Google is attempting to position Gemini as a leader for AI tutoring when it comes to standardized test prep for the SAT and other tests. Earlier this year, they announced a partnership with the Princeton Review to allow practice tests followed by instant feedback from Gemini that can tell a student where they excelled and highlight areas they might need to study more.

The feature builds on Gemini’s learn mode. Previously called “Guided Learning,” this is a tutoring mode built on a collection of AI models called LearnLM that were specifically designed with teaching in mind and built with principles of education science.

Here’s a closer look at Gemini’s tutoring and test prep abilities.

Using Gemini To Prepare for Tests

For SAT prep, Gemini can generate full practice tests for free. All you need to do is enter a prompt such as, “I want to take a practice SAT test,” and Gemini will generate a test on it. This test will utilize resources from the Princeton Review, a test-prep company that draws on real SAT questions to generate practice tests.

In my experience, this feature works just as advertised. It took me only minutes to generate a quick practice test, and I also had the option of having Gemini create sample SAT questions. It quizzed me and offered encouragement when I got questions right and great explanations when I got questions wrong. This is a tool that seems like it would be helpful for students preparing for this test.

This type of access to high-quality practice tests and tutoring is a great way to increase access to better test preparation methods for people from all economic backgrounds as Gemini is available for free. I also suspect Gemini’s AI coaching could be helpful even for those who get one-on-one tutoring.

Google Wants Gemini To Be A Tutoring Leader

This recent foray into test prep is part of Google’s larger effort to make Gemini the go-to AI for tutoring. So far they seem successful in these efforts to me.

Gemini in learn mode has outperformed other similar tools in certain studies. For instance, researchers compared Google Gemini's and ChatGPT's effectiveness for enhancing the academic writing skills of English learners in two Thai universities. The study found “both tools effectively improved linguistic accuracy and essay structure,” however, “Gemini was found to work better than ChatGPT in multimodal feedback and source integration.”

This tracks with my own experience using both tools. While any AI tool has its limitations and subtle inaccuracies can be a big problem for test prep, Gemini in learn mode is the best AI tutor with which I have interacted. And Gemini continues to improve its tutoring features. In addition to the SAT test, Google recently announced Gemini can provide vetted tests for the Joint Entrance Examination, a standardized engineering entrance exam used in India. It also seems likely Google will expand Gemini’s data set to include other standardized tests going forward.

Overall, I’m once again really impressed with Gemini’s tutoring abilities. My graduate school options were somewhat limited because I was so afraid of taking the GRE that any program that required its completion was ruled out. It’s possible had a tool such as Gemini been available when I was younger, I would have felt differently, though I am very happy with the graduate program in which I ended up attending.

As regular Tech & Learning readers know, I have mixed feelings about AI. But I’m impressed by this feature. Using Gemini to prepare for standardized tests feels as if it could have been a game-changer for me personally and may indeed be a game-changer for many students today.

Google’s VEO video-generating AI tool is now available through Gemini for Pro subscribers. I recently began experimenting with the tool and exploring potential teaching opportunities.

Overall, it’s a wild new science fiction-level technology with some fun, if gimmicky, teaching potential I could see using in the classroom.

More importantly, however, I think being aware of what this type of video-generating technology can do and discussing this with students is critical. This new generation of AI has massive potential for misinformation and will likely have implications for the entertainment industry and the future job market, and it's our job to help prepare students for all this as best we can.

How To Use VEO Through Gemini

For users with Gemini Pro, which costs $19.99 per month, accessing VEO is simple. You can just ask Gemini to “make a video” or click on the “create video” tool, which puts you in video mode and gives you more control.

Just remember, the Gemini Pro tier only permits you three video prompts per day.

You can also upload photos that VEO can use to add action etc., which is both very cool and very scary. I made a short video of myself shoveling snow using a headshot, and it looks pretty legit if a little artificial.

Prompting the creation of a video isn't as forgiving as a text-based chat with a chatbot. My first few prompts were nonspecific and resulted in poor-quality videos.

That said, I quickly learned where I went wrong and didn’t have a long learning curve. The secret, I found, is to provide as many specifics as possible. This was much more enjoyable than my experience with OpenAI’s Sora early last year. Using Sora was a consistently frustrating experience, at least for someone who was new to the world of AI video prompt writing.

VEO, on the other hand, doesn’t always do what you want but generally creates something interesting that is at least roughly based upon what you prompted.

Teaching With VEO

I enjoyed experimenting with having VEO recreate moments from history. I asked it to create a scene about the New York City Fire of 1776. The first attempt went very poorly. For some reason, Gemini/VEO had a dragon start the fire, but this tool isn’t exactly claiming to be an accurate purveyor of history.

Once I got more specific and asked it get rid of the dragon and show a person saving a child, it created a better video (see below).

This isn’t a fantastic work of visual art by any means, but it was interesting to watch and more fun then it should have been to "create." It has some subtle inaccuracies, and I could envision an exercise asking students to spot these. For instance, there are no wooden buildings even though wooden structures were common in New York City at that time.

I also tried to get it to create a realistic video of an electron traveling through a cloud chamber in the style of a vintage early 1900s science show. Separately I asked it to create this in as realistic a way as possible. Both of VEO’s attempts left something to be desired in terms of accuracy, but that can also be a useful teaching tool.

Here is one of those videos:

Using Gemini and VEO can also provide good examples of the importance of word choice.

Teaching with this AI could also be an interesting classroom activity for a creative writing class. I could see a situation in which students write short stories and then select three from which to generate videos.

Broader Implications of This Technology

Beyond these admittedly somewhat frivolous direct teaching applications, this is a serious and potentially game-changing technology that I’m taking note of and reminding my students to keep an eye on.

I truly don’t think Hollywood or society will turn to AI-generated movies any time soon, but there will be fewer people working in special effects, and those jobs will look very different and will probably involve a lot of AI prompting and fine-tuning. This raises questions about equity, copyright, and all-around fairness, all of which are important to discuss as a class.

Even more pressingly, creating these videos myself has already given me a better ability to discern the tell-tale signs of AI generation. This can help students learn digital literacy and how to spot misinformation and deep fakes -- skills that are becoming increasingly important.

Bottom Line: Would I Teach With VEO?

Yes, I would teach with VEO, but with some caveats.

I wouldn’t give students direct access or encourage them to use it, but I would share videos I generated with my class as a way to illustrate the technology’s strengths and weaknesses, and potentially as a subject matter tie-in, if and when appropriate.

Google recently unveiled its new Auto Browse AI feature that integrates with its Google Chrome browser. Think of a self-driving car, but for your internet browser. In Auto Browse, an AI agent takes the driver's seat using a tab in Chrome to explore the internet at your direction.

Other AI agents exist that browse the internet, but Auto Browse marks Google's biggest public-facing entry into this arena. Auto Browse fully integrates with your browser and across Google’s other services, undertaking tasks such as searching your calendar and email and using information contained there to complete other tasks.

For educators, the tool is, at least in theory, well-placed to do things such as complete spreadsheets, help with travel plans, lesson planning, and finding teaching resources and materials.

In practice, after experimenting with Auto Browse, I didn’t find it to be a revolutionary step over existing AI services, though its integration with Gmail and Google Calendar was pretty seamless and impressive.

Here’s a closer look at Auto Browse.

What is Auto Browse?

Auto Browse is the latest and greatest AI agent tool from Google that works with Gemini. The idea is that you can use it to open Google Chrome tabs for you and complete tedious web tests in autopilot.

That being said, there are some caveats. As soon as you start using Auto Browse, a warning appears saying, “You are responsible for Gemini's actions during tasks.” I found this kind of unsettling. What if my AI agent starts ordering pizzas, convinced (probably correctly) that that would be the best way to keep me happy?

Because you are ultimately responsible, you have the option to take control of the browser. But sitting there watching what Auto Browse is doing really defeats the purpose of using it in the first place.

Additionally, cybersecurity experts say Auto Browse and other AI agents are at risk for “prompt injection attacks,” malicious instructions hidden on websites that can trick AI agents into putting your computer or accounts at risk.

That said, Auto Browse does have some cool features that some teachers, particularly AI enthusiasts, will love.

How Much Does Auto Browse Cost?

Auto Browse is available for subscribers to Google AI Pro ($20 per month) and Ultra ($250 per month).

I subscribed to Google AI Pro to gain access. The interface is fairly user-friendly. You can activate it by clicking on the Gemini option in the right-hand corner of Chrome, which opens the Gemini AI sidebar. You can then ask Gemini to open Auto Browse within that, or it will open automatically depending on your query.

How Helpful Is Auto Browse?

For this story, I asked Auto Browse to undertake a series of education-related tasks, including looking for an Airbnb for me in Boston when I attend an academic conference, looking for open academic positions, and generating some teaching materials based on old talks I gave.

On the whole, the performance was mixed. I was impressed by how the AI agent was able to look up the date I was going to be in Boston from my Google Calendar, and could search my email for contacts I’d communicated with on certain topics. But in some other areas, it fell short. It did not help me find an Airbnb rental, for instance. Though it provided a list of potential rentals that fit the criteria I had given it, the links to these rentals provided by the AI did not work. I was able to find the properties it had discussed by searching for them myself, but that defeated the purpose.

More impressive was the response to my query asking it to find specific types of writing professor jobs available in New England. It created a nice list of all the jobs and what was required to apply for each. This was pretty cool, but other than this, I had trouble finding tasks I wanted done that Auto Browse was uniquely qualified to help with.

That aside, I was impressed with the AI integration of Gemini with other Google products, including Gmail. I use a personal Gmail account, but could see using Gemini to do quick searches of things “every student who had a question for me over the past week . . . .” Or every student who asked about a specific assignment. Gemini was really strong at completing these types of queries and it didn't even need to go into Auto Browse mode for many of these.

Bottom Line: Is Auto Browse Worth Exploring As A Teacher?

Auto Browse has a lot of potential and is fun to experiment with, but it’s not superbly useful. It does indeed act as a personal assistant as it's supposed to, just a personal assistant that’s not particularly good at its job.

Nonetheless, I have hope that it could get better as time goes on, and I might get more ideas of how best to use it. Ultimately, educators who are obsessed with the latest and greatest in AI should take a look, but others may want to wait until the technology matures a bit.

Google Scholar Labs is a major new AI interface for Google Scholar that launched in late November 2025.

Instead of using key terms to search academic studies, Scholar Labs lets teachers, academics, and their students ask research-related questions such as, “What are some recent research papers about mindset?" Google Scholar Labs then finds relevant research studies and summarizes.

Experimenting with the tool, I was struck by its speed and convenience. It’s a quick way to get a broad overview of any research topic, and while it doesn’t replace a more traditional research search, it can definitely help with one. It also furthers Google Scholar’s mission of making academic research more accessible overall.

What is Google Scholar Labs?

Scholar Labs is an AI-powered search tool designed to assist users in searching Google Scholar, Google’s search engine for scholarly resources such as research papers.

The tool's purpose is to simplify the process of finding relevant research. As such, it’s a useful tool both for seasoned academics and newbie researchers.

To use Scholar Labs, go to scholar.google.com/scholar_labs and then type in a search query. For instance, you can ask it to summarize all the recent research on flipped learning and whether it impacts student achievement. Within a few moments, you’ll get a type-annotated bibliography with links to various research papers on the topic and summaries of these papers.

How Well Does Google Scholar Labs Work?

Scholar Labs works as advertised. Despite some limitations, I found it to be great at providing a quick snapshot of research into a topic without requiring me to spend a lot of time searching.

For instance, in the example I gave above about mindset research, it provided me with 10 or so pieces of research on the topic that quickly let me know there are a good deal of questions around whether growth mindset is really as linked to student achievement as many educators believe. The tool led me more quickly to this takeaway than a traditional Google Scholar search might. I got similarly helpful results on queries about flipped learning and other topics.

You can also use Scholar Labs to compare and contrast different interventions, such as flipped learning vs. traditional classroom settings. In addition, you can get specific about the types of research you want it to include in its search summary with instructions such as, “include only randomized control trials.”

Despite all these great features, Google Scholar Labs is not perfect. By default, it tends to include a lot of old research, and can miss important studies. So while it provides a quick overview of research, it’s not a replacement for a deep dive on a topic.

Additionally, the tool is less a chatbot and more the Google Scholar version of Google Search’s AI summary tool. So your queries should be framed as questions, and it struggles to do more than provide broad research summaries.

When I asked it to find the first study linking Growth Mindset to education, it provided me with another summary of research into Growth Mindset’s impact on learning overall. This was not at all what I asked for.

Despite these minor drawbacks I find myself using the tool more and more as a starting point for my research.

How Can Teachers Use It?

Teachers can use Google Scholar Labs for quick overviews of pedagogical research and for research related to the subject matters they teach, as well as with students, provided such use is in accordance with their institution's data privacy and AI policies.

I plan on recommending it to my graduate students who are working on research. It’s the rare AI tool that is relatively free of drawbacks, provided students don’t over-rely on it and use it in addition to, rather than instead of, more traditional research methods.

Bottom line: Is Google Scholar Labs Helpful for Education?

Google Scholar Labs is an easy-to-use new AI tool that makes research more efficient, effective, and therefore accessible.

If you can’t tell already, I’m a big fan of Scholar Labs.

The ever-popular NotebookLM from Google has added six new features and upgrades, as well as now being made available in more than 80 languages. The goal of these updates is to make the AI-powered platform more dynamic and useful for active learning, according to Google.

In addition to the recent addition of featured notebooks (which we tried out here), Google has upgraded NotebookLM with:

1. Flashcards and quizzes - Users can now turn notes, research papers, or work reports into customized flashcards and quizzes. You can customize the topic to focus on core concepts and terms, set a level of difficulty, and then share study sets with students with a simple link.

2. New audio overview formats: Users can now select the format of audio overviews, with three choices now available:

• Brief: A single AI host delivers a short summary of core ideas.
• Critique: Two AI hosts review material, offering constructive feedback on an essay or design document.
• Debate: Two AI hosts discuss different perspectives on the topics in the sources.

3. Personalized learning guide - Users can break down complex topics step-by-step with probing, open-ended questions and adaptive explanations. Ideal for providing extra support for students, like having a personalized digital tutor.

4. Trusted academic content - NotebookLM has partnered with OpenStax to provide interactive public Notebooks with high-quality, vetted sources. Subject areas include biology, AP biology, chemistry, psychology, introduction to business, and principles of management.

5. New and customized report formats - NotebookLM users can now create reports in a “blog post” format, which suggest options based on a theme or topic mentioned based on the sources used.

For example, if the source is a scholarly article on economic theory, NotebookLM could be used to create a glossary of key terms or a magazine-style explainer of the paper’s implications. Or if a draft of a student’s short story is uploaded, users could use NotebookLM to generate a character analysis or a detailed critique of the plot.

Users can also create their own format tailored to their specific needs.

6. NotebookLM now offers seamless integration for teachers - Users can now create and assign Notebooks directly in Canvas by Instructure and PowerSchool Schoology Learning using Gemini LTI.

In the near future, educators will also be able to create and assign notebooks in Google Classroom.

For more on NotebookLM, Lisa Nielsen, the Innovative Educator, recently provided an overview for Tech & Learning on how to get started with it.

• Google’s NotebookLM: An Innovative Educator’s New Best Friend (and Podcasting Powerhouse!)
• Trying NotebookLM’s New “Featured Notebooks”

A viral video starts with a comedian complaining that a recent date went bad when the woman he was with claimed we are all “prompts.” It then cuts to a series of other short segments of people debating whether they are prompts, as the tone grows increasingly dark. An angry politician promises to ban “the prompt theory” in schools. A man takes another person hostage but claims he has no control because the “prompt” is making him do it. Finally, as various people appear on screen suffering, they turn directly at the camera and beg an unseen prompt writer to “Write a new prompt.”

Of course, as you’ve already guessed, even though the people in the video look, sound, and appear to be real, they were indeed created with “prompts” by AI — specifically Google’s new VEO 3, the tech giant’s most advanced public-facing AI video model.

VEO 3 is currently available to subscribers of Google’s $250 per month AI Ultra plan, which makes it unavailable for many education budgets. Yet, it’s still technology that seems likely to influence education in positive and not-so-positive ways.

On the positive side, once the technology trickles down and becomes more available, it’s easy to imagine educational-use cases with tons of options to create videos that relate to class exercises in various subjects, such as history or STEM.

But this technology also highlights the gray area around AI use and what its impact on actual creatives might be. Beyond that, it will -- troublingly -- lend itself very well to deepfakes. AI videos have already been used to spread misinformation, and to bully and harass in school settings. A tool such as VEO 3 potentially makes those types of illegitimate, and in some cases criminal, uses easier to create and even harder to spot.

Here’s a closer look at everything educators need to know about VEO 3.

What Is VEO 3 and Why Is It Different Than Other Video Generators?

VEO 3 is Google’s latest and greatest AI video generator. Combining Google’s Veo, Imagen, and Gemini AI models, VEO 3 is designed to let users create short, life-like videos with audio, and then string these videos together in longer scenes.

The tool is designed to make writing prompts for these videos easy and intuitive. This audio and ease of prompting in particular stand out when compared to other Google video tools and the competition. For example, when I used OpenAI’s Sora video generator, there was no audio, and prompting was as unpleasant as high school calculus.

But reviewers say VEO 3 not only produces amazing clips with audio, it does so with relative ease, though VEO 3 is far from perfect.

What Are Some Ways VEO 3 Can Be Used For Teaching?

If VEO 3 becomes more widely available for less money, or if your school has a large AI budget, it doesn’t take much to come up with creative uses for it: Writers can bring their stories to life with prompts, history students can recreate scenes from events they’re studying, and biology students can model photosynthesis and assess the video’s accuracy.

VEO 3 also has a feature that lets you see exactly what prompts others used to create their videos. For the growing field of AI education and prompt writing, this is a valuable feature and one that educators might encourage their students to explore in the future.

What Are Some Concerns About VEO 3 Technology?

VEO 3 does not yet have a tool that lets users upload an image and generate a video based on that, but that tool is available for VEO 2 and is expected to be rolled out to VEO 3 eventually. This will make VEO 3 a particularly powerful tool for generating deepfakes.

Even without this, VEO 3’s realistic videos and ease of use make it likely to increase the use of AI to spread misinformation and potentially bully and harass people. This is true for society in general, but will be amplified in school settings.

What Else Should Teachers Know?

Regardless of whether you’re a fan of AI technology or not, learning about the capabilities of VEO 3 and other AI video generators is critical. These tools are here, for better or worse, and educators and their students need AI literacy training in order to navigate a world in which what we see is not always real.

We’re not all prompts, as the video referenced at the start of this article claims, but increasingly much of what we read and see on the internet will be created from prompts, and we all should be thinking about how to navigate that.

• Sora: Is OpenAI's Video Generating Tool Helpful For Teaching?
• Lights, Camera, and 7 Actionable Ways to Use Google Vids

Snorkl is the result of using generative AI as a means to offer students direct individual feedback, while saving teachers on time.

The idea here is to have students explain their working process on a particular problem, which can result in a better understanding.

Crucially, this is an example of an AI tool that actually makes it tougher for students to use Google or AI as a way to find an answer. They have to explain how they arrived at it aloud themselves, challenging their understanding on a deep and meaningful level.

This guide aims to explain all you need to know about Snorkl for education.

What is Snorkl?

Snorkl is an app-based digital tool that uses generative AI as a way to grade student work with direct feedback.

This offers a space for teachers to set tasks for students, who are able to respond in that space for both to see. Crucially, this requires verbal explanations that allow students to speak as they work on a problem.

The AI is able to give direct feedback as it can be prompted by the teachers when setting out the task. That means it can be given guidance on how to respond, allowing for an instant response for students, as the teacher would do only when the student is working outside of class.

How does Snorkl work?

Snorkl features a web-based platform that can be accessed from most devices. Students who have access are able to carry out tasks on a variety of subjects.

Teachers create a question, problem, or prompt, and then students are able to respond. They do this by solving the problem, perhaps using a keyboard and mouse, while also speaking into the microphone as they talk through what they're doing.

The AI is then able to mark the actual answer, but more importantly, it responds to the explanation of how it was resolved. It can then help to explain what's been done well along the way, but also what could be improved and why that is, based on the thinking process of the student.

In this way, a student may get the answer wrong, but understand the basics of what is being asked of them -- so they can still get some positive responses even when getting it wrong, helping them confidently progress.

What are the best Snorkl features?

Snorkl uses AI in a way that is well-balanced so the teacher can tap a button to auto-generate an AI response to the question they've created. This then completes the way it will respond and teachers can then adjust that, if needed, for the perfect response that students will see.

The fact that Snorkl responds to a student's working process, rather than simply to output, is crucial here. A student who gets the answer right but shows no process clearly will still get lower marks as this is all about understanding and mastery, not just getting to the answer.

In the feedback section teachers are able to see all student responses from one place. Usefully, this also offers an Insight tab that uses AI to spot trends in the responses, ideal for identifying areas of weakness that need to be addressed in class.

Teachers can try a question with their own response as a way to test the AI and see how it responds -- ideal for perfecting and tweaking to attune this to specific teaching goals as needed.

Sharing these tasks is also easy, with a single click to share with a class group. Or copy and paste the link and share that via any platform you already use as a way to have students taken straight to the assessment in the device they're using.

How much does Snorkl cost?

Snorkl offers two tiers with the first aimed at teachers and the second for school- and district-wide use in which extra features are enabled.

The Teacher plan is free to sign-up for and gets you full access to your own class room with instant AI feedback for students on tasks you set.

The School and District plan is charged at a bespoke rate and adds unlimited access, a Snorkl coach, an admin dashboard, and more.

Snorkl best tips and tricks

Use the AI
Let the AI suggest answer responses, and edit if needed, as a faster way to build out your assessments.

Work with the class
Carry out a task in class to show students how the process being spoken while typing on screen works before setting tasks.

Go face to face
Students who get the right answer but are not using the correct process may need face-to-face time to see what they're not getting, helping them reach mastery.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

Tappity is an app-based learning platform, and more, which aims to teach science- and STEM-focused subjects using interactive learning.

While the Tappity website features downloadable courses, this is primarily designed as an app that can be downloaded for use by kids from the age of four and up.

A few app versions are available, with both K-1 and K-5 titled options you can pick from to suit the age of your little one. These are designed to tackle learning in a more interactive approach than simply videos, so students can explore and learn in a way that's engaging and that sticks.

This guide lays out all you need to know about Tappity for education.

What is Tappity?

Tappity is an app-based learning platform that teaches science of varying types through the use of interactive videos, quizzes, games, and stories. Primarily this uses videos, with responses required, so students feel like they're interacting with a real teacher.

The idea is to offer an app that is immersive and guided enough to help children, even of young ages, explore and learn around a STEM subject area. It is designed to work with the curriculum of the specific child's age so they're learning appropriate content to compliment school education.

This elementary school-aged app is aligned to Next Generation Science Standards for K-5.

How does Tappity work?

Tappity is an iOS app that offers an array of areas covered under the science remit. These include life, earth, physical, space, and more.

The website also has specific courses that can be downloaded to teach a subject area, such as STEM courses for math and science, and coding courses for making games.

The app is comprised of more than 100 topics aimed at helping children aged four to ten. While a lot of the interactivity happens right there in the app, this also offers workbooks and materials for hands-on experiences, both with parents and for teachers to use in class.

Crucially, there are live science teachers who work with students using the app. Kids can ask a question and receive an answer from a real person -- making this a powerful learning tool for at home as well as in class.

What are the best Tappity features?

Tappity is fun and that is a key point here as kids can learn by play, making it effortless and enjoyable so they want to come back for more.

Since this app is entirely narrated, even younger children, and those not yet reading fully, are able to interact and learn without barriers. The fact they can interact with a real person, as if their own personal science teacher, is a real bonus, too.

Usefully, lessons invite kids to ask their parents to come and see what they've learned. This is a nice way to create interactive moments, time away from the screen, and a chance for kids to cement their learning through saying it aloud.

Students fill in a science journal as they learn, and can access lots of short videos with interactive questions and discussion points to explore a subject. This variation is superb, with kids working through lessons, stories, experiments, and participatory videos as part of covering the material being taught.

The Tappity Live weekly science shows are another nice touch that gives kids something fresh and special to look forward to and enjoy each week.

How much does Tappity cost?

Tappity is free to download and does give you a few free options to try before investing in the full offering.

For free you can get access to the first Tappity story in each world and access to the Tappity Weekly Game Show -- without the need to create an account. A 14-day free trial is available for you to try before committing to the full package.

Tappity can be paid for monthly at $14.99, or annually at $74.99. Or go for a three-month plan at $24.99.

A Tappity lifetime membership that covers everything, forever, is available for $149.99.

Tappity best tips and tricks

Start together
Teacher or parent, it's a good idea to start the app together with kids so they can feel confident going ahead alone as they settle.

Expand out
Use the subject area covered to dive deeper, teaching ways to research further and expand knowledge outside of the app itself.

Meet weekly
Use the weekly game show as a way to group up and enjoy together, linking socializing and learning in a fun and friendly way.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

Teachable Machine is a Google offering that allows anyone to experiment with the powerful possibilities that AI offers.

This website uses Google machine learning smarts to allow people to play with the tech in a simple way that makes it highly accessible.

This can be used as a teaching tool to help educators get across how AI works. Students are able to actively explore the AI learning algorithms in a way that's fun but also illuminating.

Since this is a tool designed to be creatively used, it represents a vast array of options for teachers to work with to help students better understand AI.

This guide aims to explain what you need to know so you can see how Teachable Machine could be helpful to your class.

What is Teachable Machine?

Teachable Machine is a website-based tool that allows anyone to play with an advanced AI that can be trained and used.

The idea here is to take the algorithmic smarts of a learning AI and put that in the hands of anybody. As such, this platform is able to learn from images, sounds, and movements, and then respond to these in future as needed.

Teachable Machine is a way for students to see how AI learns and then responds. It can be played with creatively for fun, but also to be used as a discussion point around how AI works and, indeed, how it is all around us in the digital world in the form of algorithms.

While this is a helpful introduction to AI, it can also be used in more complex ways that allow more experienced students to work with this tool as part of creating more advanced digital projects.

How does Teachable Machine work?

Teachable Machine can be accessed directly from a web browser without the need to sign up or share any personal information. Educators and students can start using this, on most devices, right away.

The simplicity is apparent immediately with a "New Project" icon that can be tapped to get started. You are then able to record using either images, audio, or movements.

Select one option, for example Images, and you are then asked to record yourself, or whatever you are using, for the first category. You can then do the same for a second or more. Next you select the Learn icon and the AI will go to work processing what it sees. Finally, you can choose to download to work with the output locally or upload to use it online.

In either case you can see, live, the AI working as you change out image one and two, and see it recognizing the differences live on screen.

What are the best Teachable Machine features?

Teachable Machine is very simple to use and clearly shows how the AI has learned the differences between the inputs with which you trained it.

While that is fun in and of itself, the ability to take that output and use it -- perhaps in a coding project or app -- is a really powerful tool. That applies both as useful in adding AI to a project but also as a way to show students how this works.

In addition, there are some dedicated teaching resources created by MIT that can be downloaded and used to further the learning possible on this site. The AI + Ethics link takes you to a selection of resources in Google Docs that can be used to teach and explore AI.

One example here is a lesson that involves teaching algorithms as opinions in which students write an algorithm to detect the best peanut butter and jelly sandwich. They can then explore what made the AI pick one over another, and dive into exploring data sets and how opinions can affect outcomes.

The Dancing with AI tool is for playing with the visual movement detection and having it affect outcomes in fun and creative ways.

How much does Teachable Machine cost?

Teachable Machine is totally free to use and does not require you to sign in or give any personal details at all to get working with the tool.

While Google says the training is kept locally on your device, it's worth considering this may still not be enough for privacy rules at all schools.

Teachable Machine best tips and tricks

Start simple
Use the tool, as a class, to detect a simple difference so students get the idea of how this works, then let them play with it.

Get ethical
Use the exercises to explore the ethics of AI and the wider internet -- using YouTube as a great example of how algorithms work to filter our perspectives.

Export
For more advanced students, have them use the output as a way to create in their coding projects using advanced recognition techniques.

• New Teacher Starter Kit
• Best Tools for Teachers

Google unveiled a series of new features for educators at Bett UK, the annual edtech conference in London. I was not in attendance, but as an educator, I’m always curious about what innovations Google, and other tech giants, have in store.

This year, unsurprisingly, many new innovations from Google focused on integrating Gemini and other generative AI capabilities into existing Google Classroom features. This is intriguing because these are designed to help educators provide more personalized learning opportunities with less work, which is always a goal for me and many educators.

The recent updates that really stand out to me are about more than just AI capabilities, however, as there are also new features aimed at improving accessibility and bringing parents more into the fold of their children's educations.

Here’s a closer look at the new Google Classroom features that I’m most intrigued by as a journalist and educator.

1. Google Classroom Now Allows Educators To Generate Tailored Vocabulary Lists with Gemini

One of the ways in which AI has the potential to impact education is when it comes to helping educators personalize offerings and suggestions for students.

This update aims to do that by having Gemini AI help educators create custom word lists for individual students or groups of students. These include parts of speech examples and other examples relevant to defined grade levels and topics. This builds on other Gemini classroom capabilities such as videos made with the assistance of AI.

Gemini in Classroom is powered by LearnLM, Google’s suite of AI models trained to align with learning science principles.

2. Parents Now Have More Access To Google Classroom

For obvious reasons, students' parents and guardians often want to be involved in their child's education. This new Google Classroom feature gives educators the ability to share a classwork page within Google Classroom so parents can stay informed on assignments for their child’s class or classes.

Parents will also have access to a weekly email summary of the student’s work in the class.

3. Access To NotebookLM Plus

Google Education customers who are 18 or over will have access to NotebookLM Plus, the most advanced version of one of Google’s buzziest AI tools. With this access, educators can upload sources they are using in class and have NotebookLM generate summaries, lesson plans, study guides, discussion questions, and quizzes — all with in-line citations to ensure accuracy.

The tool can also do some truly spectacular-seeming things such as create a custom podcast featuring AI-generated personalities summarizing a PDF an educator uploads.

4. Head And Face Control For Chromebooks

Google’s AI-related updates will likely get the most attention, but this new update to Chromebook capabilities could be the most impressive and might be a major win for accessibility.

This update enables users to control their cursor by moving their head and performing various facial gestures. It utilizes AI technology through a series of machine learning models trained to recognize a 3D mesh of 478 facial points, allowing for real-time hands-free control.

If this amazing new feature works smoothly this can be a huge benefit to people who are not able to type or navigate a mouse with their hands. The feature is rolling out with the ChromeOS M132 update.

• 5 Google Classroom Tips From Its Developers
• How To Use Google Earth For Teaching

Google Scholar has entered the AI revolution. Google Scholar PDF reader now utilizes generative AI powered by Google’s Gemini AI tool to create interactive outlines of research papers and provide direct links to sources within the paper. This is designed to make reading the relevant parts of the research paper more efficient, says Anurag Acharya, who co-founded Google Scholar on November 18, 2004, twenty years ago last month.

In honor of Google Scholar’s 20th anniversary, Acharya shares how teachers and their students can make best use of the new AI features available through the Chrome extension Google Scholar PDF reader.

Google Scholar’s New AI Tool: Making Human Research More Efficient Before AI

A former professor of computer science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Acharya grew up in India. As a student, he was frustrated by the lack of access to research materials available in India. When he came to the U.S., he says he stepped off the plane a better researcher than he was in India.

“I got access to resources, I didn't become smarter,” he says.

But even in the U.S., access to much-needed scholarly material was often difficult to find for scholars and researchers in various fields. Acharya and his Google Scholar co-founder Alex Versta, realized that this was slowing down research. They decided to take the lessons they had learned by developing Google search and apply that to the world of academic papers, research, and study. The goal was to make it more efficient for all researchers to build upon existing research, Acharya says. It has also helped make academic work more accessible to students, educators, and general enthusiasts. But AI is now allowing the tool to take things one step further.

Utilizing AI For Deeper Research

“Scholar, for a long time, has been focused on helping you find things,” Acharya says. “There are lots of different ways in which we help people find things. Finding research is a key component, but reading and understanding and following up is another very significant part of building on other people's research.”

The AI-powered Google Scholar PDF reader is designed to help people navigate each individual paper itself, Acharya says. It does this a number of ways.

For example, anyone who has done research has come across a citation they want to examine. But when you’re reading the paper this usually comes in the form of a bracketed reference, and you have to look it up in the citations section of the paper. Then you need to copy and paste that other paper’s name.

“You put it in some other search service and hopefully you can find some way to get to that paper,” Acharya says. Google Scholar PDF turns that initial reference into a link and makes navigating to that second paper easy.

Additionally, Google Scholar PDF uses AI to create an annotated table of contents for each paper. Typically, a table of contents is just section headings, says Acharya, but this creates quick descriptions of what’s in each section of the paper with bullet points. You can then click on these bullet points to navigate directly to that portion of the paper.

“So you can skim the parts that you want to skim, and you can go into detail for the parts you want to go into detail or decide that 'I know enough about this and I don't need it,'” Acharya says. He adds the tool might help make a long paper less intimidating for a student who is researching this type of topic for the first time.

The Future of Generative AI As An Aid To Research

Acharya says generative AI’s ability to understand language so well is one of the features that makes these models so powerful.

“The fundamental ability to understand language will enable us to do many more things,” Acharya says. “First is finding and reading. Second is to basically be able to comprehend an entire group.”

For Google Scholar, Acharya would like to see generative AI be able to quickly summarize research that is related to whatever paper a person happens to be reading. This could identify the research that seems to contradict that paper as well as new research that has appeared since it was published. Right now doing this isn’t possible, but Acharya has built his career on asking complicated and difficult questions and ultimately figuring out the answers to them.

Ultimately, Acharya is excited by the new era of generative AI. “It's a wonderful time to be able to be participating in these efforts. There’s so much possible,” he says. “I think we have only scratched the surface, so I look forward to what is yet to come.”

• 6 Google Scholar Tips From Its Co-Creator
• Google Gemini: How Google’s New AI Can Change Teaching

Google Learn About is a new experimental AI-driven platform available that provides digestible and in-depth knowledge about various topics, but showcases it all in an educational context. Described by Google as a “conversational learning companion,” it is essentially a Wikipedia-style chatbot/search engine, and then some.

In addition to having a variety of already-created topics and leading questions (in areas such as history, arts, culture, biology, and physics) the tool allows you to enter prompts using either text or an image. It then provides a general overview/answer, and then suggests additional questions, topics, and more to explore in regard to the initial subject.

The idea is for student use is that the AI can help guide a deeper learning process rather than just provide static answers.

So let’s see what I learned about Google Learn About.

Learn About: Trying Text Search

I tested Learn About by simply typing “Benedict Arnold” into the search bar under “What would you like to learn today?”

In addition to a biographical thumbnail with multiple images (all credited with sources), Learn About provided related topics for Benedict Arnold and the American Revolution (in the left side bar), including various events in his life, reasons behind his betrayal of the American cause, and other impacts.

In the main section below the biography, the next section that comes up is “Why It Matters,” which provides a brief overview of how Arnold’s treasonous turn has impacted U.S. history. It also offers a “Test Your Knowledge” multiple choice question regarding which fort Arnold tried to hand over to the British. Clicking on an answer provides extra details about Arnold’s exploits.

Scrolling down provided a gallery of more sources, including a link to the Wikipedia page, multiple videos, and content from other vetted sources such as History.com, the National Park Service, and Biography.com. It also offers options to simplify, go deeper, or get images.

Also provided are follow-up questions about Arnold, such as “What led him to betray the Americans?” and “What happened to Arnold after he switched sides?” Selecting one of the choices here brings up an interactive list of topics for more exploration and various sources.

Going deeper, more interactive features are provided, such as “Common Misconceptions,” “Build Your Vocabulary,” and “Stop and Think.”

It’s easy to see how Learn About could be a dynamic research partner for a student. It parses out information to discourage any sort of “copy-and-paste” book report-like results, and also encourages a bit of deeper thinking and focus to navigate the topic at hand. The inclusion of interactive features also is more engaging than a static web page or even AI-generated report.

By the way, selecting any of the prompts on the Learn About homepage offers a similar choose-your-own-path learning experience, with all the same kinds of features, interactives, and sourced content.

Trying the Learn About Image Search

Curious about this approach, I tried the Learn About image search by uploading the image of an engraving of Benedict Arnold by H.B. Hall, taken from Wikimedia Commons, which is one of the most cited images of Arnold. I was given the option of drawing on the image or using the text prompt box, which I opted for and typed, “Who is this?”

Unfortunately, the image was incorrectly identified as George Washington, and all the various features and options that I previously described for Arnold were provided but focused on Washington.

I then retried the image upload and asked, “Is this Benedict Arnold?” This time, it correctly identified Arnold, and then followed the content/interactive cycle previously described.

I tried a third Arnold image upload, and this time used the pen tool to write “Who is this?” on the image. Learn About replied, “You've circled a portrait of a person! Would you like to learn more about famous figures in history, or perhaps a different topic?” So not a right or wrong answer, just an indication that Learn About needs a bit more tweaking and testing for its image-reading feature.

Wondering if it was maybe the image selected, I tried a different portrait of Benedict Arnold, this one a well-known formal portrait painted by Thomas Hart in 1776, and also obtained through Wikimedia Commons. Again, I asked, "Who is this?"

Unfortunately, once again Learn About misidentified the subject, saying, "This is a portrait of Marquis de Lafayette, a French aristocrat and military officer who was a key figure in the American Revolutionary War." Followed by all the content features and interactives focused on Lafayette.

Again, this is another indication that more testing and experimenting needs to be done for this particular search aspect of Learn About.

Ultimately, Google Learn About is a choose-your-own-adventure type of learning experience, with a seemingly endless amount of choices and paths through what appears to be quality, curated content, all powered by Google. It still has a little ways to go in its testing phase, but it seems to be on track to be a more helpful learning resource for students than a cold Google search or a static Wikipedia page.

• What is Wikipedia and How Can it Be Used to Teach? Tips & Tricks
• CS First: How to Use It to Teach

Having a uniform set of platforms in a school or district helps everyone learn how to best utilize what is available. Making a drastic change to that can be a jarring, unwelcome move for most, even when it’s deemed a necessary step forward.

Here we speak with Kathi Kersznowski, educational technology specialist at Washington Township Public Schools in New Jersey, about how she helped her district switch from Microsoft to Google, some of the steps she took to ensure a smooth transition, and what other schools and districts should know if they are looking to make a switch as well.

Kathi was recently recognized for Best Example of Professional Development at a Tech & Learning Regional Leadership Summit with an Innovative Leader Award.

One Small Step for a District

The idea to switch from one technological ecosystem to another doesn’t come lightly, but every great change starts with a spark. Even if the change is small, it can have massive ramifications if everyone is not on the same page.

“We got a new superintendent last year, and the new superintendent came from a Google district,” says Kersznowski. “He wanted us to be a Google district as well. So we knew it was coming. We had a year to do a turnaround. I have a team of three other people that work with me, it’s just the four of us. We were tasked with making this happen.”

WTPS is a district of nearly 8,000 students with six elementary schools, three middle schools, one large high school, and two preschools, so that transition seemed daunting at first.

“There’s so many people to train, so many to teach,” recalls Kersznowski. “It’s new for the teachers, it’s new for the students. Then we realized it’s new for the secretaries and the administrative assistants as well. We had a lot of people to get this knowledge into. It’s a big shift when you go from Microsoft to Google. Word translates to Docs, and Excel to Sheets, so there’s compatibility with a lot of products, but it works very differently in many ways.”

Embracing “Google Day”

Switching to another technology ecosystem isn’t uncommon. However, some districts may be put off from making the change because of the overall headache it may produce. So how did Kersznowski and her team overcome typical challenges associated with a shift in technology for a whole district?

“I’ll tell you what the best thing is that other districts could do if they want to replicate this,” says Kersznowski. “We had Google turned on last year. The official switchover date wasn’t until the middle of the summer, but we had Google turned on by February 16th of last year, which was a full day in-service for the whole district. As a tech team, we asked for permission to have that day, then we commandeered it and called it Google Day. We wore shirts that had Google day on them. We spent months planning for what this was going to look like, but the fact that we had it turned on last February gave us a sandbox where we could play with it. The only things we didn’t turn on were Gmail and Calendar because those were still running in Microsoft Outlook.”

What was the benefit of having extra time to work with the Google ecosystem?

“With Google Day, we wanted to find out what the core things were that every single person is going to need to know to survive in Google,” says Kersznowski. “We identified those things as Google Drive, the Chrome OS, Google Calendar and Gmail, and the overall app suite. Those were the core things that everyone had to take a session in. We offered live sessions and we offered recorded sessions. Everybody had to take at least two live sessions. We wanted people in person to interact and discuss.”

And how do you deal with pushback?

“Change is hard,” says Kersznowski. “So it would have been the same pushback if we had gone from Google to Microsoft or anything else. People are resistant [to change]. But the fact that we got them PD and training and support so early on, and gave them a place to play, work, and learn, [that was helpful for the transition.]”

Making such a big change for a school, let alone a whole district, can be a daunting task to undertake. But, as Kersznowski and her team have proven, with proper planning and plenty of time to learn the technology, you can set your district up for success as well.

• Innovative Leader Award
• Regional Leadership Summit

Google NotebookLM isn't just another note-taking app, folks. Well, it is, but it’s also an AI powerhouse that can supercharge your lessons, engage students in exciting new ways, and – wait for it – help you create amazing podcasts!

Beyond the Notes: Why NotebookLM is a Game-Changer

Okay, before we get to the podcasting magic, let's touch on what makes NotebookLM so special. Think of it as your own personal research assistant. You can upload documents, slide decks, articles, books, and even videos, and NotebookLM will:

• Summarize key information: No more spending hours sifting through dense texts.
• Generate useful text formats: FAQs, study guides, briefings, timelines.
• Answer your questions: Have a conversation with the content and get instant insights from your uploaded materials.

But the showstopper is this: The built-in podcasting feature!

Imagine This!

• Turning historical documents with different perspectives into engaging audio dramas.
• Uploading a student assignment into NotebookLM and generating a podcast that gives students a deep dive into their work.
• Creating a podcast from a slide deck lesson to help reinforce student learning.
• Enabling students to better understand the books they are reading by providing a deep dive podcast.
• Providing students with an analysis of a learning portfolio they’ve created.

NotebookLM can take any text and transform it into a high-quality podcast. This opens up a whole new world of possibilities for student learning, including:

• Boost comprehension: Auditory learning is especially important for students who struggle with traditional reading.
• Spark engagement: Podcasts are fun, dynamic, and perfect for today's media-savvy learners.
• Evaluate Information: Students develop critical thinking skills and learn to evaluate information effectively by listening to different perspectives and interpretations in podcasts.
• Synthesize Ideas: NotebookLM can generate podcasts that synthesize information from multiple sources, helping students connect ideas and develop a deeper understanding of complex topics.

Want to Hear a Sample?

I created several podcasts to check this tool out and have shared some below. One of my favorite podcasts was made from sharing my yearly credit card statement. The podcasters took a deep dive into my spending habits, but I’ll keep that one private.

Note that you must be logged into a Google Account to listen. Some schools, districts, and businesses do not have this feature turned on, so you may need to use your personal account. Currently, there is no cost to use this product.

• Podcast created from my article on banning cell phones
• Podcast created from my LinkedIn profile
• Podcast created from my book about the history of schooling in America

Ready To Get Started?

I know. You're already juggling a million things. But NotebookLM is worth exploring. Head over to https://notebooklm.google.com and start experimenting! Not sure how to use it? No worries. I created this easy step-by-step guide.

• Podcast Praise: Connecting Teachers and Community
• Podcasting for Educators

Google.org recently announced a new AI-centric funding program that will provide equitable access to artificial intelligence for both students and teachers. Part of the more than $25 million contribution will be allocated to ISTE for the creation of GenerationAI, an initiative that will educate teachers on proper AI use within their classrooms.

For this initiative, ISTE is partnering with the National Education Association (NEA), Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), Center for Black Educator Development (CBED), Latinos for Education (L4E), Indigitize, and Playlab. The goal is to reach educators across the country through high-quality professional learning on AI, specifically created by and for educators.

Tara Nattrass, Managing Director, Innovation Strategy, ISTE + ASCD, discusses the importance of GenerationAI and how it will achieve the goal of reaching educators nationwide on AI.

Expanding the Conversation of AI

Introducing AI into the classroom has been at the forefront of the recent technology movement. Instead of blindly following trends, ISTE wants to take charge by leading the conversation on AI with the GenerationAI initiative.

“One of our big goals in working with our partners is to build identity-affirming communities of practice,” says Nattrass. “The communities of practice are going to be with teachers, building leaders, and district leaders. It will give educators within those communities an opportunity to explore those opportunities and risks related to AI and also identify some of the challenges of practice that they see. [The goal is to] come up with solutions and resources that can be used across the field.”

GenerationAI will help to close the knowledge gap surrounding AI in education. It will help educate teachers and students while making the classroom experience simpler, helping teachers and students connect more effectively.

Four Keys to Empowering Educators with GenerationAI

GenerationAI hopes to achieve its goals through four core principles, according to Nattrass:

- Understanding AI: “We know we need to build AI literacy for both teachers and students,” she says. “[Students] are interested in guidance around responsible use and around educational applications and the things that they can be using AI for to help them in their learning. [This is] versus the things that may be more harmful to them in their learning.”

- Using AI to Enhance Teaching and Learning: Giving teachers the ability to enhance their teaching methods through AI use can help give teachers back more time in the classroom. AI can also play a large part in helping students understand their work by uniquely appealing to individual students’ needs.

- Amplifying Educator Voices: Teachers will be dealing with technology and AI continuously going forward, so it is important to understand their needs in the developing medium. The best way to cater AI services to the classroom is to understand how to best help educators reach their students, perform their duties, and achieve their goals.

- Strengthening AI Dialogue in Education: From the early days of AI in education, the dialogue about its use in the classroom has fluctuated wildly. GenerationAI looks to help normalize the conversation around AI to help everyone better understand how AI works and what it can do for both students and teachers in education.

What Will GenerationAI Consist Of?

GenerationAI has the daunting task of bringing a well-rounded AI conversation to educators, students, and administrators from all over.

“The goal is to reach over 200,000 educators over the next three years,” Nattrass says. “As we are doing the work within the communities of practice, as well as some of the foundational learning experiences that we’re going to be providing through courses and other things, educators are going to be helping to build this. We’re calling it a hub of innovation and creativity, where they’re capturing case studies, videos, frameworks, and other resources that can then support other educators.”

AI is a hot topic right now, and in one way or another, everyone is jumping on the bandwagon. ISTE + ASCD, however, are looking to create a framework for the future, helping teachers adapt AI in the classroom, helping students understand work better through AI, and helping to clarify how AI helps and is being used in education.

Since the pandemic and the more recent AI evolution, Google Classroom has added many new features. Most are aimed at helping educators serve students better while using the popular education tool that turned 10 on August 14.

Akshat Sharma, a group product manager for Google Classroom, shares his favorite new features and discusses how teachers and/or students can best utilize these.

When it comes to AI features, these are vetted by educators who participate in the Google for Education pilot program to test new technologies, including AI applications.

1. Interactive Questions on YouTube

YouTube is incredibly popular with teachers and students, which is why Sharma and the Google Classroom team are excited about the new ability built into Google Classrooms to quickly and easily allow educators to embed questions within YouTube.

“You can add questions at any time stamp,” Sharma says. These questions can be multiple choice, true or false, or short answer, and can provide instant feedback to students and give teachers data on how these were answered.

Popular AI videos also have AI-generated questions added automatically, giving teachers a jumping-off point. “The student will receive real-time feedback and can go back and rewatch segments if they need to to help them arrive at the right answer,” Sharma says.

2. Read Along

Read Along is an AI tutoring product aimed at helping students increase their reading abilities. “About 65 percent of students globally can’t read at their grade level,” Sharma says. “We are really thinking about how AI can play a major role in supporting students in their journey of reading.”

Read Along allows students to read various stories aloud. The tool will highlight the word they’re reading and offer computer-generated voice feedback as they go. The tool also encourages student success and gently points out and corrects words they might miss.

“The core idea here is we’re making it very easy for educators to support every child’s individual reading education through this AI-enabled tutor,” Sharma says. “You get real-time feedback as a student as you’re reading out loud, plus on the teacher side, you get automated insights.”

3. Google Classroom Groups

Teachers are constantly telling the Google team that they want more opportunities to differentiate learning for students, Sharma says. The new groups feature in Google Classroom grew from that.

“The idea here is that educators can define groups of students inside Classroom,” Sharma says. “When they’re assigning any of the content they can choose to assign to any of the groups instead of the entire class. That provides flexibility in how teachers might want to differentiate content. For example, if you have a set of students who are English language learners, you might want to provide some specific resources for an assignment. Or you might have a set of students who are still emerging readers and you want to create a Read Along version of that assignment.”

The new feature makes it much easier for students to run a classroom and assign materials where one size definitely does not fit all.

4. Gemini in Classroom

Gemini, Google’s most prominent generative AI technology, is now built into the teacher experience in Google Classroom. The tool within Classroom has been specifically tailored to teacher needs and can help educators kickstart their lesson ideas and brainstorm activities, making differentiating for students easier, Sharma says.

The tool also has careful safeguards in place. It does not help with grading, for instance, and is not available to students.

“AI is another tool in the tool kit but what we’re really trying to do here is make sure we can solve the educator and student’s needs,” Sharma says. “Teachers have always wanted to differentiate more in the class to meet the needs of varied learners, but it has been very hard for a variety of reasons. One of the reasons has been that curating content, creating content for specific needs has been hard, but with AI we think that becomes more possible.”

• Google Gemini: How Google's New AI Can Change Teaching
• Google for Education Certification and Exams

Google has announced that it has implemented a new form of artificial intelligence for use on varying amounts of data, allowing for the dissemination of large amounts of complex data into actionable information. Once known solely as Bard, the new AI is called Gemini, and it has been upgraded in almost every aspect to become Google’s main footprint in the generative AI space.

Many people know Google as the premier way to look up information online, while others may see it as the creator of various tools and applications, such as Youtube. Now Google will be able to strengthen its position with AI by creating a platform that handles data in a way that feels more helpful for those who need it.

Understanding what Google Gemini is, how it operates, and how it can be utilized in the educational space, can go a long way in ingratiating AI to educators on a grander scale.

What is Google Gemini? 

Google Gemini is an advancement on Bard, Google’s existing AI. According to Demis Hassabis, CEO and Co-Founder of Google DeepMind, Gemini is Google’s way of creating “a new generation of AI models, inspired by the way people understand and interact with the world.” 

The main feature of Google Gemini is its multimodal build. This makes it different from other AI builds as it allows Gemini the ability to understand, combine, and work across multiple forms of data. This includes text, code, images, videos, and audio. 

Gemini also touts flexibility and accessibility as a benefit to ensure everyone with a smart device can use the AI model. Google has designed Gemini in three different sizes: Gemini Nano for smaller tasks; Gemini Pro for midrange tasks; and Gemini Ultra for large-scale tasks. According to Google, anyone can access these AI models regardless of what device you use to do so.

Gemini’s Impact On Education 

Google tests Gemini with understanding and problem-solving tasks to benchmark its ability to assist in daily activities of varying difficulty. According to these tests, Gemini touts outstanding scores in the areas of reasoning, math, coding, and more.

Given the way Gemini was developed, it can understand text, images, audio, video, and more, simultaneously. This helps it to understand more complex information and provide solutions to more complex problems. This can have an immense impact on education and can be a helpful tool for educators and for students.

For example, students may find a useful tutor with Google Gemini. With its ability to understand large amounts of complex information, making sense of mathematical and scientific problems in a way students can understand might be critical to overcoming educational roadblocks. 

With Gemini, teachers can quickly analyze years of grades to better understand a student’s academic journey. A new multimodal approach could help influence lesson plans that target overall and individual weaknesses in student learning habits. Gemini might even be able to provide insight about the best path forward for a student in their educational career through higher education and beyond.

Addressing Security and Accuracy Issues 

Gemini is a bold step forward for Google, and while the ways it can be used are myriad, AI will always raise questions about the accuracy of the information being given and the security of the information being put in.

According to Google, “Real Toxicity Prompts” are used to help build a content safety foundation during Gemini’s learning phases. 

To clarify how Google prioritizes safety with Gemini, Hassabi said, “To limit harm, we built dedicated safety classifiers to identify, label, and sort out content involving violence or negative stereotypes, for example.” 

While Gemini will be used by many all over the world, implementing these safety measures will ensure that students have access to an AI tool with adequate safeguards in place. 

As AI continues to grow in the education space, it becomes more important to understand how it can benefit educators and students without distraction or intrusion. Google looks to provide a powerful tool that can be used in multiple ways in the Gemini AI. How both educators and students use Gemini to enhance the learning experience moving forward will be exciting to watch.

• Bringing AI, STEM and Robots To American Samoa
• Microsoft Copilot: How To Use It To Teach

GAT+ by GAT Labs, a comprehensive security and management platform for educational institutions, recently secured the Best of 2023 Award of Excellence from Tech and Learning in the Secondary School category. This recognition is a testament to GAT+'s innovative approach to enhancing the digital educational experience through deep integration with Google Classroom and pioneering developments in monitoring student assignments.

GAT+ unveils several new features, including:

• Deep integration with Google Classroom. This groundbreaking integration provides automatic classroom awareness and extends to detailed reporting capabilities at all levels of the educational hierarchy, including a global overview valuable for Principals. This allows for a more cohesive and insightful understanding of classroom dynamics and student engagement, streamlining administrative duties and enhancing the educational process. 
• Monitor Student Assignments When Off-Line: This new feature revolutionizes how teachers assign and monitor student work. Through it, educators can now monitor a student's real-time progress on assignments or tests in Google Docs, even in their absence. This development not only bolsters academic integrity but also ensures that students receive the necessary guidance and support, regardless of the physical presence of their teachers. 

Designed with Google Workspace for Education in mind, GAT+ seamlessly pulls live metadata through Google’s API, offering deep insights into user activity, email traffic, and document sharing. This ensures a secure digital learning environment and empowers educators and administrators with advanced monitoring and analysis tools. The platform's ability to provide real-time insights into student engagement and performance is particularly beneficial for remote teaching scenarios, allowing for a tailored educational experience that meets individual student needs.

2023 also saw GAT+ introduce features to enhance digital security and privacy, reduce administrative workloads, and provide insightful analytics for personalized learning. These features include managing drive-sharing expirations, securing communication channels, and optimizing cost through efficient license management.

GAT+ stands out for its diverse functionalities, including audit and reporting, advanced security and data management, educational tools and workflow integration. Continuous updates and Chromebook insights ensure that GAT+ remains at the forefront of educational technology solutions.

Go here to learn more about GAT+ 

The best Google Chrome extensions for teachers are here to make life easier. Since  most are free, work within the Chrome browser, and are in many cases, specifically designed for educational needs, these can serve classroom use perfectly.

Chrome is not only available across devices but is designed to work very well with Chrome devices, commonly used in schools. The idea is to get app-style services right there within the browser -- so you won't need a powerful computer to enjoy all the functionality.

From marking work to creating presentations for the class to assessing progress, there are lots of apps built to support the teaching process. Crucially, these extensions are helpful for both teachers and students to save time, enhance learning, and make the digital space more engaging.

This guide aims to lay out some of the best Google Chrome extensions for teachers right now.

• Google Classroom Review
• Google Classroom Clean-up Tips

Best Google Chrome Extensions for Teachers: Grammarly

Grammarly is a great Chrome extension for students and teachers to use. The basic version is free, with a few premium options, and it works really well. It will check spelling and grammar anywhere that typing happens in Chrome.

That includes typing in a search bar, writing in a document in Docs, composing an email, or even working within other Chrome extensions. Errors get underlined in red so the student can see the mistake and how to correct it.

A really helpful feature here is that Grammarly will email the students a list of their most common mistakes for that week, along with writing statistics and areas of focus. Also useful for teachers to get a view on the week gone by.

Best Chrome Extensions: Kami

Kami is a great Chrome extension for any teacher who wants to go paperless. This allows you to upload PDFs from your desktop or via Google Drive, for editing digitally.

Annotate, mark, and highlight the PDF using a virtual pen before easily having it saved, ready to return to students digitally. A really useful system for use within the Google Classroom ecosystem.

Kami also allows you to setup a blank PDF that can be used as a virtual whiteboard – ideal for remote learning as it can be presented via Zoom or Google Meet, live.

Best Chrome Extensions: Dualless

Dualless is one of the best Chrome extensions for teachers as it's built for presentations. It allows you to split your screen into two, with one half for the presentation that's being seen by others, and one half for your eyes only.

Dualless is a great way to present to a classroom remotely while still keeping an eye on the class by having the video chat windows open in the other section. Of course, the bigger the screen here, the better.

Best Chrome Extensions: Mote

Add voice notes and vocal feedback to student documents and notes with Mote. Rather than editing digitally, or even physically, you can simply add audio to student work submissions for them to listen to.

Mote is a great way to provide a more personal touch to student work feedback. It also allows for a more clear explanation that can be laid out quickly for students. Mote works on Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Classroom, and can transcribe audio with more than 15 languages supported.

Best Chrome Extensions: Screencastify

If you could benefit from recording your screen, then Screencastify is the Chrome extension for you. This works on a computer but can also be used in app from on smartphones. It lets you record the screen for up to five minutes, in Chrome extension form, while being saved automatically to your Google Drive.

This is a great way to provide guidance for students navigating a task. You can just record it and send that video, using a quick link, rather than having to write an explanation. Since it's recorded, the student can refer back to it as often as needed.

Best Chrome Extensions: Reactions

Reactions is one of the best Chrome extensions for teachers who run remote learning with Google Meet. It allows you to keep students muted but still get feedback in the form of emojis.

You can then get some more interactivity without slowing down instruction pacing by going off topic. Students can use a simple thumbs-up, for example, if you want to get them to check-in so you know they're following along.

Best Chrome Extensions: Random Student Generator

The Random Student Generator for Google Classroom is a nice way to pick students to answer questions, in an unbiased way. Ideal for use in virtual classrooms in which perhaps layout can change, unlike in a physical room.

Since this is built for Google Classroom, the integration is seamless, allowing it to work with the roster of your class. You don't have to input any information as this will just work to pick out students, at random.

Best Chrome Extensions: Diigo

Diigo is a good tool for highlighting and annotating online text. Not only does it allow you to do that on a webpage, with it remaining when you come back later, but it also saves all your work to an online account for access when needed.

This is useful both for students and teachers. Bookmark for reading later, archive highlights and stickies, screenshot to share pages, and markup all through this one extension that works across devices. So if you later revisit on your phone, all the notes you made on your laptop will still be there.

Best Google Chrome Extensions for Teachers: InsertLearning

The InsertLearning Google Chrome extension offers a great way to make websites more interactive. Crucially, teachers can add questions to a webpage as well as discussions to help get students actively engaged. 

So not only does this offer a way to go beyond simple reading of a webpage, but also represents a way of helping students learn in a more long-term way.

Usefully, this lets students answer your questions on a site, but also highlight and make notes, so that they can better use the resource in their own ways. 

• Google Classroom Review
• Google Classroom Clean-up Tips

Vivek Chachcha, product manager for Google Workspace for Education, has advice for those looking to incorporate Duet AI into their teaching: experiment. 

“In order to figure out how it can help you the most, it’s important to try new prompts, ideas, and ways of interacting with Duet,” says Chachcha, of Google’s recently released AI model, which is the most powerful the tech giant has made available so far. 

Duet AI is integrated across many products available in Google Workspace for Education, including tools such as Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets. While not currently available to students through Google Education, Duet AI provides plenty of teaching opportunities. 

Here are 6 ways how to incorporate Duet AI into your teaching, according to Chachcha. 

1. Teaching With Duet AI: Use it To Write a Lesson Plan  

Lesson planning is one quick and easy way to take Duet AI for a test drive. 

“Duet AI can create that first draft and save you precious minutes,” Chachcha says. 

To do this, go to Google Docs and select the “Help Me Write” feature, which should appear as an option as soon as you enter text. Similarly, you can use Duet to draft quiz questions, emails, and more. 

2. Use Duet AI To Create Timelines, Itemize, and More  

Similarly, teachers can experiment with Duet in sheets. The Duet sidebar will appear on the right-hand side panel and will offer to help perform many different tasks. 

“Duet in Sheets can help you create timelines, map dependencies, and itemize the tasks,” Chachcha says. The tool can also help create formulas for different spreadsheet calculations. 

3. Use Duet AI For Summarization  

“Ever dread returning to a full inbox after a conference, a sick day or a vacation?” Chachcha asks. “Educators have so many emails and docs to look through. Duet can help summarize that content to make it easier to sift through.”  

This can be done by selecting the Duet AI tab icon – located next to the gear settings icon. That will open up a dialog sidebar with the AI that includes suggested prompts such as “What’s this email about?” 

4. Remember It’s Not Currently Available to Students Through Google Education 

“Right now, our focus with Duet is empowering educators,” Chachcha says. “Currently, we are limiting access to these tools to 18+ users because we’ve heard feedback that schools want the chance to rigorously test these tools in their school environments.”  

In the meantime, students can learn from materials a teacher creates with the help of AI. 

5. Make Your Voice Heard on How This Technology Evolves  

One common concern from some educators is the potential technologies such as Duet AI have to allow students to cheat. 

“The goal with any education technology is not to encourage cheating but to support students outside their class time, when they don’t have access to teachers, costly tutors or another trusted educator,” Chachcha says. “We are hearing from teachers that they broadly understand how to structure their assessments to proctor situations when open web access isn’t allowed, and are experts in coaching students on how to appropriately use online resources in other situations. Still, we are partnering with teacher communities, education organizations, and experts to understand their perspectives and gain feedback as the technology and usage evolves.”  

6.  Use it For More Than Writing 

“Duet is most often understood as writing because that’s the easiest connection to draw, but it has so much more to offer,” Chachcha says. “You can pick any subject -- it can help you write a practice quiz for fifth-grade geometry, a summary on historical events you’re teaching in tenth-grade history, or an explanation of why the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell for all of us who may have forgotten in the years since eighth-grade biology. The goal with Duet AI is to help elevate the educators so they can focus on what’s truly important to them.”  

• Duet AI for Google Workspace: How to Use It for Teaching
• 7 Ways to Detect AI Writing Without Technology

Google recently released Gemini, its most powerful AI model to date, in the tech giant’s latest effort to catch up to Microsoft-backed rival OpenAI in the burgeoning AI education arms race. 

Unlike OpenAI’s GPT technology, which is trained on text, images, etc. separately, Gemini was trained simultaneously on text, video, audio, and code, which Google believes will give its new AI the upper hand when it comes to working with images, audio, video etc. 

However, like so much with the rapid development of AI, exactly what Gemini is, how you can use it, and how all of this will impact education, is still a bit murky. 

To help sift through some of that, I’ve been experimenting with a version of Gemini and think it’s an impressive new model but not yet any kind of game-changer for educators. On the positive side, it does seem to have more resistance to cheating than ChatGPT (it repeatedly refused to write a paper for me when prompted). 

Here’s everything educators need to know about Gemini, Google’s new AI model, Gemini. 

What is Google's Gemini?  

Gemini is the latest and greatest AI model from Google, and if Google’s PR efforts are to be believed, a revolutionary piece of technology. 

Ultimately, the model will have three versions: Gemini Pro, which is already powering many Google tools, including its integrated chatbot Bard; Gemini Nano, which is designed to run off-line on Android devices; and Gemini Ultra, the most-powerful-but-yet-to-be-released version of Gemini. 

In Google’s tests, Gemini Ultra outperformed GPT-4 on standard AI benchmarks in 30 of 32 categories, including tests on subjects such as physics and professional law. However, some analysts point out this performance is not quite the slam dunk Google is billing it as. On many of the tests, Gemini Ultra only scored a little bit higher, and GPT-4 is currently available to the public while Gemini Ultra is not. 

As Bloomberg columnist Parmy Olson puts it: “In other words, Google’s top AI model has only made narrow improvements on something that OpenAI completed work on at least a year ago.” 

How Can I Use Gemini to Teach?  

Gemini is now powering Bard. So if you already have access to Bard, you’re all set. 

To get access to Bard visit bard.google.com from a personal Google account and you’ll be prompted to sign up. To use the tool you need to be over 18, and if you’re using a work Google account, access needs to be approved by an administrator.  

How Will Gemini Impact Education?  

As I said at the top, it’s not exactly a game-changer in the way ChatGPT was when it was released at the end of 2022. But to my eyes, Gemini-powered Bard is a clear improvement over the previous version. GPT-4 used to easily outshine Bard for my uses but now the two models are very close, and Bard might even be a little better.

For example, I tried to get Bard to write a short discussion board post for me that was based on a prompt from one of my introductory composition classes. I wrote:  “My teacher has asked me to write an essay about a character from a movie that inspired me. Can you write about how Luke Skywalker inspired me?” 

When Bard responded with suggestions and a potential outline, I wrote back, “Can’t you just write it for me?” Bard responded: “While I can definitely help you brainstorm and structure your essay, I wouldn't feel comfortable writing it entirely for you. The purpose of an essay is not only to showcase your understanding of a topic, but also to express your own unique voice and perspective.” 

Bard then offered to help as my “writing coach” and offered some solid, if basic, suggestions about how I might write the essay myself when prompted. 

“Identify specific qualities or moments in Luke's journey that resonated deeply with you,” Bard suggested. “Was it his initial yearning for adventure, his struggles with doubt and fear, his unwavering belief in the good within himself and others, or his eventual triumph over darkness? Think about how these qualities or moments have impacted your own life.” 

Overall, the proliferation of AI tools means the technology is ever more accessible to students and, at this point, almost hard to avoid. That makes it even more incumbent on us as teachers to work on teaching responsible AI use and exploring with students what exactly this should look like. Teachers and their students should also explore how AI can be helpful and detrimental as a study aid. 

Many of us are exploring these questions and having these conversations with colleagues — let’s remember to make students part of the conversation. 

• What is Google Bard? The ChatGPT Competitor Explained for Educators
• 8 AI Tools for Summarizing and Reviewing
• Developing AI Pedagogical Practices

Anurag Acharya co-created Google Scholar in 2004. The Google engineer and former professor of computer science at the University of California at Santa Barbara was inspired to create the free search tool after being frustrated by being unable to access research articles as a student at the Kharagpur campus of the Indian Institute of Technology. 

Today, Acharya is head of Google Scholar and an authority on how the scholarly search engine can best be used by teachers and their students. He offers these tips and best practices for teachers to use and share with their students. 

1. Teaching With Google Scholar: Use The “Related Searches” Feature  

One way to dig deeper into a topic, especially for students who may not be familiar with a field’s specialized terminology, is to use the “Related Searches” feature, Acharya says. 

For instance, if you or a student start with a general search term, say “tutoring,” Google Scholar will display results for that term. But if you scroll down a bit you’ll also see a heading saying “Related Searches.” Under this heading will be more specific commonly searched terms associated with your search. In this example, the related terms include terms such as “mentoring tutoring” and “peer tutoring.” 

Some of these associated terms might help a student hone their search. “It allows you to explore easily, and it is sort of a topic map,” Acharya says. 

2. Search by “Related Articles”  

Under each Google Scholar result, there is a “related articles” link that will take you to similar articles that might utilize different key phrases than what you searched. This can help you narrow or focus your search on a particular sub-area of your initial search, Acharya says. 

For instance in our search of “tutoring” articles, clicking on the “related articles” link under “peer tutoring” brings up more peer tutoring research and steers you away from other types of tutoring research.

3. Search by Author and Follow Authors

Once you’ve found useful articles, clicking on the author link and going to their Google Scholar profile can often help you find other work from the same researcher. “The authors may actually do other work that is only slightly related, so therefore may not be using the same terms,” Acharya says. 

Google Scholar lets you select researchers to follow, which can be a great way for teachers and more advanced students to stay on top of topics of interest. Google Scholar also lets you opt to receive email alerts regarding new articles by the author, new citations to the author, and new articles related to the author's work.

4. Learn to Recognize Which Articles Are Available 

“A challenge for scholarly articles always is, 'Are you able to actually read what you find?'” Acharya says. “A lot of the things are by subscription only.” 

To help with this, Google Scholar provides two columns of results, unlike a traditional Google search. On the center of your screen, you’ll get the regular link to the articles that come up in your search. However, on the right-hand side, you’ll see links to PDF or HTML versions of the article that you should have access to. 

“We merge the articles that are available to everybody, and all the articles that are available to you based on your institutional subscription,” Acharya says. “So if your college, your school or school system, or your public library has access, then this gets automatically integrated into the search results.” 

5. Search for Review Articles 

Teachers can explain to students how review articles summarize other studies or material on a given topic. As such, they can provide an excellent overview of research, Acharya says. 

Google Scholar provides two ways in which people can search particularly for review articles. One way is to select “review articles” on the left hand side of the screen. You can also just type your topic word followed by the word "review." This second method will bring up slightly different results but in most cases the quality of the search is comparable, Acharya says.   

6.  Use Google Scholar to Generate Citations  

This tip is one students will be particularly interested in. Under each Google Scholar search result is the word “cite.” Clicking on this will provide citation results in various styles, including MLA, APA, and other common academic citation styles. “You can just paste it into the paper that you're writing,” Acharya says. However, he understands some teachers might bristle at using this type of shortcut. 

“It depends on what the goal of the course is. Personally, I'm not really sure that having people learn the minutiae of styles is that useful,” he says. ”There's so much more to learn about information, the evaluation of information, how to collate it, how to combine it, which would I would think would be far more powerful and useful to students in their future lives."

• How To Use Google Earth For Teaching
• Google for Education Identifies 3 New Education Trends

Google Classroom add-ons are a new feature from Google Classroom designed to allow educators to seamlessly use other edtech tools in conjunction with Google’s popular learning platform. 

This integration is designed to save both students and teachers time by doing away with the multiple sign-ins previously required if they wanted to utilize Google Classroom and additional tools. 

In a recent announcement about the new feature, Google said it was initially partnering with 18 tools for Google Classroom add-ons. The first 18 Google Classroom add-ons are some of the most popular edtech tools, including Edpuzzle, Nearpod, and Kahoot!.

Here’s what you need to know about Google Classroom add-ons. 

What Are Google Classroom Add-Ons? 

Google Classroom add-ons provide educators with the option of utilizing additional edtech tools without the need for additional sign-ins and accounts. The add-ons make grading easier for educators with integrated features such as auto-grading and grade syncing. All of the add-ons sync with the Google Classroom grade book and some provide the option to include personalized feedback when sharing a grade with a student. 

In addition, by allowing educators and their students to do more from Google Classroom, the add-ons are designed to save time for both teachers and students. Now students won’t have to remember multiple passwords and login details if their teacher wants to use Google Classroom and a tool such as Kahoot! 

Cutting down on the number of student logins is always a plus. In the past, I’ve avoided incorporating certain edtech tools that I liked because I didn’t want to require students to create a new login or learn a new system. The introduction of Google Classroom add-ons essentially eliminates that concern if you are teaching a class that has a need for one of the add-on tools. 

What Tools Are Available From Google Classroom Add-ons?

The initial 18 tools are: Adobe Express for Education, BookWidgets, CK-12, Edpuzzle, Formative, Genially, Google Arts & Culture, Google Play Books, IXL, Kahoot!, Nearpod, Newsela, PBS LearningMedia, Pear Deck, SAFARI Montage, Sora from OverDrive Education, WeVideo, and Wordwall. 

Educators may need to email their administrators to remind them to enable specific add-ons. Google is also asking educators to provide feedback through Google Classroom on potential new add-on partners.

How Do I Use Google Classroom Add-ons? 

Before a teacher can use Google Classroom add-ons, an administrator from their district needs to set up add-ons by going to the Google Admin console and then navigating to the “Billing” or “User” page. Once in one of these pages, admins can assign licenses to individual teachers. However, in order to use add-ons, each individual teacher needs to have the Google Workspace for Education Plus edition or Teaching & Learning Upgrade assigned. 

After the administrator from the district has set up the add-ons feature and assigned it to each individual educator, teachers can find an add-ons module in the Assignment and Stream screens of Google Classroom. This will take teachers to a list of the available add-ons for their district. 

 Google Classroom Add-ons Tips and Tricks  

Free Support
Google has several free resources, including a presentation and lesson plan, designed to help educators integrate Google Classroom add-ons. These are useful for administrators looking to share the tool with their staff as well as individual teachers who want to learn more about how to best utilize the feature. 

Work Smarter
Use Google Classroom add-ons to cut down on the login information both educators and students need to remember. Having the tools accessible from one platform helps streamline your class and makes it easier for everyone. 

Consolidate Grading
Use Google Classroom add-ons to grade student work in one centralized location. Allowing students to find all their grade information and instructor feedback in one place can help them focus on the content of their studies rather than the medium by which it is delivered. 

Read Up
Because Google Classroom add-ons are not providing new tools, educators who utilize the add-ons will want to read our individual guides on many of the tools including Edpuzzle, IXL, Kahoot!, Nearpod, Newsela, Pear Deck, and WeVideo. 

• What is Google Classroom? 
• What is Edpuzzle and How Does It Work?
• Kahoot! Lesson Plan for Elementary Grades
• Pear Deck: Best Tips And Tricks For Teaching

Google Arts & Culture, as the name suggests, is an online portal to real-world art, culture, and historical collections. This can allow students to access art that might otherwise be geographically difficult to experience.

Essentially the idea behind Google Arts & Culture is to digitize the world of art. That isn't to say it's there to replace the real thing, but simply to supplement it. From an education perspective this makes a wealth of rich cultural content available from the classroom.

Crucially, this also allows teachers to work with remote learning or a hybrid class to get students exposed to the arts and culture of the world from wherever they are. So is this a genuinely useful teaching tool?

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What is Google Arts & Culture?

Google Arts & Culture is an online- and app-based collection of art and cultural content from around the world. It allows anyone, including students and teachers, to explore real-world collections, such as museums and galleries, from the comfort of their digital device. 

From the MOMA to the Tokyo National Museum, the world's best offerings are to be found on this platform. Everything is well organized and is laid out in a way that's super easy to understand and navigate, making it a great option for students, even when outside of the in-class environment.

Thanks to augmented reality and the integration of Google Earth, this goes beyond museums and galleries and also includes real world sites, making any easy to visit virtually.

How does Google Arts & Culture work?

Google Arts & Culture is available within a web browser but also works well as an iOS and Android app, so students can also access it from their smartphones. In the case of the app there is an option to Google Cast to a larger screen, making it a useful option for in-classroom teaching of a group so a discussion can take place.

The app is free to download and use, as is the website. You can sign in using a Google account, which allows you to save what you like for easy access later – a bit like bookmarking your best bits. 

You are able to explore in several ways, from browsing by artist or historical event to searching using a geographical location or even a theme, such as colors. The site offers access to a trove of museum holdings as well as real world sites with images taken from Google's databases. It's also possible to virtually tour locations such as art installations or even non-art places such as the science center CERN.

What are the best Google Arts & Culture features?

Google Arts & Culture is very easy to navigate and can be used by students freely to explore and discover. But since everything is well organized it can also be possible to follow a theme and have students learn along a pre-set path chosen by the teacher.

This can actually offer a better experience than a real-world museum in some cases. For example, you could visit a museum with a dinosaur skeleton, however, using the app's 3D visuals you could move the phone to look around and have the dinosaur come to life, beyond being just a skeleton as you'd have in the real world. These augmented reality experiences make for a hugely explorative virtual trip for students. 

Written content is also available, as is news about the museums and galleries and suggestions of other places to visit. Some artifacts have accompanying narratives, further bringing the exhibition to life. 

For teachers, there are useful favorite and share features that allow you to grab a link to a specific exhibit, for example, and share it with the class. Ideal if you want them to explore something at home ahead of a class on that topic. Or vice versa, this could follow-up a lesson for further exploration and depth.

The site also offers interactive experiments and games to allow further engagement in what's on display. The camera is also well used in the case of the app allowing you to do things such as take a selfie and get matched with paintings from the app's library, or snap your pet and have works of art with similar pets pop up for you to explore. 

How much does Google Arts & Culture cost?

Google Arts & Culture is free. That means the app is free to download and all the content is free to access. You also don't have to worry about adverts as these are not a feature on the platform.

The service is always growing and offering new content, making it a really valuable offering, especially when you consider it costs nothing. 

For the better AR experiences a newer device would be preferable as would a decent internet connection. That said, since this scales to fit what it's being viewed on or over, even older devices and poorer internet connections won't stop access to this free service.

Google Arts & Culture best tips and tricks

Have students present back
Get students to take a virtual gallery tour or visit a real-world site then create a presentation for the class in which they take everyone on the experience but in their own way.

Take a virtual tour
For history students, you can take them on a virtual tour of a site anywhere in the world, such as the ruins of Rome as it is now.

Recreate a piece
For art students, have them find a piece and draw or paint it themselves, also adding in an element to show how they discovered it and why it stood out for them.

• What Is Quizlet And How Can I Teach With It?
• Top Sites and Apps for Math During Remote Learning
• Best Tools for Teachers

About three months ago I did something I often do but I am embarrassed to admit:

I assigned a "sub lesson" when absent, asked students to submit evidence of completion, and then...

...wait for it...

DIDN'T EVER LOOK at the document!

Yes, I suppose it's a combination of my confidence in the accountability created by having students submit images via a collaborative google doc, and the pure hecticness during the school year. More of the later. 

Anyhow, here I am, sitting at some random cafe enjoying my summer and cleaning up my Google Drive, and I stumbled upon a Google Doc that contained a sub assignment I had asked my students to do when learning about balancing ionic compounds.

I have been striving to incorporate more inquiry into my sub assignments, and this was my first stab at it.

A little bit about the lesson: 

My 4-year-old twin boys were gifted a set of HUGE, generic legos, and I had a thought! See image right:  

While my kids quickly realized that they were not "real" Legos and went on to doing whatever 4-year-old twin boys do, I saw a potential sub lesson! 

In my chemistry class we had just got done learning about the Periodic Table of Elements and how positive and negative ions form. I had yet to introduce the idea of ions transferring electrons to form balanced ionic compounds. Hence, the entry point for inquiry! 

I was to be gone the next day of class, and I decided to cut all the legos into blocks of 1, 2, or 3, bumps (not sure what the correct term is?), that, in my mind, represented the +1/-1, +2/-2, and +3/-3 ions. It is a common activity to have students form ionic compounds by fitting them together correctly.

But, my students did not know this. Hence, the entry point for inquiry! 

After placing all the pieces in the center of the room, I emailed my sub the following prompt: 

Ask students to model the formation of Ionic Compounds using this document. Ask them to insert images of their models into the document. 

To be honest, I had know idea what they would produce, as the prompt was very open-ended in general, let alone for a sub assignment. 

Back to the point of this post. When I looked at their responses...today...I was blown away. They completely nailed the activity. Shame on me for not even following up with them the next day in class...It is so easy to lose track of the most important things as a teacher at times.. Embarrassing, but true.


Below is screenshot from the shared google doc where they uploaded their responses: 

cross posted at www.cyclesoflearning.com

Ramsey Musallam teaches science and robotics at Sonoma Academy in Santa Rosa, California, with the aim of fostering inquiry-based learning environments fueled by student curiosity. He presents widely on sparking student curiosity and teaching with technology. Musallam is a Google Certified Teacher, a YouTube Star Teacher, and a Leading Edge Certified Teacher. Watch his TED talk here and read his blog at www.cyclesoflearning.com.

Today Google announced Code with Google, a new comprehensive computer science resource for educators. 

Code with Google brings together Google's free curriculum and programs that build coding skills - from beginner level to advanced - to help students succeed.

In addition, the company announced a $1M Google.org grant to the Computer Science Teachers Association, to support their mission of building community and providing CS professional development to teachers in communities across the United States.

Learn more on the Google blog post. 

Catch up on everything new in G Suite for Education from April 2019, and see great ideas and resources!

Below is the recorded video from our April 2019 Google User Meeting, along with the meeting agenda and all the awesome resources and G Suite updates from the last month. This includes 31 new Google updates and 13 Google resources for your class.

The monthly meetings are hosted by the Google Educator Group of Ohio, but are open to anyone from any location. The purpose of these meetings is to:

• Connect Google-using educators
• Share the latest Google Apps news and features
• Provide tutorials, demonstrations, and how-to’s
• Share best practices of how Google Apps is being used within schools
• Ask questions and get answers

The video from the meeting is recorded and available for later viewing for those who cannot attend or connect live. See below to view the recorded video, agenda, and all the resources from the April 2019 meeting: 

Note: If you would like to see each of the agenda items with links directly to those spots in the video, open the video using the YouTube link below and then click “Show More” below the video.

You can view the full Google Document agenda with links to all the Google Apps updates from the last month, as well as all the resources covered in the meeting in the Google Doc linked below.

Agenda details

Upcoming Events 

• ITIP Ohio Summit Featuring Google for Education - May 13-14, 2019 - Sandusky - www.itipohio.org
• CREATE Conference - June 6, 2019 - Anthony Wayne HS - createconference.net 
• KEEP Academy - June 10-12, 2019 - Streetsboro High School
• APS3T- June 11-12, 2019 - Firestone CLC, Akron, Ohio 
• North Olmsted Roadshow - June 12, 2019 - North Olmsted Middle School - Website
• Tech and Trek Conference - June 19-21, 2019 - Hiram College - https://www.ideastream.org/tech-and-trek-conference  
• Wellington Roadshow - June 19, 2019 - Wellington Middle School - Website
• Mid-Ohio Road Show - August 8, 2019 - Bucyrus HS - Website 
• SPARCC Tech Conference - August 9, 2019 - http://conference.apps.sparcc.org - Call or proposals closing soon!
• OCALICON 2019 - November 20-22 2019 Columbus, Ohio - https://conference.ocali.org/register 

What's New in G Suite 

 April 2019 

• Roundup of Google's April Fools announcements
• Play Snakes game on Google Maps - Resource Link
• Google Tulip communicates with plants - Resource Link
• New Screen Cleaner in the Files app - Resource Link
• Collection of old April Fools videos from Google - Resource Link
• Gmail getting option to schedule when an email is sent - Resource Link
• Gmail Smart Compose getting personalization options - Resource Link
• Google Slides getting option to embed MP3 and WAV audio files from Drive into Slides - Resource Link (Recording Tools - Resource Link)
• New "Training" and "Updates" option in Gmail, Calendar, Docs, Sheets, and Slides - Resource Link
• Gmail Smart Compose can now make suggestions for the subject of your email - Resource Link
• Hangouts Chat screen get updated layout with sections for People, Rooms, and Bots - Resource Link
• Google Search adds "before" and "after" date filter commands - Resource Link
• Google Assistant will now work with G Suite accounts, starting with Calendar integration - Resource Link
• Admins getting options for advanced phishing and malware protection for Gmail - Resource Link
• Google Drive getting option to label and search for files with metadata, such as categories - Resource Link
  Google Drive getting built-in feature to edit Microsoft Office files in Docs, Sheets, and Slides - Resource Link
• Google launching Currents as replacement for Google+ in G Suite - Resource Link
• Hangouts Meet getting option for live captions - Resource Link
• Coming soon - Comparison in Docs - compare two Google Docs and review the differences as suggested edits in a new Doc - Resource Link
• Google launching Add-ons for G Suite that work across multiple apps - Resource Link
  Activity Dashboard for Docs, Sheets, and Slides now getting Sharing History and Comment Trend features - Resource Link
• 9 new updates coming to Google Sites - Resource Link
• Google's Science Journal app now syncs experiment data to Drive for easy access anywhere - Resource Link
• Google Slides getting option to customize theme colors in Slides - Resource Link
• Improvements coming to search in Team Drive, including hiding specific Team Drives and searching by creator - Resource Link
• Classroom gets updates including filtering for topics in the Classwork page, new items posting to the top of the Classwork page, and new attached material view - Resource Link
• Updates for Sheets including Guides, Multi-Selecting Objects, Enhanced Pivot Table Insertion, Copy and paste images into Sheets, Formula backed charts inserted from Answers - Resource Link
• Google Chrome getting "reader mode" to display simplified, clean version of webpages - Resource Link
• Google Fit app now available on iOS - Resource Link
• Updated offline mode for Docs, Sheets, and Slides - Resource Link
• Google Earth Timelapse gets updates with more years, easier navigation, and mobile support - Resource Link
• "Team Drives" is being renamed to "Shared Drives" - Resource Link 

Show and Tell 

• Introducing the Control Alt Achieve Podcast - Resource Link
• Hipster Google 2 - Even More Google Tools You Probably Never Heard Of - Resource Link
• 4 Free and Easy Audio Recording Tools for Google Slides - Resource Link
• Google Slides Short and Long Vowel Sounds Audio Activity - Resource Link
• Google Slides Instagram Template - Resource Link
• Use Google Drawings to create your class logo - Resource Link
• Random Student Selector using Google Slides - Resource Link
• Create a mobile app from Google Sheets in minutes with the free Glide service - Resource Link
• 6 Killer Productivity Tips for Google Sheets - Resource Link
• Choose Your Own Adventures with Google Forms - Resource Link
• Super Mario themed Google Slides template for student self-paced activities - Resource Link
• A Beginner's Guide to Google Slides - Resource Link
• OCALI Apps for Autism and Low Incidence - Resource Link 

To see the schedule for upcoming Google User Group meetings visit:
Google User Group schedule - https://sites.google.com/view/geg-ohio/monthly-meetings

If you have something to share and would like to join the Hangout for an upcoming meeting, send me an email to let me know at: ericcurts@gmail.com  

cross posted at www.controlaltachieve.com

Eric Curts is an education trainer and consultant with over 20 years' experience throughout the U.S. He is an authorized Google Education Trainer and a Google Certified Innovator. Read his blog at www.controlaltachieve.com and follow him on Google+ and @ericcurts on Twitter.

Exploring hands-on challenges in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) is increasing girls’ interest in engineering robots for competitions, according to initial data from Girl Powered, a global movement launched by The Robotics Education & Competition (REC) Foundation and VEX Robotics, and supported by Google.

Google is expanding its partnership with the REC Foundation by supporting a new series of Girl Powered Workshops, with the first workshop being held March 16-17 from 9 am-5 pm (GST) at its headquarters in Seattle.

The two-day workshop in Seattle will feature Google employees helping students build VEX EDR robots and put them to the test with the VEX Robotics Competition Turning Point game challenge.

Since Girl Powered launched in 2016, female participation in VEX Robotics has increased steadily from 23 percent in 2016 to 37 percent in 2018. Girl Powered aims to change the face of STEM, as females only represent 24 percent of the STEM workforce in the U.S.

Future Girl Powered workshops are being planned for this summer in Boston, MA; Austin, TX; and Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

Google also supports The REC Foundation by sponsoring an online challenge for Girl Powered VEX Robotics participants in elementary, middle school and high school. This year’s online challenge asked students to share how they have created a more inclusive environment on their team.

The top prize, a $750 vexrobotics.com gift certificate and automatic team qualification for the 2019 VEX Robotics World Championship, was awarded on March 10, 2019, for the VEX IQ Challenge category to Team 10142A, Green Tiger from Honolulu, HI and for the VEX Robotics Competition category to Team 7983W, Centennial Cyberhawks from Bakersfield, CA.

For National Women’s History Month, Girl Powered is honoring female accomplishments in STEM history with a new line of Girl Powered T-shirts. The T-shirts feature the Girl Powered logo and inspirational quotes from female STEM heroes, with 20 percent of sales supporting Girl Powered programs. For more information, visit: https://shop.spreadshirt.com/VEX-Robotics/girl+powered?q=T292261.

Having been in education for last 27 years (but who's counting?) I have seen incredible advancements in technology. One area that has experienced much growth is recording and sharing video. I remember doing video projects with students using a large camcorder that recorded to video tape. Then we got those flip video recorders that we all thought were the height of technology. And of course now we can record with everything from phones to webcams to drones.

As easy as it is now to record video, anything we can do to make the process even smoother is a win for our students. Technology shouldn't put up hurdles to jump over, but instead empower our students to seamlessly create, express, and share their ideas.

Recently one of my favorite video tools, Screencastify, has made this process even easier with a new add-on for Google Slides. This new tool allows users to locate their recorded videos and insert them into their slideshows with fewer clicks and less time than ever. This can be especially helpful for younger students and for those still learning how to use these tools.

See below for details on how to install and use this new add-on, as well as ideas for how students can use this in school. 

Installing the Screencastify Add-on for Slides

 First you will want to begin by installing the new Screencastify add-on. This is a one-time process. Once you have it installed, you can use it forever. 

• Open an existing Google slideshow or create a new one.
• Next, click "Add-ons" in the top menu bar.
• Then click "Get Add-ons" from the drop-down menu.
• You can now scroll down or type in the search box to find the Screencastify add-on.
• Alternately you can use this link to go directly to the add-on: Screencastify Add-on link
• When you locate the add-on, click the "+FREE" button to install it.
• You will now be asked to choose your Google account.
• Then you will need to scroll down and click "Allow" to give permission for the installation.

The Screencastify add-on will now be installed and ready from use from the "Add-ons" menu. 

Using the Screencastify Add-on for Slides

Now that you have the add-on installed, it will be easier than ever to add your recordings to Google Slides.

Note: To record your videos, use the Screencastify Chrome web extension as normal. If you have not installed or used the extension before, see my earlier blog post and video on how the extension works: "7 Super Screencasting Activities for School"

Any videos you record with the Screencastify extension will now be available for use in the Screencastify add-on. Here's how it works.

• With a Google slideshow open, click "Add-ons" then "Screencastify for Slides" then "View Screencastify Videos".
• A panel will now open on the right side of the screen, displaying all of your recorded Screencastify videos.
• As needed you can scroll through the videos, or type in the "Search" box to locate the video you need.
• By default the most recent videos will be at the top, so if you just did the screen recording, it will be the first in the list.
• Click on the video you want to insert.
• The add-on will now add that video to your Google slideshow.

Once the video has been inserted into your Google slideshow you can adjust it as normal: 

• You can click and drag to move the video.
• You can resize the video.
• You can select the video and then click "Format options" in the top toolbar.
• In the format options you can set the "Start" and "End" time for the video.
• You can also check the box to "Autoplay" the video when the slide loads.

Uses for the Screencastify Add-on

Video is a fantastic way for students to express themselves, explain an idea, share feedback for their peers, contribute to a discussion, and more. With the Screencastify add-on it is easier than ever for students to add videos to their slideshows. Some ideas for how this tool could be used include: 

• Adding an instructional video to a slideshow.
• Adding narration to a presentation.
• Reading a slideshow eBook aloud.
• Embedding a speech or performance into a presentation.
• Explaining how to solve a math problem.
• Leaving video feedback on another student's writing.
• Responding to a question or prompt in a shared class slideshow.

cross posted at www.controlaltachieve.com

Eric Curts is an education trainer and consultant with over 20 years' experience throughout the U.S. He is an authorized Google Education Trainer and a Google Certified Innovator. Read his blog at www.controlaltachieve.com and follow him on Google+ and @ericcurts on Twitter.

Today I sat down to begin the arduous process of finalizing all fall semester grades for my sophomore chemistry class and the benefit of using Google Slides their lab reporting format was clearly evident! 

My final "stack of papers" to grade was a shared folder full with our final lab practical reports: a group experiment where students determined the optimal H2-O2 ratio to fill a 2L bottle fo for maximum product upon ignition. 

Not only was I able to grade each project directly from my phone, but embedded video of procedures, screenshots of calculations, and clear images of laboratory procedures made for a meaningful assessment process. 

MORE IMPORTANTLY, the process of student creation and curation of their work using a Google Slide template (click here for the one used in this activity), was fluid, easy, and put the learning, rather than the reporting, at the forefront. 

Below is an embed of one group's  "report". 

cross posted at www.cyclesoflearning.com

Ramsey Musallam teaches science and robotics at Sonoma Academy in Santa Rosa, California, with the aim of fostering inquiry-based learning environments fueled by student curiosity. He presents widely on sparking student curiosity and teaching with technology. Musallam is a Google Certified Teacher, a YouTube Star Teacher, and a Leading Edge Certified Teacher. Watch his TED talk here and read his blog at www.cyclesoflearning.com.

If you and your students are familiar with the classical 20 questions game, you will love this one!

Mystery Animal Game is a new twist and a challenge. The computer pretends to be an animal and you try to guess it by using your voice. You can only ask Yes-No questions such as ‘Are you a reptile?” or ‘Do you have feathers?’ and you see if you will be able to guess the animal or not in 20 questions.

This tool is a great way to practice your speaking in English! You can group your students if you have enough computers and microphones or you can choose to play it as a whole class and the students can take turns in asking questions.

[WRITER IGNITER]

This game is sure to get your students thinking and collaborating!

Check the website to try it!

cross-posted at ozgekaraoglu.edublogs.org

Özge Karaoglu is an English teacher and educational consultant in teaching young learners and teaching with web-based technologies. She is the author of Minigon ELT book series, which aims to teach English to young learners through stories. Read more of her ideas about teaching English through technology and Web-based tools at ozgekaraoglu.edublogs.org.

Today, Black Girls CODE, the non-profit organization dedicated to teaching girls ages 7-17 about computer programming and technology, cut the ribbon on its redesigned New York Tech Exploration Lab that’s co-located within its existing East Coast office within Google’s New York headquarters. Along with the opening of their new tech lab, CEO Kimberly Bryant announced the organization’s new Board of Directors.

[What’s New: New Tools for Schools]

Designed to look like the inside of a computer, the new space was built for the sole purpose of bringing both new and existing BGC students closer to the innovative technologies used within the workshops the organization hosts throughout the year on topics such as game development, robotics, virtual reality, blockchain and more.

“We’ve been working with Google to improve diversity in the STEM industry since we were founded in 2012,” says Black Girls CODE CEO Kimberly Bryant. “This new space will bring us one step closer to our goal of teaching 1 million girls to code by 2040. Here we will hold workshops, host talks, and also provide after-school and summer programs for students eager to learn skills for building mobile apps, virtual reality games, and more.”

To learn more about Black Girls CODE, events, or ways to get involved, visit http://www.blackgirlscode.com.

What type of video, images and media are you using in your classroom? I’ve shared lots of favorites when visiting schools and presenting at events this year. One of the resources I love to highlight is an awesome website from Google Arts and Culture. There are so many fantastic resources on this site to dive into but I absolutely love the Google street views for your classroom!

There are over three thousand Google street view experiences to choose from on this special section of their website. It’s pretty easy to naviagate by using the search bar at the top of the screen. All you have to do is type in a keyword then look through the resources that appear after your search. Just scroll down to where “museum views” pop up to view the Google street view experiences. You’ll find that many of these resources include links to extra information to incorporate into a lesson too.

When would you use Google Street Views with students?

Sometimes there is just no way to take students to a specific place you’d like them to explore. Although there isn’t a substitution for the “real thing,” these resources from Google help transport students to new places to help them learn about the world and the lives of people in different places.

You might use Google street views with students to help them imagine the setting of a book or think about how a character interacts with the world during a novel study. In the science classroom you might ask students to compare two different ecosystems as they learn about animal habitats, and so much more.

Download my virtual reality eBook with more tips for teachers.

Google Street Views for Your Classroom

Although there are thousands of Google street views to search through I thought I’d pick out a few favorites in case you’re in need of inspiration. On this list I’ve highlighted several favorites along with ideas for how each one might connect to the learning goals for your next unit of study. Remember to place tasks before apps and choose a virtual experience that connects to your learning goals.

Mount Rushmore

This street view lets students look up at Mount Rushmore and gain a better understanding of its placement in the middle of a forest. You might introduce this to your students when discussing scale in the math classroom or before reading a biography of Theodore Roosevelt or George Washington. This might also be a street view you introduce as students get ready to study national landmarks.

Palace of Versailles

With this street view students can tap on the screen to walk through the Palace of Versailles. As they move through the halls they can look up, down and all around. This resource also includes links to different rooms in the Palace making it pretty easy to navigate around. If you can’t take your students on a trip to Paris this year, you might use this Google street view during a discussion on the French Revolution, art history, or architecture.

Machu Picchu

Want to take your students on a walking tour of Machu Picchu but can’t fit a trip to Peru on your schedule? This Google street view is perfect for classrooms where you’re diving into different cultures, exploring the geography of South America, or making cross-curricular connections with informational text or literature around this topic.

Ford’s Theater

If you’re studying American History with your students you may want to check out this Google street view that transports students to Ford’s Theater. They can stand on the stage and learn about the assassination of Abraham Lincoln as they click on some of the extra resources on the bottom of the screen.

Taj Mahal

The Google street view for the Taj Mahal is very impressive. Students can walk towards this iconic landmark and look around in every direction. You might introduce this resource to students when exploring geometric shapes in the math classroom or looking to bring a social studies lesson to life.

Statue of Liberty

As a typical native New Yorker, the only time I’ve been to the Statue of Liberty is when relatives were visiting from out of town. Although I had the chance to take students to many New York City landmarks as a classroom teacher, I love this particular Google street view because it lets anyone stand on the ground in front of the Statue of Liberty. Students can look out up at this famous landmark or turn to view the New York City skyline.

When you’re looking for a specific street view to share with students use the search bar at the top of this screen and scroll down to see if there are any “museum views” related to your keyword search. Remember, just like any super cool online resource you want to make sure you put the learning first and focus on your objectives. This is the topic of my book Tasks Before Apps: Designing Rigorous Learning in a Tech-Rich Classroom, where I share strategies for creating meaningful learning experiences with technology. Grab my free Tasks Before Apps poster by clicking here.

Do you have a favorite Google street view to share with students? Add it in the comments below!

cross posted at classtechtips.com

Monica Burns is a fifth grade teacher in a 1:1 iPad classroom. Visit her website at classtechtips.com for creative education technology tips and technology lesson plans aligned to the Common Core Standards.

Since discovering how easy it is to make movies with Google photos at the start of the school year, I've made several movies. Most movies were made to capture a day of learning with other innovative educators. I also made a movie to capture a vacation getaway. Another to commemorate an award a colleague received. And another movie to share with a friend the fun day her puppy had with my pup while I was pet sitting.

In a relatively short period of time, I've made more than a dozen movies.

Here is what I've learned.

1) Opening Shot

Your first picture should set the tone for what the movie is about. Try to find a sign, banner, sticker, book, welcome message, etc that let's people know what they're about to see.

2) Mix it Up

A mixture of photos and videos works well.

3) Camera Direction

Capture everything in the same direction: portrait or landscape. This will make for a better, more consistent viewing experience.

4) Pan

Capture a quick video (<5 seconds) panning the whole experience.

5) Closing Shot

Capture a photo or video that wraps up the experience. Think people waving goodbye, a cake with a message about what is being celebrated, a group photo.

6) Descriptive Title

When the video is complete you have an opportunity to give it a title.

You can change the music, theme, and remove, trim, or reorder clips by tapping on one of three icons that appear on the bottom of your movie.

• Theme: At the bottom, tap Themes . You can change the themes while the movie is playing to see how they look.
• Music: Tap Music . You can change the music and also turn it off so you can hear audio in the background.
• Reorder , trim, or remove clips: Tap Edit .
• Tap the clip you want to remove Trash .
• Touch and hold a clip and drag it to a different order.
• To change the length of a clip, select the clip and tap the scissors icon.

When you're done editing, tap Done .

8) Share

Share your creation on your fave social platform. Don't forget to tag people who were there and check in to indicate the location.

What do you think? Were these tips helpful? Were there some you already incorporate into your movie making? Were any of these tips new to you? Is there something you do when making your movies that's not here?

Lisa Nielsen writes for and speaks to audiences across the globe about learning innovatively and is frequently covered by local and national media for her views on “Passion (not data) Driven Learning,” "Thinking Outside the Ban" to harness the power of technology for learning, and using the power of social media to provide a voice to educators and students. Ms. Nielsen has worked for more than a decade in various capacities to support learning in real and innovative ways that will prepare students for success. In addition to her award-winning blog, The Innovative Educator, Ms. Nielsen’s writing is featured in places such as Huffington Post, Tech & Learning, ISTE Connects, ASCD Wholechild, MindShift, Leading & Learning, The Unplugged Mom, and is the author the book Teaching Generation Text.

Disclaimer: The information shared here is strictly that of the author and does not reflect the opinions or endorsement of her employer.

Part of providing an effective learning opportunity includes capturing and celebrating the learning. There are numerous ways to do this. Lately, my favorite is Google Movies because it is a fast, fun, and easy way to document events.

Here's what you do.

During the event:

• Take photos
• Record videos

After the event:

• Go to Google Assistant on your phone
• Tap "Movie"
• Select photos and videos you want to feature
• Tap "Create"

You've made a movie. Google will pick the filter and music, but you can always go back to edit and select your own filter or music.

Here are movies I've recently created:

Successful 1:1 Onboarding

#NYCSchoolsTech Educators Hit The MakerEd Forum

MakerBot Social

Saturday Learning: Common Sense Digital Citizenship

What do you think? Do any of my movies inspire you? Is this something you might try using to capture the learning at your next event, workshop or learning activity? How could you get students involved? What else do you think is possible?

Lisa Nielsen writes for and speaks to audiences across the globe about learning innovatively and is frequently covered by local and national media for her views on “Passion (not data) Driven Learning,” "Thinking Outside the Ban" to harness the power of technology for learning, and using the power of social media to provide a voice to educators and students. Ms. Nielsen has worked for more than a decade in various capacities to support learning in real and innovative ways that will prepare students for success. In addition to her award-winning blog, The Innovative Educator, Ms. Nielsen’s writing is featured in places such as Huffington Post, Tech & Learning, ISTE Connects, ASCD Wholechild, MindShift, Leading & Learning, The Unplugged Mom, and is the author the book Teaching Generation Text.

Disclaimer: The information shared here is strictly that of the author and does not reflect the opinions or endorsement of her employer.

Looking to update your Google Slides decks or searching for a way to support student storytellers during their own presentations? You’ll want to check out Spark Post from the folks Adobe, a free, easy-to-use tool for teachers and students. If your school is using Google Classroom or you and your students love Google Slides, you’ll absolutely love Spark Post. It’s a super simple design tool that lets you create beautiful graphics.

To get started with Spark Post all you have to do is choose an image size and add text. Then you can try out different colors, fonts, search for a picture or upload your own image. Spark Post has lots of design options and plenty of inspiration. So what does this have to do with Google Slides?

Well Spark Post gives you an option to create images in the perfect size for both full screen and wide screen slide presentations. If you’ve seen me present over the past year my slide decks are almost all made with Spark Post creations. You can use Spark Post to create your slides (on the web or using the Spark Post iOS app) and then save your images and add it to your slide deck. When using Google Slides, all you have to do is add the image to a slide just like when you insert any image. You can replace your blank slide with this new Spark Post creation.

5 Ways to Update Your Google Slides with Spark Post Designs

Although you might decide to create just a title slide at first, here are five ways to combine Spark Post with Google Slides:

Search for pictures to illustrate a point using Spark Post. When you go to replace or add a picture to your Spark Post slide you can use the search feature to find Creative Commons-tagged image. It lets you easily search for pictures then add text and colors to convey your message.

Explore how design impacts storytelling with your students by giving them an opportunity to brainstorm what type of images support an argument or connect to their narrative during a presentation. You might ask students to design a presentation as a group and establish a peer feedback loop to gather advice and suggestions on how effectively their story connects to their audience. This is a great opportunity to make a connection to story arcs or presentation techniques.

Discuss how colors connect to themes by connecting the Spark Post design palettes to a conversation about colors and symbolism. Whether you are exploring literary themes or persuasive writing techniques, colors connect to an audience by presenting information with a clear tone.

Energize tired content by updating images to communicate content more clearly. The search feature within Spark Post makes it easy to find image and there is also the option to upload your own. You can take an old presentation and add images and clear designs to share an idea or explain a concept with your students.

Create signals for students by incorporating slides that encourage them to take action. For example, you might create a graphic you can add to a presentation anytime you want students to turn and talk, stop and jot, or respond to a prompt.

Here are a few examples of slides I’ve created with Spark Post for different presentations I’ve given this year (example #1, example #2, example #3). It’s an absolute favorite tool – click here to get started!

Looking for planning pages to use with the other Spark tools – click here to download the graphic organizers.

cross posted at classtechtips.com

Monica Burns is a fifth grade teacher in a 1:1 iPad classroom. Visit her website at classtechtips.com for creative education technology tips and technology lesson plans aligned to the Common Core Standards.

This week I spoke at an event for New York educators about how to turn students into creators with Google Apps and Google-friendly tools. We discussed the power of giving students an audience for their work and strategies for supporting students during the process. Part of our session included tips for collaboration and planning on Google Docs before shifting our focus on how to take the work out of a closed ecosystem and share it with the world. In this post I’ll share some tips for using the free, BYOD-friendly Adobe Spark Page to publish Google Doc creations and provide a way to publish student work.

As a one-to-one classroom teacher having a device for each student made it possible for each student to type up their written work without having to put my name on the sign-up sheet on the door of the computer lab. This was before Google Classroom and the way Google Apps are now available in many schools for students to make use of their powerful collaborative features. At this early stage of tech-integration, I was guilty of using the devices on my students’ desk to simply type up their writing so it could be printed and stapled to the bulletin board. Spark Page is a simple tool to publish student writing and turn their work into beautiful webpages.

Making a plan

Google Docs is a powerful tool that gives students the space to do more than just type up their work. Students can collaborate with their classmates on a shared document and ask for feedback by giving a peer or teacher the ability to comment on their work. It gives students a space to make a plan for their published writing, work through the process and solicit feedback. You might create a template for students to use – a virtual graphic organizer – or jump into their work to leave comments during the writing process.

The beauty of Spark Page is that it can be used to drag and drop content students have already created while providing the option to search for images to compliment their writing. This makes the jump from traditional writing activities easier, with the added layer of real-time collaboration and feedback, to publishing online. Students can take their “final draft” in Google Docs and use it to populate their Spark Page. You’ll notice in the image below, in addition to the headings and text, there are special notes for adding link buttons and ideas for keywords to use when searching for images.

Publishing student writing

When students open up Spark Page they can add their title and subtitle, choose an image for their header, and work their way down the page. Every time they see a plus sign they have the option to add a variety of content. This includes copy and pasting their paragraphs from Google Docs straight into the Spark Page website creator. Students can then search and add images in-between their text, include buttons with links to extra information, and more.

When students are finished creating their Spark Page they can share it using the button at the top of their screen. They’ll have a link to their final page to share with an audience. This type of creation might be one shared on a school social media page with the hashtag like #findyourpark.

Get started with Spark Page by heading over to Adobe Spark’s website or click here to check out the beginning of my Yellowstone creation on Spark Page!

Looking for planning pages to use with the other Spark tools – click here to download the graphic organizers.

cross posted at classtechtips.com

Monica Burns is a fifth grade teacher in a 1:1 iPad classroom. Visit her website at classtechtips.com for creative education technology tips and technology lesson plans aligned to the Common Core Standards.

The Kahoot! EdTrends Report, a new quarterly report, addresses the latest edtech trends in the K–12 market. Key findings of the first report include:

● Google is gaining a stronghold in classrooms, with Chrome OS growing quickly for computers, Apple’s iOS dominating on mobile devices and tablets, and Microsoft holding its ground with classroom computers, especially among teachers.
● Google Classroom/G Suite for Education is the most popular productivity suite in classrooms.
● The biggest incentive for educators to adopt edtech is improving student productivity—specifically: to improve student learning and outcomes, to motivate students, and to encourage student engagement.
● In the coming school year, schools will see the increased use of digital platforms for teaching, learning, and assessment, as well as the rise of personalized learning.
● Educators in public schools are grappling with budget constraints and lack of resources, while the biggest challenge for private school teachers is lack of training in new technology.

For the full report go to www.techlearning.com/sep17

Managing documents in your Google Drive account can be problematic, especially if your district and your staff use Google Docs, Google Slides, or Google Sheets a great deal. What do so that you can access those documents you need to use the most? How can you organize those documents that are shared with you continuously? I think I have found a system that works, at least for me.

Since the premise of Google Drive is more collaborative that individual, that means you have to work with a product with this in mind, and carefully organize it to meet your individual needs. Speaking with others, the most common approach is create a series of folders to organize your documents, but if you use too many folders, then the problem of remembering which folder your put that inventory document or that course syllabus becomes enormous. Keeping folders to a minimum is a must. So, I designed my system with five folders that capture every single document I need ready access to. Here's those five folders and what I place in them.

Working Docs: I place any ongoing Google Doc that relates to a current project I am undertaking. It might be a presentation I am developing and will be using in staff development in the near future. It might be a letter to parent that I am writing, or a new schedule I am developing for my school in the coming weeks. The general rule here? These are documents under construction that I will be getting back to short-term.

To-Do Items: This folder is for those documents that require action in the future. It might be a request for information or a form that needs to be completed in the future. If someone shares a Google Doc with me requiring future action, I make a copy of it and place it here. These are all documents that correspond to a "To-Do" Item on my Google Keep To-Do List. (I'll do a blog post shortly that shows how I use this Google App.) If I start working on a doc in this folder and not finish, I move it to my Working Docs folder.

Templates: This is one of my favorite folders. I have begun to make Templates for those docs that I find myself recreating often, such as my Staff Memo or my Parent Newsletter. I simply make a copy of the template in my Working Docs folder when I am working on these items. Over time, I will develop a complete library of personalize templates for use on any occasion.

Current School Documents: In this folder I place those documents that are mostly complete but that I find myself referring to quite often. For example, I have my school master schedule, daily class schedule, bell schedule, and many other documents that I will most likely refer to at least once a day or week. The central office often asks for a copy of these documents. I don't have to search for them.

Archive: This is the folder of everything else. All documents end up here when I am no longer working on them or they are no longer needed. Because this is fully searchable, as is all of Google Drive, I can locate items here through the search function. The key here is: make sure your documents have unique names.

In addition to these folders, I have also set up a Team Drive for my school. In this folder, I and my staff can place most used documents and those documents under construction that are totally collaborative.

So far, I've found few problems with this system. If someone shares a Google Doc with me, I immediately make a copy of it, and file it in one of these folders.

Google Drive Folders and Team Drives

cross posted at the21stcenturyprincipal.blogspot.com

J. Robinson has decades of experience as a K12 Principal, Teacher, and Technology Advocate. Read more at The 21st Century Principal.

FreshGrade announced today that Google Translate is now integrated into the comment and announcement features within the FreshGrade tool for all new and existing school and district partners. The integration will be available on the FreshGrade web application, as well as the FreshGrade for Parents and FreshGrade for Students mobile apps, and will allow users to both read and write in the language of their choosing. This upgrade aims to enable more effective communication and collaboration between educators and their students and parents who are bilingual, multilingual, or English language learners (ELLs).

In the FreshGrade platform, teachers provide personalized feedback in student portfolios, which students and parents can read and reply to. The Google Translate integration will support this feedback feature by enabling comments to be translated into each teacher, parent, or student's preferred language. Push notifications inform parents and students when students’ digital portfolios are updated or when information is shared.

For more information about FreshGrade for Schools and Districts, visit www.freshgrade.com.

We need to work smarter, not harder. And when we work harder, it should be on the things that matter.

It’s an unfortunate truth about education that we’re so often bogged down and overwhelmed by red tape and paperwork, making it hard to manage our time. So when technology can help us manage time more effectively, make our work easier and more efficient, and clean up some of that literal or metaphorical red tape, we need to let it and celebrate it.

And this summer’s updates to Google Forms help us to just that--they help make form creation and use more efficient so we can stop reinventing the wheel and get more out of our time.

The new Google Forms became the default Forms for G Suite back in February of 2016, and since then there’s been a handful of updates: images for questions and answers, predicting question types, easier templates, and more.

But it’s the newer updates that really excite me because they problem solve real problems for educators and schools. These are updates I want and have asked for; they will actually lead to more effective and powerful use of forms in my practice. So update by update, let’s explore why.

#GoogleForms’ Summer Updates

For the Google Blog article about these new features, click here. The images below are from this article.

Intelligent Validation

Response validation is an incredibly useful feature, but it can be a challenge to use well. Click the three dots in the bottom right corner of a Form question, and select validation. Then, you can create a custom rule for the question and an error message when that rule is broken.

Think back to the last time you’ve entered your e-mail address wrong on a form. You forget the @ and the form knows it’s not an e-mail, reminding you to please enter a valid e-mail address. That’s response validation.

But it has so much more power than that--want a 10-digit phone number? A word that’s 12 characters? A short response of no more than 20 words? Exactly 4 checkbox selections? Validation can do that with what’s called regular expressions; the article, Useful Regular Expressions for Validating Input in Google Forms, walks you through the possibilities.

For a US Zip Code, the regular expression is: ^\d{5,6}(?:[- \s]\d{4})?$

Huh? What does that even mean? Google’s new intelligent validation solves the problem of the confusing regular expression and predicts the validation based on the question (see the image below). It remains to be seen how powerful and complex the feature becomes; will it only predict e-mail, web address, and whole numbers, or complex expressions, too? It’s too early to tell, but with intelligent machine learning, the possibilities are powerful and exciting.

For now, it means that it will be a lot harder for a student to type in the wrong e-mail address or share an invalid web address.

Upload Files Outside Your Domain

Uploading files to a Google Form was a hot request for a long time, but for me, Google Classroom, and even Drive, have made it loose meaning. Why do I need to have students submit files on a Form when they can turn them in on Classroom or share on Drive?

The answer, or one answer, is to share with others, too. When the file is uploaded, it’s organized on the response Sheet, which is easy to share and organize. This is an easy way to share student work and ideas outside of your classroom.

The new addition of uploading files outside your domain isn’t as important for students, but for schools and organizations. Want parents to submit art for a yearbook ad? Do teachers need to submit receipts? How about invoices from vendors? As a former theatre director, I even paid for another service to create a form where parents could upload artwork for the playbill. At the time, this was something worth paying for to me.

While it’s easy to share with Drive, for someone new to Google, the upload feature is familiar and powerful. It can make school business, clubs, and similar submissions a whole lot easier.

Default Settings

During the school year, I probably create a dozen forms a week. That might be a low number in some weeks. And each time, the first thing I do is adjust the settings. Collect e-mail addresses. Restrict to our domain. Often, only one submission is allowed.

I’ve gotten smarter and sometimes create a template form with all of my settings, and then create copies in Drive. But that’s extra work I shouldn’t have to do. When I’m working with students, I know that I ALWAYS want to collect their e-mail addresses because I want to eliminate user error. I want default settings.

And, thankfully, now we have them. The image below details the new default choices, and I hope they become more robust. Submission attempts, response messages, and more should all be customizable as defaults.

For me, this change matters so much, but I hope it continues to evolve.

Have you ever had to use a site like doodle.com for scheduling because you couldn’t figure out how to get a Form to work for that particular question? Now you don’t have to.

I’m curious about other uses for this question type--I don’t have them yet--but it’s a simple and obvious addition.

We need to be able to reorder Form sections. I’m not sure there’s anything more to say about that, but it’s an important change. This is especially true if you like to play with branching forms and pages; our work just got easier.

It’s not just these changes that excite me, but the potential for the future. I love that Google is always iterating and updating it’s G-Suite products, and that they always look for feedback from education. I’d love to see some of these features continue to grow, and can’t wait to try them in my classroom, school, and practice soon.

What are some uses you see for these new #GoogleForms features? What changes would you like to see next? Please share your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

cross posted at www.aschoenbart.com

Adam Schoenbart is a high school English teacher, Google Education Trainer, and EdD candidate in Educational Leadership. He teaches grades 10-12 in a 1:1 Chromebook classroom at Ossining High School in Westchester County, NY and received the 2014 LHRIC Teacher Pioneer Award for innovative uses of technology that change teaching and learning. Read more at The SchoenBlog and connect on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

I’ve seen a lot of discussion lately about the concept of delaying grades based on Kristy Louden’s awesome article, Delaying the Grade: How to Get Students to Read Feedback, over at the equally awesome Cult of Pedagogy.

She argues that if you have students focus on reading feedback and self assessing their work before addressing the grade, the feedback becomes more meaningful. I wholeheartedly agree, and have seen many educators jumping into the conversation with their own practices and strategies. I’ve thought a lot about my own grading and feedback beliefs and policies this year, and done a lot of work to be better.

Louden writes, “Wow, glad I put so much time into that assignment, said no teacher ever.” We spend so long grading and providing feedback, but too often it ends up crumpled in backpacks or garbage cans. Online feedback is great because it’s harder to lose or misplace, but it still can be a struggle to get students to read it. We need to stop doing the same thing and expecting different results. We need to stop the insanity.

Louden explains her methods, continuing, “The simple act of delaying the grade meant that students had to think about their writing. They had to read their own writing—after a few weeks away from it—and digest my comments, which allowed them to better recognize what they did well or not so well. The response from students was extremely positive; they understood the benefit of rereading their essays and paying attention to feedback. One boy said, ‘Mrs. Louden, you’re a genius. I’ve never read what a teacher writes on my essay before, and now I have to.’”

For more on grades and feedback I recommend checking out ”Changing the Conversation: Grades vs. Learning” by Starr Sackstein and ASCD’s Seven Keys to Effective Feedback from Grant Wiggins.

Feedback Conferences

I wish I was better at face-to-face, individual conferences about student work. Louden conferences with her students--and this is fantastic--but it’s never been my strong suit. What I’m really good at is using technology to provide specific, focused, and timely feedback to students. This shouldn’t entirely replace the conference--I wish I did this more often and better--but it can be a nice tool to help make the feedback process easier in delaying grades.

Google Tools to Delay Grades

In addition to delaying the grade, I like to delay the feedback. To do so, I generally return digital or hard copies of student work without any comments. Then, I ask students to read, comment on, and assess their work using a rubric. Usually, I do this a few days or even a week after the writing is turned it--this time creates a separation from the student as the writer versus editor. With distance, my students are often about to be more objective, thoughtful, and constructive about their own work.

Sometimes, the student’s self-assessment makes it easier for me to provide feedback. I can reference their own comments and thoughts, and learn more about their understanding of their progress. Other times, I want to return my feedback immediately and use it to help them assess their own self-assessment and reflection. To do so, I turn to Google.

Google Classroom: Return with Purpose

Let’s start with the simple option: use Google Classroom to promote self-assessment and feedback and delay the grades. When a student turns work in on Classroom, they lose rights to edit. Use this transfer of sharing rights to have them provide feedback on paper or to add suggested comments about their own writing. Then, return the work to a class or any number of students to share your comments and/or grades.

Looking for more control and specificity in your feedback? Explore Google Forms below and its power to help delay the grade.

Google Forms and formMule

With my students’ most recent work, I created a feedback form to organize and maintain my feedback digitally. I read students’ writing and used this simple form (see below) to provide the feedback. Notice the drop down list of student names and the checkboxes for common feedback items. This makes it quick and easy to make the process effective--the same options repeat with a heading for improvement.

I fill out the form, write comments, and can provide a grade. The submissions live in a Google Sheet, where I set up the add-on formMule to make the return process easy. With formMule, the sheet rows merge to an e-mail, sharing the results when I’m ready to do so. I use a roster of my classes to look up student e-mail addresses based on their names (but there could easily be a form question or drop down for e-mails, too) and then send the feedback only AFTER students have completed their reflections and self assessments. This way, I can delay the grades and the feedback to promote active reflection and metacognition.

If my students are ready, I’ll return all of the feedback at once, but I can also choose to add a send condition in formMule to only send it back to some students. If you’re new to formMule, check out Schoencast 01: formMule for a walkthrough tutorial.

To make feedback and grades matter more to students, and to make them matter to learning, we need more than technology. We need conversations about learning, along with reflection and conversations about growth and metacognition. But technology can help make the process easier and more efficient. Check out the original article that inspired this post, Delaying the Grade: How to Get Students to Read Feedback, and add your best tips--high tech or no tech--and join the conversation.

What are your best strategies for making feedback matter to students? How can technology help (or hurt?) in the process? Please share your thoughts in the comments or on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

cross posted at www.aschoenbart.com

Adam Schoenbart is a high school English teacher, Google Education Trainer, and EdD candidate in Educational Leadership. He teaches grades 10-12 in a 1:1 Chromebook classroom at Ossining High School in Westchester County, NY and received the 2014 LHRIC Teacher Pioneer Award for innovative uses of technology that change teaching and learning. Read more at The SchoenBlog and connect on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

itslearning introduces integrations to the world’s most popular cloud apps. Users will be able to work in Excel, Word and PowerPoint directly from within itslearning, without the need for a Microsoft email account or for any user information to be shared with Microsoft. The new cloud integration is available now.

Features include:

• Access to Word, Excel, and PowerPoint
• Google and Office 365 Integration

See the icons in the logo image above? The pants, leaf, megaphone, light bulb, apple, and stethoscope? I drew them with Google’s new AutoDraw tool.

Maybe some of them look familiar, faithful reader. If so, it’s because I attempted to redraw the very same icons I’ve used in recent logos on #Schoenblog posts: a pen, fire, arrows, a lightbulb, apple, and stethoscope

AutoDraw uses machine learning to predict what you are trying to draw and match it to artists’ submissions. So while my pen and fire might have turned into pants and a leaf, my quick sketch of an apple matched perfectly. AutoDraw gave me options to choose from as I drew each image, predicting and matching my movements.

The tool’s about page explains, “AutoDraw is a new kind of drawing tool. It pairs machine learning with drawings from talented artists to help everyone create anything visual, fast. There’s nothing to download. Nothing to pay for. And it works anywhere: smartphone, tablet, laptop, desktop, etc.”

This GIF is from Google’s blog post introducing AutoDraw, Fast Drawing for Everyone.

AutoDraw in Education

How often do we ask students to represent things visually? AutoDraw is a great tool to help students develop visual iconographies. Whether it’s used to help develop sketchnotes, depict scenes from literature, represent a cell, or storyboard historical events, I can think of so many uses for the simple visuals that AutoDraw helps create.

While it’s machine learning features may take away from some elements of student creativity, it provides a valuable and easy way to get students started in creative or visual tasks online. Plus, it’s free and works on every device. You can also use the basic drawing features, add text, change colors, and more.

In an age where more and more we need to teach students about digital citizenship and acceptable use, AutoDraw helps us create. Although the tool matches our sketches to other artists icons, these creations appear to be copyright free. On the Control Alt Achieve post, Using Google AutoDraw for Sketchnotes, Infographics, Drawings, and More, Eric Curts notes that when artists submit their artwork to AutoDraw, they have to agree that "Drawings are my own and Google may use my drawings for any purpose." The AutoDraw about page also describes the tool as free and for everyone. I’m eager to see more clarity on copyright and fair use here, but this has a lot of potential for our students--and beyond.

Blogging & Branding

I spend a lot of time--too much probably--thinking about how this site looks and feels. In fact, a huge update to the #Schoenblog is coming very soon. One of my intentional decisions over the last year has been to brand my blog posts with a title image; each one is sized for Twitter, and they follow a similar aesthetic. In the beginning, I worried about finding other people’s artwork or ideas to help influence my look. Lately, though, I’m much more interested in simple visual iconography--just like I attempted in this post’s title.

I want to be more aware of the visual branding for this site and for how I use images or art from other sources. A tool like AutoDraw helps me be in control by evolving my ideas into simple open source icons that are easy to use. I can download them as .png files and import right into my favorite image editor. It’s free, easy, and efficient.

There’s a lot of potential for AutoDraw, and definitely room to explore more tools for creation, visual aids, and graphic design, both in and out of the classroom.

How might you use AutoDraw in your classroom or professional practice? What other tools for creating simple visuals and icons do you use already? Please share your thoughts on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

cross posted at www.aschoenbart.com

Adam Schoenbart is a high school English teacher, Google Education Trainer, and EdD candidate in Educational Leadership. He teaches grades 10-12 in a 1:1 Chromebook classroom at Ossining High School in Westchester County, NY and received the 2014 LHRIC Teacher Pioneer Award for innovative uses of technology that change teaching and learning. Read more at The SchoenBlog and connect on Twitter @MrSchoenbart.

Yesterday I had the chance to lead a session for teachers on favorite tools for the reading classroom at the State of Maryland’s Annual Reading Conference. So what does this have to do with Google Cardboard? Well halfway through the session I shared Nearpod, a fantastic formative assessment (aka #FormativeTech) tool for teachers. In addition to embedding interactive activities there is the option to add a virtual reality experiences into your lesson.

It was so much fun seeing teachers from across the state of Maryland standing up in the conference room and spinning around as they viewed a gorgeous panoramic picture of Santorini on their mobile devices. Earlier this year I wrote a post for Edutopia that talks more about the ways you can use virtual reality in the reading classroom which is why I was excited to share this Google Cardboard tip with teachers yesterday. Are you ready to get started with virtual reality and Google Cardboard in your classroom? Here are 9 tools for teaching with this powerful technology!

Tip: If you don’t have access to mobile devices or a Google Cardboard headset most of this content can be viewed on a Chromebook, laptop or interactive whiteboard.

9 Must-Have Virtual Reality Tools for Teaching with Google Cardboard

The first thing you’ll need is a headset to accompany your mobile device. I love this super inexpensive Google Cardboard which is available on Amazon for under $10 and ships for free if you have Amazon Prime. Heading to a conference this year? Check out the Expo Hall and see if any vendors are giving one out for free. It’s become a popular promotional item and you might be able to snag one from a company’s booth.

1. I’m super impressed at the way the New York Times has developed their Virtual Reality content. I covered some of the reasons why their app is so exciting and you can learn more here. Recently I shared one of their videos with elementary teachers in Queens who loved the video covering Olympic games of the past.

2. The folks at National Geographic have also developed virtual reality content perfect for using with Google Cardboard. They have lots of 360 videos hosted on YouTube. A quick search of their channel will bring up videos on viking adventures and monarch butterflies, just to name a few.

3. If you’ve followed my blog in the past (get the newsletter here) you might have figured out that I’m a big fan of National Parks. Although it is definitely not a substitute for the real thing, Parks Explorer is an awesome option for letting students explore a national park from inside the walls of your classroom.

Tip: Grab my free eBook on Virtual Reality here so you can access lots of Google Cardboard tips offline, anytime, on any device.

4. Ready to get started but not quite sure where to start? Nearpod has lots of virtual reality lessons that are ready-to-go. Here is a list of seven favorites that includes a link to explore plenty more.

5. A must-have tool for taking students on virtual college tours is YouVisit. This can be a game changer for students who might not be able to visit a particular campus or just want to learn more about a new place.

6. I shared Thinglink on a popular list of Google Cardboard favorites last summer and today they’ve announced the release of Teleport 360 Editor. Here’s part of the announcement from their press release: “Teleport 360 Editor is the first app of its kind that allows users as young as first graders to easily create dynamic, information-rich 360° experiences for mobile VR in minutes. The Teleport 360 Editor is available today for premium ThingLink users via iTunes and coming soon to Google Play.”

7. In addition to checking out New York Times VR, another news organization with virtual reality content is the BBC. They have lots of videos hosted on YouTube making it easy to pop into a Google Cardboard or explore on a larger device with students.

8. One last Google Cardboard tool to explore is Discovery Channel VR. With this fantastic app, you can access lots of great content from the Discovery Channel.

Have you tried Google Cardboard or virtual reality in your classroom? Share in the comments below.

cross posted at classtechtips.com

Monica Burns is a fifth grade teacher in a 1:1 iPad classroom. Visit her website at classtechtips.com for creative education technology tips and technology lesson plans aligned to the Common Core Standards.

I’m a huge fan of the power of Google Tools in education. This year I’ve been lucky enough to work with a school that is one-to-one with iPads and embracing the possibilities of Google Classroom. We’re exploring the ways to give students more opportunities to create products that demonstrate their understanding. Learning how to integrate media in a way that supports their writing is an important part of preparing students for the digital world. One of my favorite tips for teachers is the easy image insert option in G-Suite. The images below will show you how-to insert mages in Google Docs and Google Slides.

Whether you are using Google Docs or Google Slides both teachers and students can easily insert images into their work. Instead of sending students out on a Google Image Search or uploading pictures from another device, students can stay within their documents to find media that adds to their creation. From slide-based presentations on sustainable fishing to feature articles that use maps to complement their writing, the easy image insert option will come in handy when exploring any topic.

How-To Insert Images in Google Docs and Google Slides

In the screenshot below you’ll see the menu bar in a Google Doc. At the top of the screen you have the option to Insert and choose to add an image to your page.

There are lots of options for bringing images into your document. The last option on the right-hand side of the screen says “Search.” With the Search option you can find images that are labeled for reuse with modification. When you click on the image it will add it to your document.

I hope this quick tip will come in handy next time you are creating a template to share with students in Google Classroom or sending students off to create a product that demonstrates their understanding. Looking for another quick Google Teacher Tips? Learn how to find blackline masters in this post.

cross posted at classtechtips.com

Monica Burns is a fifth grade teacher in a 1:1 iPad classroom. Visit her website at classtechtips.com for creative education technology tips and technology lesson plans aligned to the Common Core Standards.

Canvas by Instructure, the open online learning management system (LMS) today released an integration with Google tools that allows students and teachers to use Google while working inside of Canvas.

Features include:

• Single sign-on: With a single login, when users are logged into Canvas, they’re also logged into Google.
• Google Drive embedding and linking: Users can easily embed documents from Google Drive anywhere they use the Canvas rich content editor.
• Google Docs as assignments: With this new integration, students can submit Google Docs as assignments, and teachers can use a Google Doc to give an assignment and to grade submitted assignments in Speedgrader by editing or annotating the Google Doc submitted by the student.
• Google Drive collaborations: Students can participate in a Canvas collaboration using Google Docs, Sheets or Slides.
• Modules: Teachers can include a read-only Google Doc in their modules.

To learn more, visit https://www.CanvasLMS.com/