Google Forms Now Require Publishing

Prior to the update: You could potentially share a form link even before “publishing” it, which might lead to unintended access. Additionally, you would turn on, “Accepting Responses” to allow people to respond. Now, you Publish the form to accept responses.

location of publish button in Google Forms
Location of new Publish button in Google Forms. In order to get responses, you must publish it.
screen options when publishing
When you click Publish, you will see this screen. The form will default to anyone in Plymouth-Canton can respond. Click “Manage” to adjust this.

After the update: You must explicitly “Publish” the form before it becomes accessible to others, even if you have shared the link. You can share editing access to the form from the traditional, share icon. visual of share icon

Preview of sharing and collaborating options for forms.
When you click the share button, you will be able to update collaborators on the form and responder permissions.

Enhanced Security: This update adds a layer of security by requiring a deliberate action (publishing) to make the form accessible. This helps prevent accidental sharing or premature access.

Better Control: It gives form creators more control over when their form goes live and who can access it.

 

For additional support, see Google’s guide.

Canvas Semester/Quarter Transition

Teacher desk with an alarm clock on it

With the upcoming change in semesters and quarters, please be aware of grade deadlines and Canvas access for Semester 1/Quarter 2. See the deadline and tips below to avoid issues.

*****Please Note: Starkweather’s Grading Window closes on Tuesday January 21 at 11:59pm, all other secondary buildings close grading on January 22 at 11:59pm.*****

  • Teachers:
    • Edit/Grade assignments in Canvas for Semester 1/Q2 courses until January 22, 2025 at 11:59 (read-only after).
    • Year long courses: Edit/Grade access for Semester 1 will end when grades are due on January 22. If you think you will need access to grade as assignment after that, update the due date prior to the term ending.
  • Students:
    • Access to Semester 1 Canvas courses until Jan 17, 2024 at 11:59pm (read-only after, no quiz questions access).
    • Be aware, students can still submit S1/Q2 assignments in a year-long course as long as the availability dates allow it. However, you won’t be able to grade them beyond January 22 due to grading window limits. You can update availability dates and due dates in bulk following these directions.

Special Circumstances

Moving Assignments from S1/Q2 to S2/Q3

As seen above, once the grading window end (January 22) in a year-long class, teachers cannot grade S1/Q2 assignments.

If you foresee that you will move a S1/Q2 assignment into S2/Q3, you will need to adjust the due date by January 17. After this date, you will need to submit a ticket to get the due date updated.

If you have ongoing assignments in your course, thing through your options to duplicate the assignment or alter dates. Reach out for support, if needed.

S1/Q2 Extensions

S1/Q2 grades will NOT passback from Canvas to MiStar once the MiStar term ends (and the grading window closes). You may have to work with your records office to update a report card if submitted late work results in a grade change.

Beginning Semester 2/Quarter 3 in Canvas

Student Access to Content in Past Enrollments

location of course view settings

Do you want your course content to be viewable to students after the course is over? *Quizzes are automatically not viewable by students after the Term End date has passed.

Go to your Course Settings and adjust as needed (see image above). If your course is viewable to students, it would be located at https://pccsk12.instructure.com/courses under “Past Enrollments.”

If you do keep it visible to students, you may consider “prepping” your course for read-only access by unpublishing any answer keys (or remove links) or other materials you might hold until a student has attempted an assignment.

Import Course Content

Have new courses starting? You can easily import content from past years. Use this tutorial.

Crosslisting Courses

Do you have more than one section of a course beginning? You might consider crosslisting the course to save time.

Additionally, if you have a yearlong course that you regret NOT crosslisting, the semester break may be a good time to do it. Note that student submissions and grades will be lost in Canvas!

Check out our Crosslisting Guide for more information.

Don’t Forget to Publish!

If you have a course beginning, don’t forget to publish it! You can publish it when it is ready for viewing and it won’t be visible to students until January 18 or until it is published by you.

Laptop Upkeep Best Practices

suggested laptop maintenance

The tech department would like to suggest the following maintenance steps to ensure the best performance from your new laptop.

Making sure you perform periodic restarts and logging into your laptop while on the district network does several important things to improve performance including clearing the laptop’s Random Access Memory (RAM) which can otherwise over time bog down its system resources and allowing important and useful district updates to to run at start up.

We appreciate your help to ensure the best possible performance of your laptop. Please submit a tech ticket if you have any questions.

Tech Housekeeping for Winter Break

Tech break checklist

We hope you enjoy your winter break! Before you leave on the 20th…

WOULD YOU PLEASE SECURE ALL VALUABLES in the classrooms and office spaces you inhabit. This includes laptops, document cameras, Apple TVs, remotes, and interactive pens.

Further, if it is equipment you handle, would you please make sure all iPads and Chromebooks are in their carts and those CARTS ARE LOCKED and plugged in before leaving.

Finally, would you please also POWER OFF any of the following equipment, if it is equipment you handle:

  • projectors
  • sound amps
  • SmartBoards
  • desktop computers
  • monitors
  • printers

THANK YOU for your cooperation.

Some new Google updates and features

slides.google.com released a number of updated templates, in Google Slides, access templates using the top toolbar or by going to Insert > Templates. Visit the Help Center to learn more about templates in Google Slides.

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Star rating in Google Forms – you can now insert a “star rating” question in Google Forms.

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eSignature available to collect in both Google docs and PDFs within Google Drive

eSignature offers a variety of features to help you streamline requesting and capturing signatures, helping you stay organized and keep your work moving along. Specifically, you can:
  • Request eSignatures, including signatures from more than one user and from non-Gmail users.
  • View the status of pending signatures and find completed contracts.
  • Keep contract templates to initiate multiple eSignature requests.
  • View an audit trail of completed contracts.
  • Use custom text fields to request additional information from signers, such as job titles, email addresses and more.

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Google Lens now built within Google Chrome allows you to quickly take a snapshot of anything in the browser and get more info (see example at https://www.youtube.com/shorts/J1dQSiBMrPk)

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New Adobe Express Add-on for Google Slides
Install the Adobe Express add-on for Google Slides and get access to lightweight creative tools that let you edit images, visually enhance presentations, and create flyers, infographics, & more. Adobe Express for Education is the quick & easy content creation app from Adobe — free for K-12.  visit https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/adobe_express_for_google_slides/682264952061

 

Misc sites for your consideration

Useful Sites

In no particular order…

https://bioart.niaid.nih.gov/  Build figures, presentations, and illustrations with 2,000+ science and medical art visuals

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https://phishingquiz.withgoogle.com/  Google’s phishing quiz to help us be more vigilant when it comes to emails

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https://sethideclercq.com/teachingtools/  assorted teacher tools created with minimalistic design principles in mind

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https://artsandculture.google.com/art-zoom-out with the help of generative AI, Google helps you Zoom Out and envision what might lie beyond the frame of iconic paintings.

https://artsandculture.google.com/experiment/2gFc5DkygEURfw Art Remix puts your AI prompting to the test, presenting artworks alongside a prompt that describes them, challenging you to edit the prompt and imagine the work with your own twist.

https://artsandculture.google.com/experiment/food-mood/HwHnGalZ3up0EA  food mood combinations

https://artsandculture.google.com/project/uslatinocultures explore Latino cultures in the US

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http://www.gearsket.ch/  a fun, simple web app for experimenting with gears

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https://labs.google/gentype  uses AI to generate custom fonts using everyday object directions  other labs https://labs.google/experiments might be of interest too

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https://blog.google/technology/ai/notebooklm-audio-overviews/ reviews audio summations of sources you submit in notebooklm.google.com

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https://www.sonicentric.com/  relaxing, themed videos

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https://noises.online/  simple noise generator

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https://sandtimer.toolten.io/  if you want a digital hourglass with lots of customization options

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https://www.canva.com/designschool/courses/teacher-essentials/?lesson=welcome-teacher-essentials  Canva teacher essentials

 

 

 

Barely a week away, sharing a reminder – thanks!

We hope you enjoy your winter break, arriving just eight days from now! Before you leave next Friday afternoon…

WOULD YOU PLEASE SECURE ALL VALUABLES in the classrooms and office spaces you inhabit. This includes laptops, document cameras, Apple TVs, remotes, and interactive pens.

Further, if it is equipment you handle, would you please make sure all iPads and Chromebooks are in their carts and those CARTS ARE LOCKED and plugged in before leaving.

Finally, would you please also POWER OFF any of the following equipment, if it is equipment you handle:

  • projectors
  • sound amps
  • SmartBoards
  • desktop computers
  • monitors
  • printers

THANK YOU for your cooperation.

Tech break checklist

DitchThat Textbook Digital Summit

Graphic about the ditch summit, details provided in the post

I’m signed up for a GREAT free online conference for teachers in December and wanted to tell you about it. 

It’s called the Ditch That Textbook Digital Summit. It includes video presentations from awesome presenters on topics related to tech and solid teaching and learning. Including previous years’ sessions, you’ll have access to more than 90 video presentations! 

This year, it’s scheduled for December 16, 2024, to January 10, 2025. Get registered for free at: DitchSummit.com.

HOW IT WORKS: New presentations are released every day. They remain available until the end of the summit so you can re-watch or catch up on any you’ve missed. They’re pre-recorded, so you can watch them whenever you want until the summit closes. After that, the summit ends and the videos are unavailable to watch anymore.

THIS YEAR’S SPEAKERS: Here’s the lineup for this year …

  • Trevor MacKenzie (English Teacher, Author: Inquiry Mindset)
    • Topic: Student curiosity and questioning routines
  • Manny Curiel (Edpuzzle Head of Community, Former Elementary Teacher)
    • Topic: Perseverance and overcoming setbacks
  • Ed Campos Jr. (Educator, Speaker, Consultant)
    • Topic: AI and teacher wellness
  • Ken Shelton and Dee Lanier (Authors: The Promises and Perils of AI in Education)
    • Topic: Cautious steps toward AI implementation
  • Stevie Frank (Learning Integration Specialist, Zionsville Community Schools)
    • Topic: Student voice through podcasting and more
  • Jorge Valenzuela (Speaker, Author, Educator)
    • Topic: Project-based and lifelong learning
  • Holly Clark (Author: The AI-Infused Classroom)
    • Topic: AI literacies for students
  • Students for Innovation (Innovative, Passionate Student Leaders)
    • Topic: AI in learning and life, student perspective

Introducing: Google Vids

Title image

Google Vids: A New Tool for Teacher-Created Videos

Google Vids is an AI-powered video creation app for work that is now available for Google Workspace for Education. While it is not yet available for student use, teachers can use Vids to easily create, edit, and share videos for a variety of teaching and learning purposes.

**It will be available for students in the near future, so take time to try it out for yourself now!

Key Features of Google Vids

  • User-friendly Interface: Vids is designed with an intuitive interface for creating, editing, and sharing videos. Users can add content including images, video clips from Drive, videos, GIFs, images, stickers, music, and sound effects from the Vids stock content library.
  • Templates: To help you get started, Vids offers templates that can provide a framework for your videos.
  • Recording Studio: A built-in recording studio lets users record audio, record themselves, their screen, or a combination.
  • Collaboration: Users can collaborate with each other on videos in real-time.
  • Flexible Sharing: Videos can be shared as Google Vids files, MP4s in Google Drive, or downloaded as MP4s for sharing.

Vids in the Classroom: Ideas and Considerations

Since AI capabilities will not be available in the education version, features like “help me create” and read-along teleprompter will not be accessible. However, teachers can still take advantage of the platform’s many other features to create engaging and informative videos.

Here are some ideas for how teachers might use Google Vids in their classrooms:

  • Create instructional videos: Explain complex concepts, demonstrate procedures, or provide step-by-step instructions for assignments. If you are saying the same thing, the same way to everyone then a video may be your best bet.
  • Develop flipped classroom content: Prepare video lectures or lessons for students to watch at home, freeing up class time for more interactive activities.
  • Produce video announcements: Share important information with students and families about upcoming events, deadlines, or classroom updates.
  • Make explainer videos for parents: Clarify classroom procedures, grading policies, or other aspects of your teaching approach.
  • Record student projects: Capture student presentations, performances, or other creative work in a polished video format.

Important Notes:

  • Videos created in Vids have a maximum length of 10 minutes.
  • While Vids works with many browsers, some features may not be available in all browsers. For example, editing and commenting are not currently supported in Safari.
  • A variety of audio, image, and video files are compatible with Vids and can be uploaded from your computer or Google Drive.

As Google Vids becomes more widely available in educational settings, it is poised to become a valuable tool for teachers to enhance their teaching and engage their students in new and creative ways.

See Google’s Blog Update and Help Guide for more information to get started.

Master Library Schedules

Master Library Schedules Waffle Screenshot

Please continue to use VirtualEMS for now until we launch ML Schedules. Click here to Access VirtualEMS

Beginning in late December, facility use requests will now be made via a new platform called ML Schedules. Like Maintenance and Tech Request, this will be housed through MasterLibrary. Access will be conveniently located in the waffle (Google Apps Launcher). Scroll down to find the orange “M” – it will launch the site and automatically log you in with your Google credentials.

NEW IMAGE NEEDED – ILLUSTRATING MLS ICON

Please note: accessing through the “Waffle” is the recommended pathway. Getting to MasterLibrary through the direct link (https://mi50.mlschedules.com) and signing in with Google credentials may not work if you have not first visited through the waffle.

Master Library Schedules Waffle Screenshot

From there the procedures are similar to our previous system. However, to further assist you with navigating the new platform, here are a few resources that you may find helpful prior to its launch:

  1. Basic User Quick Start Guide
  2. Getting Started Guide – Training Videos, Glossary, FAQ
  3. Make a Request (Video)
  4. Using the Calendar
  5. Additional Reports

To reiterate, staff members should make facility usage requests by either clicking on the Google apps launcher (aka waffle) and selecting the orange Master Library Schedules icon (preferred way) OR browsing to https://mi50.mlschedules.com (feel free to bookmark) and signing in with their district Google credentials.  

More resources: