If you have not heard of Matt Miller, author of Ditch that Textbook and other titles, it is your lucky day! His website, books, and podcast are full of great teacher tips. Recently, he has promoted an EfficienTEACH series to help you save time and have a big impact on student learning. Check out some of his fantastic resources below, click the picture to access the links.
Ever find yourself writing emails and thinking that you should really save it to re-use later? Google Docs now makes it easier to draft an email in Docs and send it with just a few more clicks.
Entering @email in docs.google.com will load a template complete with To, Cc, Bcc, and Subject lines. It can also be accessed via Insert > Building Blocks > Email draft.
You can access your contacts and enter them directly in the correct fields. Then you can draft your email. Because you are in Docs you can share it with your grade-level team or co-teacher for feedback and suggestions.
When you are ready to send, click on the Gmail icon and it will automatically populate the Gmail message with what you entered in Docs. Then congratulate yourself because that yearly email or other frequent communication is saved in Drive to save you time in the future.
This feature was previously mentioned along with some other exciting updates in this blog post.
Educator ResourcesCelebrate Earth Day with Applied Digital Skills |
| New Math Lessons from Applied Digital Skills Looking for engaging lessons to celebrate Math Awareness Month? Our new collection of math lessons uses project-based learning to explore math topics such as probability, percentages, and fractions. These lessons teach students the basics of organizing data sets and using formulas in Google Sheets. |
| 22 Digital Days Challenge for Educators We have a fun bite-sized challenge for educators – #22DigitalDays – 22 tasks to engage teachers & students in digital dabbling, which can be adapted as necessary. Get started and share these cool tips, tricks and resources to use in the classroom and beyond. |
| Computer Science Educator’s Guide To help teachers gain skills and confidence in Computer Science, we are partnering with European Schoolnet to offer a free online course: “Computer Science: Educator’s Guide” starting on April 25th. Sign up now!
ARRAY 101 Educator Forum Livestream
Arts & Culture: Manga Out of the Box |
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Here are three of the most noteworthy March Google Workspace updates – all will be active by the end of this month.
You can now embed linked response charts from Google Forms into a Google Doc, Google Slides presentation, or a Google Drawing. When new form responses are received, anyone with the proper permissions can refresh an embedded chart by simply clicking the “Update” button. This eliminates the need to re-copy the chart from the form.
This feature is useful for sharing real-time responses to polls or surveys and for incorporating Forms responses data into presentations or reports.
We’re making it easy to collaborate on an email draft in Docs with the new email draft template. You can mention people in the recipient fields using the @ menu without having to remember their email addresses, and collaborate on the message body using comments and suggestions. When ready to send, simply click the button that is shown alongside an email draft. A Gmail compose window will pop up, with email fields (subject, to, cc, bcc, and body) automatically populated based on the email draft in the document.
There is no end user setting for this feature. To insert an email template, go to Insert > Building Blocks > Email draft
In addition to seeing when someone is out of office, you can now see additional Google Calendar statuses like “In a meeting” or “In focus time” in Google Chat.
We hope by surfacing these additional statuses, this will make it easier for your colleagues to identify appropriate times to message you.
Here are some highlights from the latest newsletter for your consideration.
Educator Resources |
| Celebrate Women’s History Month with Applied Digital Skills Looking to celebrate Women’s History Month with your class? Our new lesson ‘Celebrate Your Accomplishments with Google Docs’ has students explore the accomplishments of a woman they admire and practice talking about those achievements with a partner. [Contents of both lessons are in the Creative Commons and can be reworked to put up in your Canvas] |
| Women of Color in Tech Scholarship We’d like to invite you to apply to the new ‘Women of Color in Tech’ scholarship, providing twenty $10K scholarships to women studying computer science and related fields. Please encourage high school seniors or undergraduate Black, Latina, and/or Native women currently pursuing or who have completed computing related degrees to apply. |
Extra Credit |
| Register for the Teach with Chrome Series Learn about the latest in Chrome devices and Chrome OS with more than ten 30-minute sessions featuring Google experts and partners running demo-based trainings. If you can’t watch live, all sessions will be available on demand after the livestream finishes each day. |
| Arts & Culture: Women in Culture To celebrate Women’s History Month, help honor women in engineering, chemistry, natural history, space, and medicine. Discover the lives of the women in STEM and politics, art, and sports through stories, lesson plans, videos, and virtual tours. |
| Arts & Culture: Mali Magic Discover the four Ms of Mali; Manuscripts, Music, Monuments and Modern Art. Take a virtual tour of the great Mosque of Djenne, discover traditional instruments, read the Timbuktu manuscripts, or use the lesson plan to guide students through Mali’s magic. |
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In the latest update for Chrome, you’ll now see a share icon in the link address bar. Click that “sharrow” and you be able to copy the link or get a QR code with a few less clicks.
More and more teachers are going “paperless” in their classrooms. As a result, you might not like making formatting adjustments when an image, table, or something else falls right around a page break. Google Docs now gives you the option to “pageless.” View the video below to find out how and see why it might be helpful.
More information from Google on this update.
Here are some highlights from the latest newsletter for your consideration.
| Originality Reports Available for Google Slides Previously available for Google Docs, originality reports can now also be run in Google Slides. Originality reports are a feature that helps students and teachers detect plagiarism and can be used when submitting or receiving files in Google Classroom. |
| Register for the Teach with Chrome Series Learn about the latest in Chrome devices and Chrome OS with more than ten 30-minute sessions featuring Google experts and partners running demo-based trainings. If you can’t watch live, all sessions will be available on demand after the livestream finishes each day. |
Educator Resources |
| Join a Google Educator Group Find a Google Educator Group near you and meet educators in your area who use Google tools to foster learning in schools, classrooms, and communities. |
| Earn Your Educator Level 1 Certification Demonstrate your mastery of Google tools in the classroom with the Educator Level 1 Certification. Completing the certification earns you a badge that can help you stand out on your resume, portfolio, website, and more. |
| Celebrate Digital Learning Day with Applied Digital Skills Digital Learning Day is on Feb 22, 2022! To prepare for the big day, check out this collection of our most popular lessons amongst teachers. |
| New Black History Month Lesson from Applied Digital Skills Our new lesson ‘Create a Community My Map’ promotes student cultural awareness and activism. In this lesson, students will customize a ‘Google My Map’ that features places that are meaningful to them in their community and share it with their peers. |
Extra Credit |
| Apply to be a Google Certified Trainer Apply to be a Google Certified Trainer today and connect with other passionate educators! As a trainer, you’ll foster change and efficiency in the educator community by helping educators use Google Workspace tools in their classrooms. |
| Register for a Google for Education Security Summit Our virtual Security Summits focus on best practices to safely and securely manage your school’s online presence. We’ll explore our powerful, free security tools (DLP, Vault) and get hands-on with hero features (Investigation Tool, etc.) from our paid Workspace editions. |
| Arts & Culture: Memory of the World Discover some of the world’s most significant items of documentary heritage through the UNESCO program. Educational resources including video, a lesson plan for K-12, and an introduction for teachers are available. |
| Arts & Culture: A Brief History of Vaccines Find out about the discovery of viruses and history of vaccines. Check out videos, stories, quizzes, and insights into people who help save lives and the design of protective equipment. |
| Arts & Culture: Thai Art History Explore 70 years of Thai art through color, high res images, interviews with artists, and different materials. Find inspiration and insight into the culture and art of Thailand. |
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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.
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
