Google Team Drive for Educators

Collaborating with a group?  Google's Team Drive is worth a look!  Even if members leave, the files stay exactly where they are so your team can continue to share information and get work done.

Follow the steps on the G Suite Learning Center's Team Drive page at: https://gsuite.google.com/learning-center/products/drive/get-started-team-drive/

What's New in Google Classroom?

As usual (Thanks, Google!), Google staff have been busy over the summer making improvements to Google Classroom.  Now you can:

• Reorder your classes on the home page
• View all of a student's work on a single page
• Use decimal grades to award partial points
• Display the class code in full-screen
• Transfer class ownership to another teacher
• Switch between Classroom and other G Suite apps with the App launcher

More information is available here: 

https://www.blog.google/topics/education/10-ways-were-making-classroom-and-forms-easier-teachers-school-year/

Legal Image Use Made Easy!

Take just a few brief minutes and be legal when inserting images for public use...

1. To search for Google images, go to: images.google.com or just Google search then choose Images.
2. Once you've searched for an image, refine that search.  Click the Tools button, then "Usage Rights".  
3. Choose "Labeled for reuse with modifications" and you're all ready to only return image results you can use legally.

It's worth that small time and effort!  Happy Googling!

Google's Beta AutoDraw

Google has picked up on the fact that I can't draw and has come to my rescue!  AutoDraw works anywhere, on your smart phone, table, laptop or desktop computer.  Simply draw your image (left side of image right) and the suggestion tool provides a variety of possible (more professional) drawings to choose from (the parrot at the right side of the image right).  It isn't perfect, but it's definitely fun to try out.  My stick figure of a person seemed to look like an owl to the suggestion tool, but if I put a little meat on it's bones, the suggestions got better!  =]

Introducing AutoDraw: https://aiexperiments.withgoogle.com/autodraw
Take AutoDraw for a test drive: https://www.autodraw.com/

Made me smile!

Email Collaborators Through Google Doc Comments

It's the perfect way to communicate when collaborating - or divvy up those tasks.

It's easy as 1, 2, 3!

1. If your Google Doc hasn't been shared with others, do so first.
2. Highlight the word(s) you want to comment on, then "Insert", "Comment".
3. Within your comment, add a "+" before an email address, then the comment will be emailed to that address!

No More Scheduling Headaches

Did you know that, using Google Calendar, you can set aside a block of time for people to sign themselves up on your calendar?  You can, if you have a work or school Google Calendar (which we do here at 86)!  They're "Appointment Slots" and a great idea for parent conferences...

Thanks to Jeffery Bradbury on YouTube from Teacher Cast

Another possible use would be for device signups.  To track stats in terms of what's happening, we could simply put a word or two in one of the fields that displays on the calendar owner's calendar when an appointment slot is taken.  Look for that next school year!

Google Classroom Updates for January 2017

This January, Google Classroom had four improvements, two of which will be helpful to teachers!  The others are more for the "geek" side of Classroom.

1)  Google Classroom has been updated to allow teachers to give assignments to individual students (instead of the entire class).  Look for the "All Students" drop-down menu at the top of the assignment creation window.  Details:

By default, an assignment is posted to all students in the class. However, you can choose to post an assignment only to individual students. You can’t post to more than 100 individual students at a time.

1. Next to All students, click Down .
2. Click All students to deselect it.
3. To select students, check each student’s name.
4. Note: When you post an assignment to individual students, you’ll see the number of students assigned the work in the class stream. To view the students’ names, click [number] students on the assignment.

2) Teachers can now  receive email and mobile notifications when a student submits late work or resubmits work.  To set up your notifications:

1. Log into Classroom.
2. At the top, click Menu .
3. Click Settings (you might need to scroll down)
4. Check or uncheck the Send email notifications box.

3) Google for Education Admins can now see usage statistics for Classroom.

4) Third party developers can now programmatically create questions,  modify coursework, and add materials to coursework.