Google Calendar Default Notifications

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.

Verbs Activity

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.

Nouns Activity

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. 

Multiplication Basic Facts Google Forms Quiz

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.

Google Slides add Audio to a slide

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.

Google Slides embed Webcam

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

EdTech Update Podcast Episode 007

EdTech Update Episode 007
Welcome
New Badge Ideas
Fast4Friday
1 Find engaging and relevant video clips to support concepts at ClassHook.com

2 iCivics.org has great games and lessons for teaching government.

3 Have students collaborate live in Meet with Google Jamboard

4 You can create a custom Google Classroom banner image.The size is 1,000×250 pixels.

Quick Tips: How to set default values on Google Forms

Blooket.com

Blooket

Blooket looks like another cool new find for us. Blooket is another digital review game that your students can play to exercise their knowledge.

Blooket has many different game modes which is what makes it unique. Each question set that you create or upload can be played in You can also assign Blooket to be played by students in solo mode to practice at their own pace on their own time.

Here is my Blooket video. I have the regular full length video and the “down to bidness” super fast tasting of it.

Blooket Bonus:
You can easily share a Blooket you made or found by copying the URl and sending it. You can access a question set’s URL by viewing it.

https://www.blooket.com/set/5fd8d47209a5930004e0b49d
My 5th grade math multiplying and dividing fractions example.

Super short 3 minute video version shows game play only and no how to instructions or further exploration.

eMaze

Use Emaze to turn a presentation into a visual story with special effects. You can create up to 5 presentations a month on a free account. There are 100’s of templates to use. Emaze can translate your presentations into other languages. Emaze offers you audience analytics including how long viewers spent on each slide.

You can explore their own comparison tool to see how Emaze stacks up to it’s competition. https://www.emaze.com/2020/08/06/emaze-vs-prezi-vs-powerpoint/

Bakpax

Bakpax.com is a digital teacher tool that helps you grade assignments digitally and using AI to read handwriting. Gives instant feedback to students. Also keeps track of data. Bakpax connects to Google Classroom to help you connect with your students.

You can build new assignments in Bakpax or use existing ones. There is also a database of ready-made assignments. Students can complete work digitally on their device or complete work by hand on a bakpax printable handout. Students then snap a photo of that handwritten assignment and submit it through the app.

Bakpax has good tutorial videos for teachers as well as for students to help them learn how to use the platform.

Create a login with your School Google account then connect to Google Classroom and start creating assignments.

5th Grade Math Vocabulary: Volume and Multiplying Fractions

Here is a digital vocabulary matching activity in Google Slides and also I linked you to a Teachermade.com version that has a built in answer key and will grade it for you.

Recently Closed Browser Tabs

Have you ever been ticked off at yourself because you weren’t paying attention and just closed out an important browser tab? Maybe it was something you just stumbled across during research and you aren’t even sure what website you were on? Well, I do that several times a week. I always rescue myself though by simply pressing CTRL+H to bring up my browser history and locate the tabs I just closed out. So next time you are struggling to remember what website you were on just remember CTRL+H instead.

StoryBoardThat

This is one of the coolest things ever! Storyboardthat.com is an awesome tool that your students can use to create comic strips to tell a story or explain a concept. Making comic strips is always a fun and engaging activity for students and now you can kick those up a notch with this tool. As a non artistic person myself I LOVED making a comic with Storyboardthat because I didn’t have to stress out about my drawing skills and I was still able to create the scenes I wanted. It does sync with Google Classroom.

There is a 14 day free trial and it does connect to Google Classroom so maybe you can have your students complete a comic strip this week before break and take advantage of that free trial.

Let’s take a quick look at how it works.

Genially

Genially is a tool that you can use to create exciting and engaging animated presentations, infographics, animations, and more. Let’s take a quick look at Genially, it’s features, and what we get for free.

NFL Teams and Westward Expansion

Check out this super cool activity I made for your students. On the first part they must conclude which cities are which on the westward expansion map. Then they need to drag and drop the NFL teams to the correct cities on the map. In the second part students demonstrate their knowledge of the areas of territorial expansion by analyzing the location of these cities and interpreting which territory each team comes from.

No they are not the team logos you are used to. In order to avoid any copyright infringement I did make my own little logos for each team.

This activity would also be great in a Digital Interactive Notebook or even printed and used as a cut and paste interactive notebook activity.

QT Kaizena

Kaizena is a Google Docs and Slides Add-on. Kaizena’s big feature is Voice Comments. Kaizena lets you record feedback verbally to digital assignments and some teachers claim it saves them 40% of their time when grading. I can see this being an extra big help for ELAR teachers who need to respond to written compositions.

https://workspace.google.com/marketplace/app/kaizena/354175553078?pann=cwsdp&hl=en

Kaizena is allowing me to leave comments on Google Docs for free but is requiring me to subscribe to a paid account to us it in Google Slides.

How to Convert a Power Point to a Google Slides

The first step we need to take is to put that Power Point file in your Google Drive.
From your Google Drive (https://drive.google.com/drive/my-drive) Select New File Upload

Next find your PowerPoint file on your PC. Click to select it then click Open.

In the bottom right corner of the screen it will tell you that it is uploading and will let you know when it is complete.

Click on the file when complete, in the bottom right corner. It will open as a PowerPoint .PPTX file

Then go to File and “Open as a Google Slide”

That just made a separate Google Slides copy of the file in your Google Drive. Which will open in a new tab.

How to Share a video in Google Meets

This is a question I see a lot and it is a very easy answer.
In the bottom right corner of your screen you click Present Now.

Then select “A Tab”. Notice that it even says this is best for videos.

Click the tab that you want to share. Then click Share.

When you are done you click the blue stop button in the top right of that tab.

You should recommend that your audience change their view layout to Spotlight so it will remain focused on the presented tab.

360 Camera & Virtual Tours

I now have two 360 VR Cameras that you and your students can use to create interactive digital projects.

These cameras export .jpg and .mp4 files that are ready to be edited with no extra stitching work required.

Have your students create and demonstrate their knowledge by capturing 360 images and adding interactive elements such as text labels, embed other websites, links to outside websites, YouTube videos, etc.

You could also have students find 360 images online from other sources to make projects from.

The example above was made with ThingLink. ThingLink however is not free anymore.
Alternatively I found Lapentor.com which will let your students make and share 10 projects for free. The example below I made with Lapentor.

Obviously and on the most basic level images can be of places or things that students need to label and explain. They could be the inside of a factory, The skyline or birds eye view of a city, a Battlefield, or a location from a reading passage or novel, a map of political borders or regions. Images could be of weather, landforms, or an ecosystem. Have students capture a 360 image of a location in your school and label it, perhaps sections in the library, or important things to know in the cafeteria. Have students take a 360 image of the playground and then explain how and what types of force are being used or affecting the areas of play. These are great hyperdoc ideas for 2D images as well.

Teacher Made

Teachermade is hands down the coolest most useful tool I have found this year. If you need a way to convert your traditional worksheets to online digital versions that can be graded automatically…. Look no further! This is the absolute best option I have seen for that.

You could have students use this tool to annotate reading activities, answer multiple choice, fill in the blank, matching, T/F, Drop down, Check Box, and more while having TeacherMade do the grading for you. You could create new activities from scratch with this tool as well. If you are used to ClassKick this is better because you can change the size of the answer boxes as well as the number of choices.

It connects to Google Classroom and it is FREE!

I played around exploring it for a couple hours today rebuilding some old assignments into digital versions. I compressed all of that down to a 12 minute video. Go ahead and pull up teachermade.com and follow along with me as we learn how it works.