A revamped home for all our G Suite apps

dashboard

You can see a list of all the core G Suite apps enabled for our district in the User Dashboard at gsuite.google.com/dashboard. After a recent redesign, this page is now better-looking and easier to navigate, with a search bar that allows users to quickly find apps.

In the Your apps section, users can open their installed apps. G Suite core services are listed first, then other apps in alphabetical order. Users can’t hide an app or change the order of apps.

The Approved apps section shows the G Suite Marketplace apps approved for all users to install themselves.
When a user clicks an approved app, they go to Marketplace. Then the user searches for the app in Marketplace and follows the installation steps.

Which should you use — Dashboard or App launcher?

Users can open their apps in either Dashboard or the App launcher  (in the top right of the user’s window) Users with many cloud apps may prefer Dashboard and wish to bookmark it.

Free Webinars from Common Sense Education and edWeb.net

Common Sense Education is considered by many educators to be the gold standard when it comes to digital safety, reviews of edtech software, and digital resources for teachers. Common Sense has teamed up with edWeb.net to provide timely monthly webinars that explore innovative technologies, digital citizenship strategies, formative assessments, the development of critical thinking skills and more.

Both companies have also archived and posted all previous webinars which can be viewed anytime for free. Check out the site to watch previous webinars.

Celebrating 50th anniversary of Moon Landing at ISTE 2019

ISTE stands for International Society for Technology in Education. Each year they hold a conference in the summer that brings tens of thousands of people from all over the world to learn about innovative educational technology and its impacts on education. This year in Philadelphia, ISTE wanted to highlight the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. Nearly 20,000 educators engaged in their NASA Playground which included 2D and 3D modeling, augmented reality and other innovative technologies. Check out this article!

Noteworthy Resources:

Be A Nasa Scientist Poster w/ QR codes

NASA resources: A universe of learning at your fingertips (Tons of NASA Resources)

Google is shutting down their embedded G Suite Training app September 30, 2019

Almost since the beginning of the P-CCS adoption of the Google platform (Google Apps for Education/G Suite for Education), we have had access to a great resource originally referred to as Synergyse and later as G Suite Training. You know, that little question mark at the top right corner of your Google Apps next to your profile picture?

Well, Google is phasing it out as of September 30th, 2019. Our beloved little question icon will go away and with it the at our fingers training and support that it offered. If you still want access to great resources for learning how to use Google tools and have relied on G Suite Training, there is hope. Here are some of the top resources you can still rely on:

What other resources are available?

Additional training and support resources are available at:

Additional education specific training resources available at:

Until September 30th, there’s still time to check out GSuite Training embedded within your Google apps.

Go to the G Suite service you want to learn.

Click the Training menu (Training for G Suite menu) for a list of relevant lessons, or use the search feature to find a particular lesson.

Select the lesson and follow the onscreen instructions.

Access the G Suite Training Video Library

If you are curious about the training that is included in this extension and available through September, you can also simply explore the video library. Here you can access all of the videos, categorized by application. Gmail alone has over 100 video tutorials! Most of which are about 30 seconds to two minutes long. Just in time learning!!!

Use A.I. to help with Question Ideas using Quillionz

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning continues to inform educational technology. This includes Google’s Autodraw which uses A.I. to predict what you draw and Grammarly which helps and supports grammar and word usage.

The web-based Quillionz, dubbed as the “World’s first AI-powered platform for creating questions, assessments, and quizzes” lets teachers import any text (journal article, website, etc.) and create question ideas based off of that text. Generated questions can come in multiple formats including; short answer, multiple choice, and fill in the blank. Teachers can choose from specific keywords, and all questions are editable based on DOK level.

To find out more about Quillionz (they do have a free version), click on this link from posting by Richard Byrne. Posting

Adobe Spark Adds Collaboration for Education Users

Adobe Spark

Adobe has updated Spark, its suite of tools for helping users create visual content. Initially launched in 2016 as an upgrade and rebranding of existing programs, the set of apps for web work enables non-graphics experts to design professional-looking graphics, mix text and images and create animated videos simply and quickly. All P-CCS staff and secondary students have access to Adobe Spark for Education, a premium, yet free, version of Spark which is made available to schools and colleges.

Spark now supports live collaboration through the web. Students and instructors can begin a project and invite others to work on it by adding their email and sending an invitation to make edits. Shared projects appear in a new tab in the project organizer, and edits made to the project will be visible to collaborators.

The feature only exists currently on the desktop or laptop version; mobile doesn’t include the capability yet. Also, only one person will be able to open the project at a time for editing.

The new version now comes in multiple languages, including French, Italian, German, Spanish and Portuguese. It also includes new text animations and animated stickers in the Apple iOS app. 

Adobe noted that it expected to add project commenting; real-time, synchronous co-editing; mobile project sharing; and “support for multiple brands” for users who participate in more than one team.

When you are ready to get started with Adobe Spark, you can log in by following the instructions at http://links.pccsk12.com/adobespark. As a reminder, the Technology Department has also enabled account provisioning for our secondary students. For a quick tutorial on how to use Adobe Spark, we encourage you to watch this tutorial video from Richard Byrne. You may also want to look at Adobe’s Spark Edu guide here.

Google Launches Comprehensive Computer Science (CS) Resources for Educators

Google Coding

On July 8, 2019 Google launched Code with Google, a new compilation of resources for K-12 educators for exploring computer science in the classroom.

According to Google, “We believe that training, resources, and community for teachers are key to improving equity in CS education and expanding access for all students. Code with Google is our new CS comprehensive resource for educators. It brings together Google’s free curriculum and programs that build coding skills—from beginner level to advanced—to help students succeed. Teachers can integrate CS First into their classroom, guide their high school students to the free code learning app Grasshopper to learn Javascript, or share CS scholarship opportunities with students.”

Some recent Google Service enhancements in Forms, Sheets, and Classroom

G Suite for Edu

*Please note that these features will be available in the next few weeks and might not show up at the time of this blog posting.

IMPORT questions from previously existing GOOGLE FORMS into a new Google form – Google Forms now has a native feature for importing questions into new Forms from your existing forms. The feature will let you select individual questions or all questions from an old Form to add into your new Form. It’s an easy process to do. Link to Post

  • First, open a form and from the action toolbar on the right, select Import Questions.
  • Then, from the dialogue box, select the form with the questions you want to import.
  • From the right hand sidebar menu, you can: 
    • Import all questions by choosing Select All> Import Questions 
    • Or, you can select specific questions to import and then select Import Questions 

VIEW the EDIT HISTORY of a cell in Google SHEETS

“Show edit history” is a new feature in Sheets that will help you easily see the edit history of a cell, including who made the last edit, when that edit was made, and the cell’s previous value. Link to Post

GRADEBOOK in Google Classroom now generally available

Google Classroom recently introduced Gradebook to make grading easier by allowing teachers to keep their assignments and grades in a single place. To learn more about this and other improvements for Classroom, see their post.

Phishing attacks can come via Gmail Calendar Invites

Fall for my crafty trick

Users of Google’s Calendar app are being warned about scams that take advantage of the popularity of the free service and its ability to schedule meetings easily. Spammers/phishers are continuing to use, in ever growing numbers, unsolicited Google Calendar notifications to trick user into clicking phishing links.

Here’s how it works: Scammers send a Google user a calendar invite complete with meeting topic and location information. Inside the details of the appointment lies a malicious link that looks like it’s pointing you back to meet.google.com for more details. Once clicked, it’s back to the usual tactics of trying to infect the user’s endpoint with malware and so on.

Users have long been warned about their interaction with email and the web. Now it’s important to add Calendar invites to the list. This latest method demonstrates how attackers are continually updating their tactics, requiring organizations to remain equally persistently educated to enable users to make smarter security decisions.

The most important thing is to be attentive.

  • Do not open messages from unknown senders.
  • Never accept invitations from people you don’t know.
  • Do not tap or click links in messages you weren’t expecting.

Note, if you do start to get spam invites, consider taking additional steps.

First, report the event as spam by double clicking the event you’d like to report, then at the top, click More Actions >  Report as Spam

Next, change your default settings for Calendar.

By default, Google Calendar will add events to your calendar whenever you receive an invite, even if you never clicked ‘accept’. As long as someone can blast invites your way, it’s easy for them to sneak garbage onto your Google Calendar.

Worse, even if you diligently decline events you don’t recognize, Calendar will still display events you’ve declined, meaning those phishy links will stick around, too.

You can read more about possible calendar default setting changes to consider to sidestep unwanted invites in this article.

You can read more about how Google Calendar, Google Forms and other Google services are being used by spammers et al in this article.

You can also check out Google’s page on Calendar feedback.