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30 Google Drive Tips You Can't Afford to Miss

30 Google Drive Tips You Can't Afford to Miss
Click To View Slideshow» Google's online office suite and storage service has come a long way, becoming the tool of choice for many. Here's a list of tips and tricks to squeeze the best out of Drive. Raise your hand if you remember Writely. At the time, a product like Writely was unique (the software didn't come on a CD), but still considered a gamble. Fast forward eight years. It's a full suite of tools that now takes on Microsoft's far more mature Office; in fact, Google Drive's very presence in the market arguable drove Microsoft to create its own Office Online versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint to work with its OneDrive storage/sync service. But after almost a decade, Google Drive has come a long way in its own maturity. Drive—one of our Editors' Choice suites—is a serious set of tools for serious (or fun) work, all entirely free.

Do Not Go Digital Recently I was in a teacher’s classroom and she was showing off these awesome geometry town projects her students had created. She gleefully told me how much fun the students had being creative in designing their town. Some students took the assignment well beyond the minimum requirements and even started to devise how the town government would work. After demonstrating Google Drawing she pondered that the students could do this same project in Google Draw. Yes…. you could… BUT…. Technology was not going to improve this project. Sometimes the right technology is no technology. If a teacher does not have mobile devices to allow students to submit pictures of their non-digital work, students can still attach pictures through the Google Classroom site. Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2015

A Good Google Drive App for Creating Photo Collages May 16, 2015 Here is an excellent Chrome app for creating photo collages. Loupe Collage is a web based tool that is integrated with Google Drive and enables users to easily create beautiful photo collages. Loupe Collage supports a wide variety of shapes. You can turn your photos into hearts, animals, words, logos and many more. You can even draw your own shapes and add them to your collages. Besides being able to upload photos directly from your local drive, Loupe Collage has recently released a new update which enables users to use photos they have on other websites such as Google Plus, Google Drive, Flickr, Google Image search, Twitter...etc. Here is a round-up of the features provided by Loupe Collage:

Teachers' Guide to The Use of Google Voice in Education May 24, 2015 Google Voice is a great communicational utility with huge educational potential. As a teacher, you can use Google Voice to obtain a phone number to use when communicating with students and parents without you revealing your personal phone number. You can connect your Google Voice number with multiple phone numbers (e.g landline number, mobile number, work number) and have incoming calls routed to all of these numbers simultaneously. You can also select a single number to forward all your incoming calls to. The voicemail features of Google Voice are also wonderful. All voicemails are recorded and transcribed. From language teaching to storytelling, Google Voice can be used in a variety of ways with students. 2- Voicemail Transcription 3- One Number 4- SMS to Email 5- Share Voicemails 6- Conference Calls 7- Mobile App

Five Great Google Education Tools You probably already use Google daily, either for Web searches, email, or maps. The tech company is increasingly involved in modernizing education, and it has developed several ventures to encourage an interest in science and computer programming. Some of these ventures are contests, and some are designed for use by afterschool or summer programs. But you can access this great content even if you don’t officially participate in a program. Many of these activities use art, music, and social awareness to make technical lessons more appealing. Take a look at these activities, and start thinking outside the little Google search box. Image via Flickr by Lexie Flickinger Google Science Fair With this worldwide contest, Google has thought far beyond the high school gymnasium science fair that we all know. Made with Code The Made with Code project is designed to show girls that coding is cool. Doodle 4 Google CS First Google Educator Groups Still innovating

20 Google tools teachers should try (and how to use them in classrooms) There’s a reason teachers like Google tools. They’re free, easy to use, and you already have an account on basically all of them. Add in the fact that Google is making a huge push into the world of teacher tools and you quickly realize it’s a good time to be a teacher. There are a ton of Google tools that you should try out. But not all of them are relevant to your classroom. See Also: 6 little-known Google tools you should try today First, check out the graphic we worked hard on making for you. Google Tools Teachers Should Try (And How To Use Them In Classrooms) Scroll the whole way down this VERY long visual for links and more! Links And Other Information Privacy and Security Tools Ensure your students’ (and your!) Google Drive Take your classroom paperless, collaborate, and share easily with this one stop for all of your documents. Docs/Sheets/Slides Easy to use word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tools for classroom work and professional development. Google Sites Calendar Forms

Posting a Daily Warm-Up If you give a daily warm-up, you can use Google Classroom to facilitate the administration. Create a generic Google Form. Link to the live Form view in the “About” tab of Google Classroom. Have students use the same form every day to fill out the “5 a day.” Go to Google Drive and create a Google Form for your daily warm up. View sample warm up Google Form: If you would like to make a copy of the above Google Form warm-up template click here to view the edit screen. Since you will use the same Google Form for the daily warm-up, you can place the link to the Form in the “About” tab of Google Classroom. Click on “Add materials…” to add the link to the Google Form. Title the material “Daily Warm-Up Link.” Daily, the students will click on the “About” tab to access the Warm-Up. Since the Google Form is generic, you will need to display the questions in another location besides the Google Form. Students will reference the posted questions and answer in the Google Form.

A Comprehensive Guide of Everything Teachers Need to Know about Google Classroom May 26, 2015 Since its release awhile ago, Google Classroom has been such a hit in the EdTech world with millions of teachers already incorporating it in their daily instruction.With this widespread use of Google Classroom, Google rolled out a host of important updates to improve the functionality of Classroom and to respond to the emerging needs of educators. All of these updates are included in this post. Today’s post is intended to help teachers and educators make the best of Google Classroom by providing them with access to some very useful resources, materials and tips on the use of Classroom in education. All of these resources are created and provided by Classroom Help Center. 1- What is Google Classroom? “Classroom is designed to help teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly, including time-saving features like the ability to automatically make a copy of a Google document for each student. 2- How does Google Classroom Work? Teachers Students

5 Useful Gmail Tips for Teachers May 25, 2015 Here are some helpful tips we pulled out from our Gmail Tips archive to share with you today. These tips are meant to help you enhance your productivity and make the best of your gmail experiences. Let us know what you think of them. 1- Add a signature to your emailsIf you want to give a professional look to your emails, you probably need to add a snippet of text at the end of your email stating who you are, your blog or website, your social media profiles…etc. Click on " settings" then on "general" and scroll down to "signature" and add your text 2- Undo sent messagesIf you have hit the "send" button too soon or by mistake then the "undo Send" feature allows you to stop messages from being sent for a few seconds after hitting the send button. To set a time limit for your cancellation message. 3- Mark Emails Use stars to easily mark certain messages as important or to indicate that you need to reply to them later. star icon next to the sender's name. Download or

50 Things You Can Do With Google Classroom I am excited to announce that the book “50 Things You Can Do With Google Classroom” is now available for sale on Amazon. The book was co-authored by Libbi Miller who teaches with me at California State University Fresno. We both are users of and fans of Google Classroom. This book dives deeper than my blog posts on ways that you can use Google Classroom. If you are using Google Classroom or thinking of using Google Classroom this book is for you. Google Classroom helps you to easily create a blended classroom. If you are new to Google Classroom the first thing you want to do is set up your classes. Google Classroom makes it easy to get started with assigning work. My best tip is to number your assignments. Direct students to log into Google Classroom at Google Classroom allows students to submit digital work to the teacher.

Getting started with Google Photos - CNET Google has an ambitious plan for the future: help nearly anyone with a smartphone to experience virtual reality. The technology industry is preparing for an onslaught of new devices that mount on your head, immersing you in computer-generated worlds ranging from space battles to Spanish villas. The trend is called virtual reality, or VR, and the technology is moving from science fiction to store shelves within the next year. As it happens, some of the biggest companies in the world are staking out a position offering the highest-quality devices, capable of displaying complex imagery and inserting users in a digitally created world that feels like our own. Google? The search giant will do this with a product called Cardboard, a simple device made from Velcro, a button, some lenses and folded cardboard. The takeaway: Cardboard may sound cheap, but it's a powerful play for getting VR out to everyone and their mother. VR for the masses For Google, this is business as usual.

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