Get ready for a game changer! Google Slides now allows you to review and respond to audience questions as well as keeping track of those questions and allowing your audience to vote for the questions they want you to answer. This new feature will appear as an option when you enter presentation mode.
When you choose "Presenter View" you are able to use the new Q&A feature along with your speaker notes. You can choose to share questions as they come up, or wait until the end of your presentation. This is helpful to both you and your audience as you preserve the flow of your presentation, but they don't forget the questions they want to ask.
Your audience will see a link at the top of your presentation that will allow them to both post questions or vote on other audience member's questions. Questions may be asked anonymously or by using your Google sign-in info. The presenter can then choose whether or not to share these questions with the audience and how to respond.
For the time being, it seems that if you're in a school-domain using Google Apps for Education, only members of your domain can participate in the online question submission. But you can easily work around this by using a free Google account to create your slideshow.
You could use this to allow students to, anonymously or not, ask questions, or you can pose questions and allow them to post their responses. The audience "voting thumbs up or down" feature could likewise be used in a variety of ways.
Timelines can look professional and polished while reinforcing a number of research and digital citizenship skills. The amazing folks at the Knight Lab at Northwestern University have created a template that, with a little help, anyone from upper elementary students to high schoolers, and beyond can make amazing embedded timelines.
Students make a copy of the template in their Google Drives and then enter dates, headlines, links to audio, video, or images they've found online along with their citations. Then following a few step-by-step instructions, they are able to get either a link or embed code to share their timeline with anyone they wish, from their teacher and class to a worldwide audience! Think of all of the ways timelines can be used in your classroom!
Great news for all Gale Database subscribers! (Which we have access to at SATEC thanks to the Vermont Online Library.)
The sign-in process is now a one-click connection to your Google Drive!
You can highlight important passages, create citations, and save articles for later review. They can be downloaded into your Google Drive and will go into their own folder. You can even collect all citations and download them as a single document.
Remember, in order to access any of the amazing Gale Databases, you'll need our school's log-in (ask your teacher). They can all be accessed from the Library's main page.
In addition to the simple sign-in and saving features, don't forget that these databases offer links to related articles and even the ability to have the text read-aloud while the words are highlighted.
Check out the Research In Context database for all of these topics and resources!
This is the vision of Google Expeditions. At the moment, the official Expeditions program is in limited areas and consists of a guided exploration of a location through a class set of cardboard virtual reality headsets. However, even if you're not lucky enough to get in on the ground floor of this program, you can bring a similar experience to your students for a nominal cost. Google Cardboard is a free app that runs on most smart phones and iPods running iOS 8.0 or later. There is a long list of compatible apps from race-car games to Google Street View and this is where the magic happens. In order to use the app, you'll need a viewer. These range from the simple, folded cardboard devices the program is named for, to higher-end, durable viewers made from molded plastic or metal. The idea is simple and emerged in the 1800's with the invention of the stereoscope.
I bought a simple cardboard model online and was using it within minutes of opening the package. It takes a minute to get used to virtual reality, it can make you a bit dizzy or nauseous and some may notice that it bothers their eyes after a few minutes, but the effect of standing in the middle of Venice, Rome, Paris, or even under the sea at the Great Barrier Reef is worth the odd sensations that come with VR.
The cardboard model I bought only cost $9.99 and does a perfectly acceptable job, but it is cardboard. By the time I'd passed it around the 8th grade French class, the edges were looking a little grubby, so I ended up duct-taping it to reinforce the joints and protect the surfaces. But, once you've bought the components (lenses, magnet, NFC tag) you could easily replicate the structure and reuse those parts to save money. Alternately, I'd suggest buying a few of the more durable (and disinfect-able) models and using it as a small-group station. Maybe buy a few and check them out from the school's library. The potential experience is worth the small investment and as time goes on, the apps available with certainly increase in number.
In Classroom, when students open an assignment, their document will open in a new tab, leaving the assignment's instructions hidden on their previous tab. Alice Keeler's come up with a brilliant solution for this in the Classroom Split Chrome Extension. Give it a try!
Go to the Chrome Web Store and add the extension.
Once you've added it, open an assignment in Classroom and click on the extension.
You will now see your screen split into two parts. One with the assignment's instructions and the other with the copied document.
Tech Tip of the week #2 is also from Alice Keeler! It is a quick settings change that will allow you to automatically convert any Word Docs that are shared with you into Google Docs.
Step 1: Open your Google Drive
Step 2: Click on the gear icon at the upper right
Step 3: Click Settings
Step 4: Check Convert uploaded files to Google Docs editor format
Looking for a way to edit pictures or create illustrations in the cloud? For Chrome users, there is free and easy way with the SumoPaint app from the Chrome Web Store. There are hundreds of tools available without the need to download anything.
This free app allows users to create, manipulate and export images with ease. The learning curve may seem steep because there are just so many options available, but there's a SumoPaint YouTube channel with tutorials on everything you may want to do from basic to advanced creation and editing. If you've had any experience with PhotoShop, you should be able to jump right into creating with this robust tool.
It has never been easier to go paperless in your classroom. Google Classroom is now available to all Google Apps for Education schools and allows seamless integrating of your Google Drive, online class discussion, collaboration and more. For a quick guide to getting started, check out this video:
