There is a new option for your screen when working in Google Slides. You can view or hide the filmstrip. What’s filmstrip? It is the vertical display of slides to the left of the slide your are working on.
Take a Look at the Difference
Why would you want to use this feature?
👉🏽 You are presenting, but still want to be able to edit on the slide, this gives you more space
👉🏽You have a drag and drop activity for students, you can utilize more of the gray area on the sides
👉🏽 You want to keep upcoming slides hidden
Interested in drag and drop activities for Google Slides? Check out these resources:
As we approach the end of the semester, you might consider some new ideas for end-of-semester final projects. Matt Miller, the founder of Ditch that Textbook posted a few great ideas on his blog. Ideas include creating a series of podcast, producing an unboxing video, and connecting with a cause. Read more about his ideas here: https://ditchthattextbook.com/10-ideas-for-digital-end-of-semester-final-projects/
You many not be looking for end-of-the-semester activities, but perhaps you are looking for activities that will engage students as we move toward Winter Break. Eric Curts, of Control Alt Achieve, has put together a collection of “googley” wintertime activities that will allow students to be creative and practice some content skills. Check out his great templates here: https://www.controlaltachieve.com/2021/12/winter.html
Time Saving Tip: Many students and teachers end up accessing Google tools from their phones. As a result, most of us are logged into multiple Google accounts on our phones. Up until last week, I would click on my avatar in the upper, right corner and then select the account I wanted to switch to. But did you know you can save a few nano-seconds by just swiping up or down on that avatar and Google will switch between your accounts? This works in Google Mail (Gmail), Google Drive, Google Keep, Jamboard, Slides, and Docs. It works in most of the Google apps except for Calendar. Video Demonstration.
You can now mark a paragraph to always begin on a new page with the new “Add page break before” option in Google Docs. This is particularly useful if you want certain paragraph styles to always create a new page such as titles, subtitles, or headings. This also means that you can import and export Microsoft Word and other third-party documents that have “Page break before” applied to paragraphs and Docs will retain that formatting.
Add the new “Add page break before” paragraph style in Docs
Starting December 1, 2021: owners and collaborators of classic Google sites will no longer be able to edit any remaining classic Google Sites in our domain. Starting January 1, 2022: classic Google Sites will no longer be viewable unless they are converted to new Google Sites. If you own a classic Google site in our domain and wish to have your content remain viewable after January 1st, at some point before the new year browse to https://sites.google.com/classicsitesmanager and initiate the conversion process.
In some cases we note there are some teacher sites that receive hundreds of views a month even though they haven’t been edited in a year or more, so will suggest you review your site’s stats before possibly deciding to skip converting it. For those with lots of page views on dated sites, if you decide to convert to permit continued visitor access, you may want to at least edit your site by adding links for visitors to follow to also access content you are now more involved in curating on Canvas or elsewhere.
Every month tweaks and changes occur in one or more of our Google apps. Here are two of this month’s.
Create meeting notes in Google Calendar. Available starting in late October, quickly start and share a meeting notes document for your Calendar events.
Add image watermarks in Google Docs. You can now add image watermarks directly into Google Docs.
The TextHelp PDF Reader has officially been reborn as OrbitNote!
Earlier this summer, the Texthelp PDF Reader was updated and became OrbitNote. This update included a new look & easier onboarding. P-CCS students & staff have access to all the PREMIUM features of OrbitNote detailed below.
If you’re not familiar with it yet, OrbitNote allows staff & students to transform and interact with PDFs and digital documents in a completely different way. It helps to create an accessible, dynamic and collaborative space that works for everyone.
You & your students can use OrbitNote to:
-Collaborate in real-time within digital documents
-Read text, including math & science equations, aloud with easy-to-follow dual color highlighting
-Type text on top of your PDFs with the Text feature
-Highlight and extract information with colored highlighters
-Add text and voice comments or use pushpins for helpful hints or instructions
-Use freehand or shape drawing to scribble and draw on your digital documents
And more!
There is NO ACTION required for students or staff who were already using the PDF Reader; the new OrbitNote extension auto-updated. Students and staff may have to update permissions with the first use of the new tool.
Staff who have not used the Texthelp PDF Reader in the past will need to install the extension here.
For more information about using OrbitNote, including Canvas LMS integration, go to the RW4G@PCCS website: https://bit.ly/PCCS-OrbitNote
The new OrbitNote Quick Reference Guide is available here.
We’d like to alert you to two online services we use (Zoom and Google) who are enforcing changes to the student experience in the coming school year. In June we posted about Google’s upcoming age-based changes taking effect and have re-posted our information below with a bit more elaboration.
ZOOM meeting changes
This summer Zoom announced a policy change that will be going into effect in a few weeks that prohibits any student from having a Zoom account associated with a K-12 educational institution. This is being done in part to align their terms and conditions since people under the age of 16 aren’t otherwise permitted an account (up until now those under 16 had only been permitted under the “School Subscriber” terms within Zoom for Education accounts) and in part done to increase the security of meetings. Their new solution is called external authentication, which allows institutions to have an increased level of security without having students in their account. Students will be able to join Zoom meetings safely and securely without the use of a Zoom account and will simply authenticate for meeting access using their district Google account. Some FAQs they have shared are posted below.
Will Breakout Rooms work if my students do not have Zoom accounts?
Yes, you can still use Breakout Rooms as usual. If you would like to pre-assign students to Breakout Rooms, you will need to upload a CSV file with the details .
Will my guest speakers or teacher be able to join a meeting?
Any external guests will not be able to join the meeting unless that specific party has an authorized account in your SSO Identity Provider.
How is this different from standard Zoom/SSO Authentication?
This is authenticating users upon joining a meeting and does not create a Zoom account.
Can I pull a report of the students and have accurate attendance information?
Yes, all student’s names will be documented accurately with their associated email address.
[We had a virtual meeting with our account representative last month to discuss these upcoming changes and among other questions asked about the ability for users to add their personal pronouns. While they said that it was possible, it would have to be mapped via a field in Google since Zoom accounts were no longer going to be associated with our students. At this point, we’re not in a position to set up that mapping, but are looking into other options.]
Safer learning with Google for Education
Google is launching a new, age-based setting to control their app experience for users that goes into effect next month. See this support page for more detail. [Since we don’t have a way to group students by their age in our admin console, these settings will apply to ALL of our students, from our youngest to any students at PCEP and Starkweather that might be 18 or older during their time in district.]
After September 1, 2021, students will see changes in their experience across Google products. For example, after September 1, students in K-12 domains can view YouTube content assigned by teachers, but they won’t be able to post videos, comment or live stream using their school Google account. More specifically, our students’ district YouTube accounts won’t have access to or be able to…
Create channels, playlists, stories, shorts, or upload videos
Watch or create live stream events
See or post comments
Participate in live chat
Use apps, including YouTube Go, YouTube Music, YouTube Studio, YouTube TV, and YouTube VR
After September 1, 2021, students will see changes in their experience when signed into Chrome. For example, after September 1, to ensure a safer web browsing experience for K-12 institutions, SafeSearch and SafeSites will be on by default, and Guest Mode and Incognito Mode will be off by default.
Google regularly updates/changes their Workspace apps. To follow their launched release changes, visit HERE. To check out details on planned release changes, visit HERE. In no particular order, some recently launched or expected release changes to note include:
File / Video Security Updates
Some shared files in your Google Drive will require using a URL that contains a resource key. This security update is being applied to some files in Google Drive to make sharing links more secure. This change will impact users who haven’t previously viewed a file that you’re sharing. As an end-user, this shouldn’t change anything for you other than the link that you initially share if you use the “anyone with the link” option to share a file. This change will be implemented beginning July 26th with full enforcement on and after September 13, 2021.
Videos in your YouTube account that were uploaded prior to January 1, 2017 and were marked as “unlisted” will be changed to “private” on July 23rd. You can revert them back to “unlisted” after the 23rd. Read more about this change here. This update doesn’t affect videos uploaded after January 1, 2017.
Google Forms
Twenty new font choices are being added to Google Forms.
The settings menu is going to be revamped to “simplify” the application of settings.
Google Docs
Improved revision history – To see who added or modified a portion of your document, simply highlight the text, right click and select “see editors.” This is so much quicker and easier than digging through revision history!
Create interactive checklists in Google Docs. There’s a new checkbox option that you can add in place of bullet points in Google Docs. This is available now. See screenshot below for an example. See this support page as well. Soon we will be able to assign checklist action items to other people and these action items will show up in their Google Tasks (as a reminder, browse to https://mail.google.com/tasks/canvas and login with your Google account. This is a full screen view of your Google Tasks.)
Google introduced the idea of a “smart chip” to demonstrate that Docs is more than just a page of text. Smart chips allow you to link to files, people, and events in your document. Just type the @ symbol and tag a person, file, or calendar event.
Coming soon…Pageless documents – Unless you are planning to print a document, there is no reason to limit yourself to 8.5×11. Google Docs now supports a “pageless” view that will automatically reflow text to fit the size of the screen you are using. If you do need to print, you can always switch back to the traditional view.
Emoji reactions in Docs – Starting this fall you will be able to add emoji reactions to portions of a document, a quick way to provide feedback without the need to leave a full comment.
Safer learning with Google for Education
Google is launching a new, age-based setting to control their app experience for users. See this support page for more detail.
After September 1, 2021, students who are under 18 will see changes in their experience across Google products. For example, after September 1, students designated as under 18 in K-12 domains can view YouTube content assigned by teachers, but they won’t be able to post videos, comment or live stream using their school Google account.
After September 1, 2021, students who are under 18 will see changes in their experience when signed into Chrome. For example, after September 1, to ensure a safer web browsing experience for K-12 institutions, SafeSearch and SafeSites will be on by default, and Guest Mode and Incognito Mode will be off by default.
Are you wondering how you can use Google Apps with younger students? Kindergarten teachers Christine Pinto and Jessica LaBar-Twomey, who are also the authors of Innovating Playhave a great blog with ideas, a spreadsheet with templates and can be followed on social media.
Why would you want to use this feature?
