Lemon Tech Tidbits

  Coming soon, you will be able to excuse an assignment for a student in Google Classroom. If a student has an assignment listed as missing, you can select the three dots and change it to Excused. (if you don’t see this feature yet, just wait. It is being slowly rolled out)

  Adobe Express has released a cool new feature that allows you to create an audio recording with an animated feature. It is called Animate from Audio and it is totally free and easy to use. First, login using your Google account. Second, pick your character and background. There is a wide variety to choose from. Once you have selected these features, simply click on the record button and record your voice. When it is done processing (may take a few minutes), you can download it as an MP4. This mp4 can then be put into Google Drive and added to a Google Slide presentation or into Canva.  This would be a great and fun way for students to share their knowledge over a topic.  This tool was included on a 12 Days of Techmas presentation put together by Christina DiMicelli. You can watch her slide over Animate from Audio in which she explains how to use this tool by going to this site and selecting the first sweater.

  Did you know that in Canva for Education , there is a whiteboard you can use with your students? Simply sign in to your Canva account. In the box titled “What Will You Design Today,” notice there is a button for a Whiteboard. Like everything else in Canva, there are many templates you can easily use or you can start from scratch. You can download a Google Slide presentation or single slide and upload it into Canva to use with the whiteboard. Assigning a Whiteboard is very easily as it is integrated with Google Classroom.  For more information, watch this short video . To learn more about Canva for Education, including how to get started using it, watch this video . It is a playlist of videos to walk you through what you need to know.

  Eric Curtis is sharing Ed Tech Cool Tools during the month of December. One of the tools he recently shared was over SchoolAI. I was intrigued so I decided to check it out - and I was blown away!  SchoolAI is different from other AI tools in that it was designed to be used by Teachers AND students. And it is completely free! SchoolAI allows a teacher to set up an AI tool called a Sidekick (which only takes a few minutes to do). They then share the AI tool with students who can then interact with the tool in a safe environment. The students do not need to login or anything. They simply go to the generated link and start interacting with the AI tool. What is so great is that all of their interactions can be monitored by the teacher and at the end, the teacher receives a summarization on how the students did. BUT THAT IS NOT ALL! There are some AI interactive tools already built into the program for the students to interact with including historical figures, famous people in diff

  Padlet has recently announced their version of an AI tool allowing you to create AI images. Padlet is a freemium (free and paid subscription). The free version allows you to only have 3 padlets BUT you can reuse them to continue to use the free AI image creation tool.  To use this new feature, create a Padlet. Click on the plus sign in the lower right corner. When a box opens, give it a title. Next, click on the three horizontal dots to open up the menu. Select “I Can’t Draw” to have the AI tool “draw” for you. Type in a description of what you want. Next, hit publish to save the image onto your Padlet. To use your image in another app, you can double-click on the picture. On the top right-hand corner, select the three dots which will open up a menu. Select download and your image will then appear in your download folder for you to use. I tried it out by typing in a description for a 6th grade math student in clipart form. This is the image it gave me to use. I found this to be

  Google just announced a new feature that will soon be coming to everyone’s Google Slide presentations - the ability to record while you present! “From webinars, to employee trainings, to lessons for your classroom, slides recordings help you effortlessly record visual and engaging presentations without ever leaving Slides.”  This new feature will be released to everyone’s account by January 2, 2024. When it arrives, you will notice a new record button on the top right corner under the Share button. Once selected, it will record your presentation and then save it to your Google Drive account. A few things to remember:  You MUST be in the Chrome browser on a laptop.  You can not record using a mobile device at this time.  All recordings have a 30 minute time limit (I wonder if you could do a part 1 and a part 2 if your presentation is longer than 30 minutes).  You must have edit rights to the Google Slides in order to record.  All recordings will be saved in a Google Drive folder tit