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Head back to school with new features in Google Classroom

Head back to school with new features in Google Classroom
Posted by Will Phan, Google Classroom Software Engineer As you gear up for the new school year, try the newest features in Google Classroom for more ways to save time, engage your students and keep everyone organized. Most of these features are rolling out this week; stay tuned in the next few weeks for more back-to-school goodies in Google Classroom, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, all designed to help you make this school year yours. Keep students engaged with question-driven discussions Since Classroom launched last year, teachers have been using their class stream to host student debates, Q&A and discussions. “Often, teachers want to do a quick check-in on what their students are learning. Reuse posts You know those lessons that worked so well last year that you want to use them again? “The reuse post feature gives teachers the gift of time. Calendar Integration In the next month, Classroom will automatically create a calendar for each of your classes in Google Calendar.

Creating Interactive Math Tasks With Google Sites Recently, I wrote a post summarizing the Stacking Paper Tasks multi-touch book for iBooks. If you had a chance to download the multi-touch book, you’ll notice that it is interactive and collaborative leveraging embedded padlet walls for students to share out their work. However, I’ve had some folks on Twitter asking how they could do something like this without an iPad: Never fear, Chromebookers or “Anti-Appletes”. you can still get your students engaged in this series of interactive 3 act math tasks via your favourite web browser! Stacking Paper Tasks on Chromebooks & Google Apps By creating a Google Site via the Google Apps for Education account I created for my school, I was able to create a similar environment to that which I created for iBooks with the Stacking Paper Tasks multi-touch book. Check It Out! Google Apps Features Used One of the great things about Google Sites is how easy it is to get a website online. Next, I’ve embedded the Act 2 YouTube video using the YouTube gadget:

Celebrating the Holidays at EA Since so many of our classes have global partners spread around the world, I thought it would be interesting for our students to document some of our school holiday traditions to share with them. Students in Pre-K, kindergarten, first grade, and second grade all used Google Glass to help capture the magic of the season at Episcopal Academy to help show our global partners how we celebrate the holidays in December. Check out this video compilation of all of their recordings: What holidays do you celebrate in December and how do you celebrate them at your school? Tagged with: christmas, global collaboration, global glass exchange, Google Glass, Hanukkah, holidays, kwanza, st. lucia, st. nick, traditions Posted in Blog, Technology Projects

How Has Google Classroom Improved In The Past Year? | Guildway Google Classroom has been updated a lot since launch in August 2014. Google classroom has come a long way from where it started. Every teacher can engage students better by using a Learning Management System (LMS) in today’s school. Google Classroom has a lot of potential given the shift to Google Apps. First Impressions I am lucky that I can choose my LMS. I mean this was Google, right? Let’s just say that I was already using Schoology and found no reason to switch. But a year is a long time. If you are just checking it out now or are curious, you definitely want to check out this list. Either way, we should take a look at how far Google Classroom has come to give it a fair evaluation. All Updates* August 2014 Classroom launch: 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. October 2014 December 2014 January 2015 February 2015 April 2015 May 2015

Google Glass: Documenting learning for a global audience People have been aware of Google Glass for a while now, but how can it work with education? Philadelphia-based school technology coordinator Margaret Powers walks us through her experiences and successes with the device. When I look at Google Glass, I’m not trying to assess whether it’s the hottest tech toy of the year or if the latest press releases about it are accurate. When I first picked up Google Glass over a year ago at the Google office in New York City, I really was not sure how effective it would be in education. "Last year I took advantage of the Hour of Code to introduce computer programming to my students, and I used Glass to record each lesson for all of the twelve classes I teach." Students have used Glass to capture their work painting, writing, exploring pumpkins and much more! Glass makes it easy for me to maintain eye contact with students, while we are discussing a new concept, and still capture an activity in which they are engaged in or what I am teaching.

14 Essential Google Search Tips for Students August 17, 2015 Teaching students how to conduct smart search queries online is an important part of cultivating a digital citizenship culture within your classroom. Smart searching goes beyond the simple ability to conduct quick search queries to how to effectively locate information online and assess their authenticity and accuracy. In other words, smart searching encompasses a complex set of interrelated skills and competencies that together make up the holistic picture of what it is to be a search savvy netizen. And since Google comes at the top of search engines accessed by students it goes without saying that attention here should be targeted at the know-how necessary for students to be able to tap into the full potential of this search engine. To this end, and in addition to the different resources we covered here in the past, we are sharing with you this collection of video tutorials from Google Help featuring some essential Google search tips. 1- Search by File 2- Exclude Words

Custom themes in Google Forms Applying themes to forms is a great way to personalize and tailor them to their intended audience. With this launch, people working with Google Forms will now be able to apply custom themes to their forms. This includes adding custom images or logos to the header and page background, specifying the font details (type, size, color) and paragraph alignment for the form text, and choosing the color for the form and page backgrounds. In addition, if a form using a custom theme is shared within a domain, others can copy that theme in order to use it themselves. Release track: Rapid release, with Scheduled release coming in three weeks For more information: Help CenterNote: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

Google Docs now lets you type with your voice Getting stuff done in Google Docs just got a lot easier. Google unveiled a series of new features for Docs, Sheets and Slides Wednesday, including voice typing and new collaboration tools for Docs. The new features are aimed at students but available to anyone who uses the company's productivity suite. Google Docs now supports voice dictation from Chrome and the Docs iOS and Android app. When the feature is enabled (from the Tools menu in Chrome), you can dictate documents using the microphone icon from Docs on Chrome, or with your phone's voice commands when using the Docs app on iOS or Android app. During a demo of the feature at Google's San Francisco office Wednesday, the voice typing feature worked much like other dictation apps — it was able to distinguish between text and punctuation commands like "new paragraph." Android users are also getting a new feature to make multitasking easier. Have something to add to this story?

Google's Free LMS 'Classroom' Goes Live -- THE Journal Learning Apps & Tools | News Google's Free LMS 'Classroom' Goes Live Google's free learning management system, Google Classroom, is now in full release and is being made available today to all Apps for Education customers. The service had been in limited preview since May. During that time, according to Google Apps for Education Product Manager Zach Yeskel, more than 100,000 educators applied to be a part of the preview, and "tens of thousands" of those educations — from K-12 schools, colleges and universities — actually participated. Classroom is an LMS that's integrated with Google's Apps for Education productivity suite. Once turned in, assignments are no longer editable by students; however, students can cancel the submission to make any necessary changes, and teachers can also return assignments to students when additional work is required. Other features of Google Classroom that had been previously announced include: About the Author He can be reached at dnagel@1105media.com.

How To Create A Google Drive Classroom How To Create A Google Drive Classroom by TeachThought Staff Using the cloud in the classroom can be a powerful thing. One of the most common uses of the cloud in today’s classroom is word processing, and one of the most common cloud-based word processing platforms is Google Drive. We’ve talked about offering voice feedback to documents. Since he clearly has experience in the classroom, this video is immediately better than the vast majority of universal Google Drive tutorials you’ll find. Update: A reader reminded us that Google Apps For Education is launching Google Classroom in September, a tool that “weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail to help teachers create and organize assignments quickly, provide feedback efficiently, and communicate with their classes with ease.” In addition to other helpful tips, Behrendt includes information on: -Creating a class -Creating assignments -Sharing documents -Filtering results -Turning in digital work -Creating student portfolios -Naming files

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