Welcome Back!

I am excited to get the school year started as I am sure you all are as well.

For this Tech Tidbit, I want to share with you all of the latest updates concerning G Suite and other popular tech sites most of us use on a daily or weekly basis.

Remember, my job is to HELP YOU! If you ever want more information or individualized help, just contact me. I love to collaborate with all classes too so if you are interested in incorporating one of these tools into your instruction, PLEASE let me know. Now without further ado…..

Google Classroom

Drag and Drop in the Classworks Tab! Yes! you can now drag and drop entire topics and individual Class Work items and rearrange them easily on the page. You can drag an entire topic to a specific location on the Classwork page, or drag individual items within—and in between—topics.

New look and design. Recently, many G Suite products have been redesigned with a more intuitive look. Along with the new look, they have added 78 new themes you can choose from to spice up your class.

Easier access to class code. The class code is now easier to find in Google Classroom. It is now located right under the title on the Stream tab. To project, just click on the square beside it.

New Grades tab. You might have already noticed this new tab called Grades when you were setting up your classes this year. This new feature allows you to set up categories, weigh grades, and show students their overall grade for your class. You do need to set it up in the class settings (the gear). Personally, I am not sure if I would want to as it seems redundant with Powerschool. However, Google is working on a tool that will sync the grades from Classroom right into Powerschool which would be wonderful.

See all of the grades in one spot. What is really cool about the Grades tab is it does allow you to see all of the students grades in one spot.

Rubrics with Google Classroom! YES! You can now use Rubrics with Google Classroom when you are grading a project. This is such a new feature, it may not be available yet for everyone so I have included a gif showing you the steps as well as these instructions.

Locked mode for Quizzes! Finally! If you want to quiz students over their knowledge in Google Classroom, you can use a Google Form that will now have the ability to lock down a student's Chromebook so they can not go anywhere else to find the answers. They will not be able to navigate away from the Form until they have submitted all of their answers. Again, this may be slow to come out for everyone so I am providing a gif so you know what it will look like and how to set it up.

Here is a complete list of all of the updates in Google Classroom.

Google Forms

Reuse Questions! One of the things most people hated about Google Forms is you could not easily transfer questions from one form to the next. You ended up having to retype the whole thing all over again. BUT NOW THAT HAS CHANGED!!!! It is so easy too! Below is a gif that shows you the steps and here are the instructions.

Google Docs, Slides and Sheets

New fonts. Google has added more fonts to Docs, Slides and Sheets to help with reading comprehension. There are now more than 8 different Lexend fonts you can choose from by going to More Fonts.

Spelling AND Grammar checks. Instead of just checking for any spelling mistakes, you now can check for spelling and grammar together or separately under Tools.

More options for headers and footers in Google Docs. You can now customize your headers and footers in a Google Doc with an option of displaying the information on every odd or even page instead of throughout the entire document.

See changes in Google Docs over time with Compare Documents. This new update will be great for when you want to compare a students paper over time.

Update linked content with one step. If you have a document with many links and want to check to make sure they are all still active, all you have to do is follow these steps.

Resize speaker notes in presentation mode in Google Slides: A new update will allow you to present a Google slide easier by allowing you to customize the size of the speaker notes and thumbnail slides.

Edit history of a cell in Google Sheets: We have all been there when we are working on a Google Sheet and we change a cell accidentally and can’t remember what it was supposed to be. With this new update, you can now see the edit history of a cell by following these instructions.

Google Drive 

Priority Page. If you have opened up your Google Drive, you may notice there has been an addition called Priority sitting right above My Drive on the left-hand side. This is a feature where Google’s algorithm will try to determine what files you need to use at any given time hopefully saving you time. Most of these files will be ones that have recently been shared with you or have new comments added for you to view.

Flipgrid

Flipgrid has really changed ...for the better

Flipgrid Shorts Camera: Flipgrid has released a new camera called Shorts. This article does a great job explaining all of what it will do. (and of course, it is entirely free!)

Whiteboard. You can now use the power of Flipgrid as a Whiteboard. When you start a video, you will notice some tools on the right-hand side. One of them is an icon for a whiteboard. Clicking this tool will allow you to draw while you are talking creating a video you can then share with others just like any other Flipgrid video.

Transcription and Close-captioning. You have the option of having all of the videos transcribed and available for close-captioned.

Augmented Reality. Flipgrid AR allows you to create and print a QR code for each video that when scanned will allow the Flipgrid video to appear on top of the item. Imagine students creating a book report in Flipgrid and then printing out the QR code and attaching it to the dust jacket of the book. That way, when another student scans the QR code, they can watch the students review.

Screencastify

Turn the video into a GIF and download. A gif you see above was created using Screencastify, one of my favorite Chrome extensions. All I did was record myself completing the steps like a regular screencast. When I was done, I simply clicked on the down arrow and select download as a Gif. Look at the other options available as well. If I had my microphone turned on, I could have downloaded just the audio of the video. *disclaimer, I do have the paid version. It is only $24.00 a year and to me, well worth it.

Kahoot

Question bank. Kahoot had a new design over the summer making it even easier to use to create quiz games and share them with your students. One of those new designs include the addition of a question bank. Check out this post for more information.