network via these APs.

Near the center of the APs is an indicator light. If it is dark or flashing put a service request in, and make sure to list the AP label and your room number. The dark or flashing light indicates that the AP is not happy and not working properly.  If the light is green, then the AP is happy and awaiting its first customer. If it is blue, it is happy and has at least one customer. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. GI JOE!

This is a repost from Troy Patterson at Dearborn Public Schools and it is indeed a worthy and important read! (While our districts currently have different extension policies, the steps to review and remove Chrome extensions that are outlined remain the same.)

“Chrome extensions can be wonderful. These can add great functionality to the Chrome browser. Unfortunately, Chrome extensions can also be used by those with ill intent. Recently, we have seen a rash of employees having trouble with their browsers due to installing a Chrome extension. Many of these users didn’t even realize that they installed the extensions. For instance, I received this email just the other day:” Read more…

One of the earliest frustrations we had with Google Slides was the lack of audio support within a slide. There has been very few viable options or workarounds to embed audio into a slide…until now!

Scheduled for a gradual roll out starting on April 18th, 2019, we should see it available within out domain soon thereafter! Read more about how here…

“Become a Certified Innovator and join a community of more than 1,700 passionate educators in over 50 countries who are excited to grow professionally, advocate for innovative technologies and drive school transformation.”

“The program kicks off with an in-person three day Innovation Academy focused on helping new participants define, design and eventually launch a transformative project. After the Academy, Innovators stay engaged through mentorship, ongoing learning and development trainings, and special opportunities from Google to advocate for transformative technologies and practices.”

To learn more about the application process, please sign up for this webinar: Certified Innovator Workshop

To learn more about the Certified Innovator Program: https://teachercenter.withgoogle.com/certification_innovator

“Last year, Google released the web-based Tour Creator that allows users to create interactive 360 degree tours right from their computers. Photographs may be uploaded from the Google Street View app or directly from a computer. Users may add points of interest, photos, text, audio recordings, and ambient music to their tours which may be published as public or unlisted. Teachers and students have been really excited about using Tour Creator as they may now create their own virtual reality experiences. https://vr.google.com/tourcreator.”

Read on to learn more about how you might use Tour Creator in the Elementary Classroom: https://flippedtechcoaching.com/2019/01/24/tourcreator/

For a basic tutorial on how it works in less than eight minutes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2s4rhDbyYo4

Even MORE ideas: https://techycoach.com/2018/07/27/google-vr-tour/

EDU in 90 is a video series from Google for Education, with new episodes three times each month. Each episode, Google focuses on an important topic for educators, administrators, and school leaders – things like product updates, new programs, and helpful resources for the classroom. Subscribe to the Google for Education channel to make sure you don’t miss an episode!

Link to Google EDU in 90

As teachers, we know that timely and frequent feedback for students is one of the most important aspects of how we support student learning. But sometimes, it can be very difficult to keep up with that task among all the other things on our plates. Never fear! Eric Curts has created this FANTASTIC resource with TONS of suggestions and options for providing students with timely and robust feedback This document is an amazing collection of tools that can really support your students in the writing process in ANY class. Follow this LINK for the full resource. Here are some highlights:

• Read & Write for Google
• Language Tool Ad-On
• SAS Writing Reviser
• Writer’s Highlighter (blog post on using this tool)
• WriQ (AMAZING Rubric & Writing Feedback Tool) 
• Orange Slice Teacher Rubric
• Use Google Keep
• CheckMark
• Using Screencastify for Video Feedback on student writing

For more Eric Curts awesomeness, navigate to his famous blog that is always relevant and chock full of great resources: https://www.controlaltachieve.com/

Did you ever want to just reuse a few questions from a Form in your Drive? Now you can, just pick the Form in the popup window and it will populate with the questions from that Form. It even will show you which questions were required in the original form and make them required in your new one! Select the ones you want to insert and the formRecycler will automagically insert them at the end of the Form!

Now also supports Team Drives and will recycle quiz questions preserving the point values. It will not recycle embedded images or section headers right now.

FormRecycler is a Google Forms Add-on that makes it easy to reuse questions from one Google Form into another form. Watch this quick video to learn how to use it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwgJpov6BA4