Highlights from the February Google for Education Newsletter

Google newsletter 36

Issue 36 was just released today. Below are some of its notices for your consideration.

Be Internet Awesome presents Safer Internet Day 2021
Join Be Internet Awesome on @googleforedu Twitter and Facebook for the 7-Day Internet Safety Challenge – promoting online safety all week long. We’ll share four new activities and tools for educators to use with their students.

Code.org celebrates Black Voices in Computer Science
Although computer science is foundational to every industry and field of study, representation and participation in CS is still far from balanced. Watch and share this inspiring video from our partner Code.org, advocating for greater access to CS education for Black students.

Arts & Culture: Blob Opera
From Google Arts & Culture’s Lab and artist David Li comes Blob Opera. Exploring the original musical instrument: our voice. Play four opera voices in real time. Explore pitch then record and share your musical composition. No singing skills required.

Arts & Culture: Preserving Egypt’s Layered History
Brings to life the archaeological discoveries, the archaeologists and preservation processes. With stories, 3D and AR models, Quizzes, videos, virtual tours and Choose Your Own Adventures, the project brings the treasures of Egypt into the classroom.

Wakelet & Google for Education: Showcase Challenge
Get involved in the Wakelet & Google for Education: Showcase Challenge! Share your ideas for making the most of Google for Education tools and showcase your expertise inside a Wakelet collection to get your hands on our exclusive digital swag pack.

Missed an issue of the Google for Education newsletter? Check out past issues here.

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Black History Month Resources

Image of Applied Digital Skills black history page

February is Black History Month. Wayne RESA has put together several resources that teachers can use this month and throughout the school year to help infuse Black History in the curriculum.

Additionally, Flipgrid has curated several topics for students to engage with on their platform.

Image of Black History collection in Flipgrid

Wide Open School by Common Sense has linked several Black History and Culture lessons organized by grade, Preschool-12th grade. Google for Education has also released several new lessons in their Applied Digital Skills curriculum.

Image of Applied Digital Skills black history page

Manage Your Inbox with Filters

Click the "Create Filter button

Our email inboxes can become quite difficult to manage, creating a filter is a great way to clear the clutter without removing important messages that we may need to access later. For example, you may get LMS notifications that you want to filter to a specific place.  Follow these steps to help your inbox manage itself using filter rules.

Suppose you get Exit Ticket response emails. You want to move them all to one folder (Gmail calls them labels) to view all at one time.

Inbox snapshot
You may receive several notifications from Google Forms that you want to create a filter for.

It is best to identify the sender and/or subject of these emails to type into the Search bar. You’ll do an advanced search, so click the drop-down arrow.

Shot of search bar and more option drop-down arrow

Add as much information as possible to ensure you get the right messages filtered. Then click, “Create Filter.”

Click the "Create Filter button

Select any filter rules you see as appropriate for that kind of message. You should apply the appropriate Label (or Create one). You may also want to select “Skip the Inbox.” If the case, rest assured, archived emails in Gmail are not deleted permanently after 30 days. They are permanently stored in your email (and now labelled) until you delete/trash it.

Image of filter menuYou can always remove or edit your filter in Setting by clicking on the wrench icon in the upper-right corner.

shot of filter settings in Gmail

When you are ready to view the filtered emails, access the Label on the left-side menu.

image of inbox label

Websites to check out

Webby Awards

The Webby Awards annually note websites with interesting design and elements to explore.  Here are some sites you might want to check out, in no particular order:

Future of Tech hosts a free & growing library of resources to get you up to speed on what’s new & next.

Poly is an online library where people can browse, share, and remix thousands of 3D models or scenes.

People Not Property: Stories of Slavery in the Colonial North 

Canvas is a Chrome/Google supported drawing app.

Applied Digital Skills reviews digital skills needed for the jobs of today and tomorrow with Google’s free video lessons.

Ted-Ed lessons

AFT’s Share My Lesson

 

 

Five Jamboard templates for all subject areas

Jamboard

John Sowash offers five Jamboard templates work for all ages and subject areas! Check them out HERE.

Three of these Jamboard activities work well as whole-class assignments. Two more work best as individual or small-group activities.

These Jamboard lessons work with Chromebooks, tablets, phones, and laptops.

 

Using Google Drawings to Create Infographics

Inforgraphics

One way students can show their knowledge of a topic is by creating an infographic. Infographics, by nature, require students to summarize their learning and choose important information to present visually and textually.

Google Drawings is a great tool to create infographics and it’s likely familiar to navigate. Google Drawings offers options for uploading images, drawing shapes, and adding color. Below is a short video tutorial for students on how to use Google Drawings.

For those who are familiar with Google Drawings and want some super neat tricks you may not know about, check out this video from Matt Miller.

For even more information on student-created infographics, check out this blog post by Matt Miller!

This post is actually a reposting of Dearborn Schools’ Tech Integrationist Amy Gwizdz (thanks Amy!) December post https://techcoaches.dearbornschools.org/2020/12/10/student-created-infographics-using-google-drawings/

 

 

Non-Student ‘accounts’ appearing in Google Assignments

For teachers who are seeing non-student names in their Google Assignments within Canvas — here’s an explanation and what can be done about it.  Non-student names can appear when students submit work using personal devices that have active and commingled Google accounts. With our district Chromebooks, we enforce the use of only district Google accounts (“… @pccsk12.com”) so students using district Chromebooks can only submit Google assignments within Canvas with the expected name associated with their accounts. On the other hand, on personal devices, any number of Gmail accounts might exists and be set up as profiles within an installed Chrome browser on that computer. On such devices, if a student opens up a Google Assignment and they are logged in with a personal Gmail account in Chrome or in a family member’s Chrome profile, the Google assignment will “assign” to that personal account and when it is submitted in Canvas the teacher will see the associated name, which could be another profile account name other than the student’s district one. There are two (2) things student should do to ensure their assignments are properly associated with them in Canvas. Please let your students with personal devices know, especially those that might claim to have submitted work that might actually be present in Canvas but under an unfamiliar, non-student name.

  1. On the Google Assignment, the students should click “switch account” and choose their @pccsk12.com account if it isn’t already listed
  2. The students should make sure that the Google chrome profile is linked with their @pccsk12.com account. Here is a video you can share that can show students how to do this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQPqhqJQAaA&feature=emb_logo

For teachers who would like to remove the non-students from your assignments, while not ideal, you can remove the “non-students” individually from each Google assignment by going to the manage people tab — the vertical dot dot dot in the upper right…see screenshot below… [Please consider before removing the non-student, should they have made a submission, trying to identify which student actually inadvertently is behind that submission — and then crediting and providing feedback as appropriate for it.]

Google engineers are aware of this issue and Canvas is hopeful that at some point it can be mitigated.