The New York Times Learning Network has added a resource called Accessible Activities.
These include five activities based on recent articles and news, which include picture prompts, lesson of the day, student opinion, what's going on in this picture, and a film club. A new activity is added weekly.
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PBS Learning offers free lessons, videos, activities, and virtual learning resources for all grades and subjects. Resources for the specials they air are available, such as the new Muhammad Ali documentary and Ken Burns Series. Resources are searchable by grade or topic.
The CK-12 Foundation offers free resources for teachers in all subjects and grades.
The Stanford History Education Group provides free, online resources through their websites. Read Like a Historian offers free lessons and posters on US and World History.
Beyond the Bubble offers assessments for US and World History that feature documents from the Library of Congress. Civic Online Reasoning offers lessons and assessments on how to evaluate online information, which can be used in all subject areas. Google continues to make improvements within their applications. Google Docs and Sheets has added Smart Commenting to each app. It can be used when commenting in Google Docs, where is will predict words and phrases you may be typing.
In Sheets, formulas and functions will be suggested where it may be appropriate. In Google Meet, you can now replace your background with a video instead of an image only. Hope this is helpful, and good luck to all the teachers starting a new school year! The suite of apps known as Google For Education Apps is now named Google Workspace for Education, and there are some nice updates coming to several apps.
Here are a few:
Google Forms has added the feature to save your work in progress so you can finish later. This feature should be available to all users by September 15th, 2021.
Now you can place text on top or behind images in Google Docs, which gives you another design option. Google also improved the formatting when importing or exporting from Microsoft Word.
The classic version Google Sites will no longer be available after May 15th, 2021. You will have until the end of the year to migrate any websites created with the classic version to the new version. The new version has been available for quite some time, and Google had been anticipating the end of the classic version for some time, but the date kept moving up. After May 15th, you will only have the option to create a site in the new version.
Civic Online Reasoning (COR) is a website that has lessons and student material for teaching students how to evaluate information they find online. Lessons include how to evaluate information, how to search for better information, and specific lessons for science and history.
You can register your class to have a virtual tour of the history Allaire Village in New Jersey. The tour is geared toward upper elementary students, and meets several NJ Student Learning Standards. It's a creative way to have a field trip for virtual or in-school learning.
Google has added the smart compose feature to Google Docs comments. Much like with Gmail, it will suggest the next few words you may type and it will show as light grey. Click the Tab button to accept the suggestion.
They also added a spelling autocorrect feature that will place a grey dashed underline under the word that will disappear as you type. Both features are designed to make commenting quicker and more efficient. Google Meet has added the feature to insert backgrounds. Click on the three vertical dots in the lower right corner and choose Change Background. There are backgrounds to choose from, and you can blur or slightly blur the background. You can't upload your own backgrounds, but I'm sure Google is working on that feature for a future release.
Flipgrid has now added the feature to comment to other's videos with text comments. This has been a long awaited feature for many as Flipgrid continues to make a great product even better.
The ability to create breakout rooms in Google Meets has launched, along with the ability to blur your background. Along the toolbar with the chat and people tools, you will see three shapes. That is the icon for the breakout rooms. Once you open the breakout room menu, Google has randomly created rooms and put students in them based on the size of your class. You can change the number of rooms and assign students where you want.
Google has had a series of lessons that use the Google For Education Apps with step-by-step instructions and video tutorials. They more recently have been adding subject specific lessons, for language arts and social studies. The lessons can be used in other subject areas as well, and they have other topics, such as life skills and technology lessons. They are always adding new lessons and you can find them here.
Moosiko is a platform for remote and hybrid guitar lessons. It is a paid program with a 3 week trial. Students can learn at their own pace and teachers can track student skills and practice time.
Soundtrap allows students to explore sound recording with sound effects and music. Soundtrap is also a paid program, but offers a 30 day trial. Students can collaborate on the same project and edit their work. Muzology uses music to learn math and is free for teachers. Muzology uses math trivia and videos with music relatable to today's students to help students remember difficult math concepts, like they remember the words to their favorite songs. After the videos, math challenges are provided for practice. Google has added some useful features to Meets. The first one is the ability to see up to 49 people, including yourself, all at once. This feature is OFF by default, so go to Settings>Change Layout and choose Auto or Tiled.
The second is the ability to blur the background of your video. This feature is also OFF by default. In the lower right of your screen you will see an icon of a person with lines behind it. Click it and you will see the option to turn on background blur. This option is available now for Windows and Mac desktop computers and coming soon for Chromebooks. Whiteboard Fi is a whiteboard app where teachers create classes and then each student gets their own whiteboard to write on. Even better, you can create a class in Whiteboard Fi, start a Google Meet meeting, not presentation, and put the link in the chat section of Meet for students to click on. The link will bring them to their own whiteboard in a separate tab and you can now view students through Google Meet working on their whiteboard. You would have two tabs - one for the Google Meet, and one for Whiteboard Fi. This way you can see your students as they work on their own whiteboard.
Well, you can't but there is a workaround! Use can use a font generator to type your text in another font then copy and paste it into Google Classroom. This will make your text stand out even though that option isn't available in Google Classroom.
Banzai is a website with free financial literacy lessons, and in light of our recent move to remote learning, they have been adding more resources to help teach and learn remotely. They have teamed with Google and are providing lessons that utilize Google Drive. Their newest lessons are called Library Challenges, which includes lessons on savings accounts, cybersecurity, buying a home, how to do your taxes, auto insurance and using credit. Each lesson includes 10 questions that promote reading comprehension and critical thinking. Go to the Toolkit Section, then Library Challenges. Just click on the lesson to add it to your Google Drive. Then you can customize, make a copy, and send it to your students.
Another challenge in today's remote learning classrooms is keeping up with all the questions from students. You can use Padlet to create a live backchannel chat, which is a private chat room where students can send questions. What makes Padlet unique is that you and your students can ask and answer questions using text or an audio or video message. This gives you both the capability of sending an audio note, which at times is easier than trying to type. The video message is helpful as well, especially when the student make be getting an error message or needs to show you something so you can help them, or it is another way of you sending video instructions without using live video. When you create your Padlet, choose the Backchannel Chat Format.
With remote learning the new "normal", it has become harder to explain some topics to younger students, but not every teacher is comfortable with live teaching. You can make screencasts, but sometimes you need variety.
You can make audio notes or directions on a Google Slide that explains what students are reading. You can set the audio to automatically play or play on a click of the button. This video shows you how to record audio notes with Vocaroo and then insert them as audio notes onto a Slide. Looking to make explainer videos for remote learning? Try Biteable. It is quick and easy and there are several templates to help you get started. Students love to make videos, and it is a creative alternative to the traditional presentation. The free version allows you to make 10 videos with a watermark. The paid plans are reasonable if you find you want more options.
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AuthorI've earned a Graduate Certificate in Technology Integration from Boise State University and am a Google Certified Teacher and Trainer. The purpose of this blog is to share ideas for educators to infuse technology into their daily lessons. Archives
September 2021
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