I have had several questions lately on how to share your doc cam through Google Meets. I made a super quick 1 minute video on how to do that. Pro-Tip when it looks backward to you on your screen, don’t worry it does not look backward to the students.
Here is a Google Slides matching drag and drop activity designed for Google Classroom. Students will click and drag each president to the corresponding correct description. This activity covers presidents James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Johnson, and Ulysses S Grant
Here is a drag and drop Google Slides activity designed to be posted in Google Classroom. Students will drag each president, identified by name and image, to the correct corresponding description. This activity covers the first eight president of the United States. George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, James Monroe, John Quincy Adams, Andrew Jackson, Martin Van Buren
Classroomscreen.com is a very useful classroom management tool. It is super simple to use and set up.
I know that as a teacher, student, and even as a parent it can be annoying to have old assignments listed for a student that were posted before the student was added. This can cause confusion for everyone. There is no quick box to uncheck in the settings to fix this problem but I have found a solution. I would consider it more of an “Advanced User” sort of strategy but it could be very beneficial if you are willing to take on the task.
This would be incredibly wordy to explain in writing so let’s just take a quick look at this video walkthrough. Special thanks to Mr. Stellpflug for asking such a relevant and challenging question. Let’s hook him up with a prize.
Automagical claims to be able to take a PDF, Doc, or Slides file and convert it into a Google Form with no copy pasting. Sounds too good to be true so let’s check it out.
This turned out to work well for a Multiple choice activity from a Google Doc that was just straight down the page with no extra formatting. I did not have success with fill in the blank activities nor Google Slides, or a .pdf.
In my opinion ClassKick or Teachermade.com would be a much better alternative to making activities digital and gradable. Unless you just have to have it in Google Forms.
Pebble Go is a kid friendly and kid safe research tool . Students easily access Pebble Go with a school wide username and password. Pebble Go offers resources covering the topics of Animals, Science, Health, Social Studies, and Biographies.
You can use Pebble Go to get your littles learning to research on the internet in a safe way.
Pebble Go is NOT Free and starts at $1,300 a year for a campus. Check it out and talk to your principal to see if it is something your campus could benefit from.
Camscanner will snap a picture of a printed document and turn it into a digital document. The Camscanner app will remove the background and keep only your document. It uses OCR technology to recognize text and convert it to an editable format. It will also translate text into 40 different languages. Camscanners app syncs up across all of your devices so you always have access to your documents.
This looks like a very useful tool for capturing old worksheets to assign them digitally or to capture student work for submission.
Award winning K-5 Online reading Resource. This tool is great for students to practice reading and improve their literacy skills. Students have access to a large easy to navigate library of eBooks offered at 29 different levels.
Students can listen and read long with the eBooks while the words being read are highlighted. Students can move through books at their own pace and explore the resources available to ensure better comprehension.
Students can record themselves reading to practice and demonstrate fluency. Raz-Kids also provides book quizzes to check for comprehension. As students pass comprehension quizzes they advanced to higher reading levels.
There is also a teacher portal to monitor student progress and results.
After the two week free trial a subscription to Raz-Kids does cost $120 per classroom.
Is something missing from a website that you know should be there. Perhaps you have recently updated your website or Google Classroom and the changes aren’t showing up for your students. Sometimes you can hit F5 a dozen times and it won’t update. That is just refreshing the page from the browser’s cache. Next time try Ctr-F5. have your students press Ctrl and F5 to skip the browser cache and refresh the page straight from the website server.
Recently I had time to go through all of the new badge applications received since 18 November through 11 January. That means it is time for an update on innovation badge rankings.
Let’s start with the big one, campus ranking for SY 2020-2021
Lacy nudged ahead of Lowe to 69 badges.
Godwin closed the gap on Clark by moving up to 43 badges.
Canup ROCKETED straight into 7th place with their first badges of the year.
Smith grew their lead over Southard and Harper bringing their badge total to 23.
| 1 | Lacy Elementary | 69 |
| 2 | Lowe Elementary | 64 |
| 3 | Clark Middle | 48 |
| 4 | Godwin Elementary | 43 |
| 5 | Smith Elementary | 23 |
| 6 | Princeton High School | 15 |
| 7 | Canup Early Childhood Center | 13 |
| 8 | Southard Middle | 7 |
| 9 | Harper Elementary | 3 |
Big shout out to Mrs. Nantz and Mrs. Rojas for putting Canup Early Childhood Center on the board!
Mrs. Nantz brought in 11 new badges. Mrs. Hargrove brings her 52 badges over from Lowe as the campus leader at Canup. That will be a hard number to beat.
Clark Middle School has some big performers on campus. Mrs. Wood has 28 badges. Mrs. Smith is catching up with 26 badges. Mrs. Lawrence has an impressive 18 badges. Did you know that Mrs. Charles, one of the Principals, is a badge leader on her campus with 17! How many badges does your principal have?
Godwin Elementary’s biggest badge earner is Mrs. Pate with 24 badges! Mrs. Woodard has 22. Mrs. Turner has 20 badges. New this year and pushing up quickly through the panther pack at Godwin are Mrs. Guerra and Mrs. Vargas who might be challenging for the lead by the end of this year.
Harper Elementary is still being led by Mrs. Schroeder, last year’s grand prize winner, with 30 badges. Mrs. Coburn and Mrs. Cormack have brought new badge contributions this year.
Lacy Elementary is always a Titan in the badge competition. Lacy has 21 teachers who have completed their badge chart and have moved on to extension charts. 8 of those teachers have completed an extension chart! Three of those 8 have complete 2 extension charts and lead their campus badge totals; Mrs. Limon at 38, Mrs. Dillard at 40, and Mrs. O’Quin now conveniently at 41, claiming the top spot.
Lowe’s Legendary Badge efforts always Impress. Lowe matches Lacy’s 21 teachers with complete charts. Speaking of Impressive, Mrs. Coffee’s 61 badges must be the district high performance. Mrs. Walker is working toward her with 42 badges and Mrs. Bedell also has an impressive 35 badges.
Princeton High School has brought in 15 badges for this new school year. Mrs. Summers dominates the high school with 25 badges. Mrs. Fielding is catching up with an honorable 18. Right behind her is Mrs. Mansfield with 16 badges.
Smith Elementary School is led by Mrs. James and quickly closing the gap is Mrs. K McCord with 21 badges and Mrs. M McCord with 18.
Southard Middle School has a new leader this year, Mrs. Dierolf has worked her way up to 23 badges! Mrs. Hart is right behind her with 20 Badges. Mrs. Lyons and Mrs. Caldera both have a beyond respectable 15 badges each.
Today we were joined by Mrs. Nelson, the secondary Math Instructional Coach here at Princeton ISD. Mrs. Nelson shared some of her experiences with Doceri and walks us through setting it up, how to operate it, and how to use your new tool in class. If you already have Doceri and want to skip ahead to applying what you know about it in class jump to 5:37. While we use math in this example video this tool is very useful for all subjects.
We have talked about Google Classroom custom banner images before. Let’s kick it up a notch though, have you ever considered changing your Google Classroom banner image often if not daily? It is a neat little way to keep the interest of your students and encourage those virtual students to check in daily out of curiosity and anticipation. You can include significant notifications in the Banner image, Lesson based images, Holiday themes, Ask anticipatory critical thinking questions based on the new banner image, or include clues to an assignment, etc. What other ideas can you share with us about how to use this idea?
I created a Google Slide show of templates that you can edit for your classroom.
Has Google Classroom made your Google drive a disaster with student copies of files? Hold on hopefully it isn’t as bad as you think it is. Take two minutes and check this out. Hopefully it clears things up for you.
Would you like to have a little more warning about meetings or events you have set up on your Google Calendar. Google Calendar is pretty smart and will add things sometimes based on emails you receive or someone else signing you up for events on Calendar. Have you ever had one of those surprise calendar events pop up on you that start in 5 minutes? To avoid that stress in my life I set my default notifications to 45 minutes before and a second notification 15 minutes before. Maybe you need a whole 24 hours ahead notification to mentally prepare for that ARD or staff meeting. You can set custom notifications to meet your needs.
Here is a Google Docs verbs activity for your students or teachers. This activity can be posted in Google Classroom. It includes answer boxes for students to type their answers in.
Here is a Google Docs activity for your teachers. This can be assigned in Google Classroom and students have boxes to type their answers in.
Here is a Google Forms auto grading multiplication basic facts quiz that you can assign to your students in Google Classroom. There are 56 questions on this quiz that cover all multiplication between 1 and 10. It is set up to shuffle the question order so every time you reassign it for practice your students will get a different quiz. It is also set up to give the students instant feed back of their grade. This is designed to allow students to repeatedly practice their multiplication facts knowledge.
We are going to take a look at how to embed an audio file in a Google Slide.
You might want to record some directions or include a song or other recording that supports the information on the slide. Let’s take a quick look at how to do that.
This one is super simple. Let’s say you have a sound effect clip, a song, or a recording of directions or an explanation that you made with a tool like Vocaroo.
On the menu bar click insert.
Then click Audio.
Navigate to find that sound file in your Google Drive. (It must be in your Google Drive)
Click the file then click select.
The sound file will embed on your slide with a little icon to launch it.
You will then get format options on the right to set up the audio file to start automatically or loop.
I got a neat little Quick Tip for you today!
Do you want to throw in a little explanation of your own to a Google Slide? Maybe you want to enhance a set of notes you made in a slide show. You can use your webcam to record and embed a video on a Google Slide.
Let’s take a quick look at how to do that.
We are going to use this Chrome extension tool to make it easier to record and save our video to Google Drive
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/alice-keeler-webcam-recor/ljkchdmiefjpclcpniabljokcaedooaa