Add Videos from Google Drive into Google Slides

Here's a quick video showing how to add videos from Google Drive into Google Slides:




After you place a video on a slide, you can right-click on the video to get to Video Options which includes the ability to adjust the start and end times, choose autoplay when presenting, and mute audio.

Student Tech Leadership Summit

Calling all student technology leaders!  There is now a conference just for you.

What?  Student Technology Leadership Summit

When? Friday, April 22, 2016 from 9:00 AM - 2:30 PM

Where? Maine East High School in Park Ridge, IL (map)

Who? Student technology leaders

Website? bit.ly/STLS16

Hashtag? #STLS16

Hosts? Evanston Township High School District 202, Leyden High School District 212, Maine Township High School District 207, and Niles Township High School District 219


This event includes a keynote presentation by Jaime Casap, Google's Chief Education Evangelist, three breakout sessions run by students, and a closing panel.  Both registration and the call for presentations are currently open.  Please visit the website for more details.

Another 39 West Leyden Faculty/Staff Become Google Educators

A few months ago, a first group of West Leyden faculty and staff completed their 4-month journey to becoming Google Educators (blog post here).  With the success of that program, it was decided to immediately run it again but with an accelerated timeline.  As of today, 39 more West Leyden faculty and staff have become Google Educators.  Here is some info from West Leyden librarian Janine Asmus (@asmusj), one of the organizers and leaders of this program:

"The educators and Support Staff members listed below committed to a whirlwind professional development experience!  They attended 10 Lunch and Learn sessions that began in early April and ended today.  They became Google Educators by studying independently and reviewing with us. They took detailed exams on Gmail, Docs/Drive, Calendar, Sites and the Chrome browser.  They earned an 80% or better on each test. 

Upon reflection, what made this professional development opportunity work so well was the willingness of our participants.  They were eager to learn more about the tools they use daily. Moreover, we enjoyed the collegiality and camaraderie we experienced. Having a technology coach and a librarian partner to deliver much-needed content was a win/win."

Admin	Math	SPED
Rick Mason	Terie Colletti	Jill Ethridge
	Nadia Ruiz-Lopez	Pete Karamitos
Art	Aysha Shedbalkar	Jessica Kelly
Lynette Rosen		Shelia Kraft
	Music	Laura Moran
Business Ed	Patrick Baker	Rosanne Orsi
Eric McFadden	Stacy Cunningham
Tim Murphy	Michelle Vazquez	Support Staff
		Frank Bavone
English	PE	Louise Jarke
Kerri Kennedy	Mark Valintis	Juli Kasper
Steve Marten		Mary Kelly
John Rossi	Science	Lilli Kruml
Karen Schumpp	Pat Godziszewski	Isabelle Pouliot-Kunca
Georgia Stavroulias	Hina Patel	Stephanie Ramirez
	Melissa Pregler	Kim Rentner
Ind Tech		Keith Rogers
Frank Holthouse	Social Studies	Daina Shuipys
	David Rose	Jasmina Sleimovic
		Caryn Thomas

A big congratulations goes out to all of the Leyden faculty and staff that have become Google Educators this year!  We are hoping to expand this program to even more people next year.  In the meantime, I'd appreciate hearing from the newest Leyden Google Educators about their experience and why this became a goal of theirs.  Please leave a comment on this post.

37 New Google Educators at Leyden

For the past 5+ years, Leyden High School District 212 teachers and students have been using Google Apps for Education.  In 2012-2013, when the district went 1:1 by issuing Chromebooks to all 3,400 students, the Google Apps tools quickly took center stage and started a transformation that permeated the district's teaching and learning environment.  Recently, I learned that a number of educators at the West Leyden campus decided to take their knowledge of the powerful suite to the next level.  Led by librarian Janine Asmus and instructional tech coach Todd Veltman, 34 certified staff and 1 administrator started meeting in mid-November and formed a study/support group to take on the challenge of becoming certified Google Educators.  They met a number of times during their lunch periods to learn together and quiz each other on the information needed to pass the series of tests to become certified.  The requirements for becoming a Google Educator include passing the four core exams (Gmail, Calendar, Sites, and Docs and Drive) and one elective exam (Chrome Browser, Chromebooks, Google Play for Education, or Android Tablets for Education).  Together, the motivated and courageous teachers put in their time, did the studying, and worked toward their goal.  After passing the four core exams, they invited me to their last meetings to help them learn more about the Chromebook management configurations and settings before tackling the last exam that stood between them and their certifications.  I am thrilled to announce that they completed that exam yesterday and have fulfilled the requirements to become certified Google Educators.  It is with some serious #leydenpride that I'd like to congratulate the following Leyden teachers on becoming documented experts of the tools they use everyday with their students to transform education and hope this begins a trend for other teachers to follow.  I’d really enjoy hearing from these teachers in the comments as to why they embarked on this journey and what they learned from it.

Admininstration	Modern Languages	Special Education
Andrew Sharos	Kojo Clarke	Marianna DeFillppis
	Anne Gruettner	Sonja Kosanovic
Business Education	Catherine O' Rourke	Ryan McSherry
Michael Haworth		Kristen Navar
Shannon O'Connor	Music	Katie Talsma
	Bryan Miller	Rick Van Roeyen
Family & Consumer Sciences
Valarie Berger	Physical Education	Student Services
Laurie Foss	Byron Benion	Karin Dewey
	Kevin Brockway	Marijana Uremovic
Literacy	William Cordts	Javier Vasquez
Jane Hyink	Joe Fezzuoglio
Kara Kennedy		Student Supports
Jennifer Lazar	Science	Janine Asmus
	Jamie Litzhoff	Julie Krueger
Math		Todd Veltman
Jeremy Babel	Social Studies
Marian Volenec	Frank Diebold
Matt Young	Christopher Lange
	Sandie Leonard
	Kevin Pluchar
	Lisa Ripley

Merge Table Cells In Google Docs Now Available

I've been waiting for this one for a long time and it's finally available.  You can now merge cells inside tables in Google Docs.  After inserting a table, simply highlight the cells you want to merge, right-click on the selected cells (2-finger click on Chromebooks) or choose the Table menu, and choose Merge Cells.  Let the custom formatting begin!

Shade Alternate Rows in Google Sheets

A few days ago I learned about shading alternate rows in a Google Sheet using the =ISEVEN(ROW()) formula in the Conditional Formatting tool from the Digital Inspiration blog: How to Color Alternate Rows in Google Sheets.

I followed the steps and put together a screencast:

Restrict YouTube Videos To Your Domain and G+ Circles

I just learned from the Google Apps blog that if you use your Google+ identity in YouTube, you can restrict your videos to only those people in your domain or circles.  Nice!

Bring Back the Google Menu Bar

By now, most Google Apps users have had their black menu bars removed and replaced with the new Google App Launcher (here's a great video overview by the Google Gooru).

 

I, personally, have already become accustomed to the new App Launcher and don't mind it at all.  I may even start to like it soon.  If you, however, absolutely cannot function without the black menu bar, check out the Proper Menubar extension for Chrome.  It provides you with a similar version of the original Google menu bar with quick links to most of your Google tools.  It does not include links to your domain/marketplace apps.

You can even go into the extension's options and configure which links are included in your menu bar, which websites it appears on, and the background color.

Enjoy!

Manage non-Google Assignments in Teacher Dashboard

Yesterday, while cruising up I-57 back from the University of Illinois in Champaign after presenting at the AdvancEd conference, Jason Markey (@JasonMMarkey) started up a conversation that began with his now famous "I have an idea..."  In this case, it was more like "I really wish..."  Basically, we were talking about how well Teacher Dashboard has been working for us at Leyden and Jason was suggesting how great it would be if our teachers could also manage assignments involving non-Google Apps tools in TD.  I reminded him about my digital dropbox idea which uses a single Google Form to collect the URL's of each non-Google project.  While he agreed that method was working for some teachers, it still required them to leave Teacher Dashboard and did not provide an easy method for providing the students with feedback without utilizing some scripts.  After a little brainstorming, here's an idea I came up with.

• Teachers could create a Google Doc template (text or spreadsheet) for an activity/project/assignment that involves a tool other than Google Docs or Blogger, which are currently managed in Teacher Dashboard (i.e. Glogster, VoiceThread, Themeefy, YouTube, WeVideo, etc.).  By the way, I'm a huge proponent for assigning an objective to students and letting them pick their own way of demonstrating their learning (see Student Choice Leads to Creativity).
• The template should include at least a spot for the students to paste in the URL of their products, but could also include things like a rubric, project check list, reference list, etc.
• Teachers would then use the Smart Copy tool in Teacher Dashboard to push out the template to each student.  This automatically creates an individual copy of the template in each students' appropriate subject folder in their Google Drive with edit rights for the teacher.  And, of course, the teacher gets to control the name of these documents.
• Teachers can then use the filter option when viewing their class in Teacher Dashboard to view just the links to each specific activity/project/assignment document.  By opening each document, the teacher would be able to see the link to the student's product, add notes or comments, possibly add grades, check off items in a check list, and other options for interacting with the student throughout the process of the activity/project/assignment.

I'd be very interested to hear from anyone that tries out this idea to learn how it works for you and/or how it can be improved.

Creating a Working Rubric in a Google Spreadsheet

Last week one of our English teachers contacted me with an idea, actually a challenge.  He wanted to create a working rubric that he could use to evaluate his acting students and then email them with their results/feedback.  The more we talked through the challenge, them more we realized how this could be beneficial for lots of other uses, as well.  We discussed the possibility of using Google Forms, but that didn't quite meet his needs.  So, the solution I came up with involves creating a Google Spreadsheet and installing a free apps script.  Some of the skills/tools involved in this process include the following:

• Creating a Google Spreadsheet with multiple sheets
• Using data validation to create drop-down menus
• Using the VLOOKUP formula
• Installing and using a free mail merge apps script
• Hiding columns

While this may already sound like a daunting task, the investment of time to create the first spreadsheet will certainly pay off as it can easily be copied and tweaked for additional rubrics.  In addition, the added bonus of being able to collaborate on Google Spreadsheets allows multiple teachers to work together to build their working rubrics.

Below are the tutorials I put together to demonstrate this process.

Getting Started With Google+ for Educators

On November 15, 2012, Google announced that Google+ became available for Google Apps for Education domains.  That was really exciting news!  Like many others educators, I had been using Google+ through my personal Google account to connect with lots of different people.  Now that it's available for all of the faculty and staff in my district, I can imagine some amazing ways we can use it to expand our personal learning networks, provide professional development opportunities, hold group meetings, and much more.  The most interesting question will be if and when we should enable Google+ for our students.  The available premium features appear to be excellent options for limiting student usage to within their domain.  We'll see.  But it all starts with getting our teachers familiar with and using Google+ first.  I put together the following narrated presentation to assist the Leyden teachers with getting started, but hopefully others find it beneficial, as well.  So, if you'd like to learn more about Google+ and how to get started, turn up your volume and play the presentation below (I'd recommend viewing it in full-screen).  I'd love to hear how others are using Google+ in their schools and if this presentation was helpful, so please consider leaving a comment.  Enjoy!

Advanced Gmail Search Operators

Did you know that you can quickly search your Gmail account for messages to or from specific people?

Did you know that you can search for email that only contains attachments?

Did you know that you can search for email within a specific date range?

Did you know that you can search for email by size?

If you haven't recently reviewed the advanced search operators available in Gmail, check them out here.

You can also watch the following video from The Google Gooru that was recently created and highlights a few of the operators.

Read&Write add-on for Google Docs

Thanks to the Free Technology for Teachers blog by Richard Byrne, I learned about the Read&Write add-on for Google Docs.  Installing this Chrome Web App provides the following features within Google Docs:

• Text To Speech with Dual Synchronized Highlighting.
• Talking Dictionary
• Picture Dictionary
• Vocabulary Tool
• Study Skills tools to capture Google highlights

This could be a valuable tool for students at all levels, but especially those with learning disabilities, struggling readers, and English Language Learners.  Check out the video below for more details and a demonstration.

New Gmail Compose and Reply Experience Coming Soon

On October 30, 2012 I read a blog post that announced the new Gmail compose and reply experience that will be rolled out in the near future.  I found the ability to test this out in my personal Gmail account and put together the following sneak peek of what's to come.

Choose Your Own Adventure Google Forms

Have you ever wanted to create a single Google Form that displays different questions based upon the users answers?  Check out my screencast below to learn how to use page breaks and the "go to page based on answer" option with multiple choice questions to accomplish this task.

  You can also try out my live example here.

Be sure to change the resolution to 720 HD and watch this video in full screen mode.

Sometimes it's the little things - Canned Responses in Gmail

I get it. We live in a time when people want information when they want it, on their terms, and that fits their timelines and needs. As the Director of Technology for my district, when I share something new with our faculty, it may not be needed by everyone at that time. It may eventually be helpful at a later date, however, and I certainly can't expect our faculty to archive and index every email I send them. So, what to do? This year, one new thing we started was a faculty tutorials Google site that we use to archive every tutorial, screencast, and other training materials that gets produced by a variety of technology leaders in the district. This provides a phenomenal repository of resources that teachers can peruse to find something specific or to just see what's new. It also makes it very easy for me to respond to an email inquiry by just sharing a link to a section of the tutorials site. While this has been tremendously beneficial, it doesn't help in every situation. There are times when a more personal touch is needed or when someone asks me a question that does not have a tutorial as an answer. This is where canned responses in Gmail comes in very handy. Instead of storing information in a variety of files that would require me to find, open, copy, and then paste the information into my current email, I can keep everything I need right where I need it... in my inbox. A couple examples of how I use canned responses include storing the details about our Dell employee purchase program and the details of the resolution to a common SlideRocket account problem. Both of these are randomly needed a few times every year. Storing them as canned responses that can be added to any email has been extremely helpful and a big time saver for me.  Canned responses are even great to just store those phrases and sentences I find myself using over and over.  Yep, sometimes it's the little things that make me happy. If you'd like to learn a little more about setting up and using canned responses, please watch the SlideRocket presentation below.

 

Google Docs Offline On Your Chromebook

Many of our Leyden students have a need for accessing their Google documents on their Chromebooks when they don't have Internet access.  I put together the following tutorial to explain the basics of enabling and using offline docs on a Chromebook.

Before the end user/student can set this up, make sure that offline docs are enabled in the Google Apps for Education control panel:  Settings > Drive and Docs > General > Offline.  There is an "Allow users to enable offline docs" checkbox.

This slide deck contains audio.

Unfortunately, SlideRocket was bought out by another company and no longer provides an educational product.  Here is the PDF version of the slide deck.  Sorry, no narration.

Replacing Printed Planers/Calendars with Google Calendars and Tasks

One of the side effects of going 1:1 in our district this coming year is that we are no longer providing our students with printed planners/calendars.  The function of that tool, however, does not need to be lost.  In fact, my opinion is that it can be easily improved by teachers maintaining course calendars and teaching the students how to effectively use Google Tasks.  The following video provides more information and a tutorial.

Create a Digital Assigment Dropbox with Google Forms UPDATED

Back in February I put together a post regarding using Google Forms to create a digital assignment dropbox for collecting student work (original post here).  The basic idea is to use a single Google Form throughout an entire course to collect the web addresses of students' digital work.  Creating the form will automatically create the spreadsheet for the teachers that they can use to see all of their students' assignments on one screen instead of needing to open dozens of individual emails or folders/collections in Google Drive.

Since my original post, it was decided that our district would issue a second Google Apps for Education account to all of our teachers in our student domain (we have one domain exclusively for faculty/staff and one for students).  Therefore, it is my recommendation that our teachers create their digital assignment dropboxes in the student domain.  There are two main advantages of doing this.  First is that the teachers can now require their students to be signed into their Google Apps accounts in order to submit their work instead of leaving the form open to the public.  Second, the teachers can automatically collect the usernames of the students filling out the form as an additional validation check.  To accomplish these goals, the teachers should create their forms in the student domain and check the appropriate boxes in the upper left corner of the form editing window:

Here is my original screencast with more information and the instructions for how to create the form.  Be sure to change the playback quality to 720p HD for the best clarity.

Do More With Google Maps

I just came across the following presentation by Richard Byrne (@rmbyrne) on his Free Technology for Teachers blog.  This is a great introduction into getting more out of Google Maps.  Some of the features he covers include the following:

• Changing views and activating information layers
• Adding Maps Labs features
• Measuring distances
• Creating and saving a personalized map
• Adding collaborators to a personalized map
• Adding placemarks
• Embedding links, images, and videos into placemarks
• Drawing paths between placemarks

I thought I knew Google Maps, but always manage to learn something new from Richard.  A big thanks to him for sharing his slides and his knowledge.