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Seven Mind Mapping Tools to Try This Year

23 de Agosto de 2023, 09:25
Earlier this week a reader emailed me to ask for my suggestions for online mind mapping tools for her students to use this fall. My preference is often to draw mind maps by hand and then digitize them by taking pictures with either the Google Keep or OneNote mobile apps. But that doesn't work for everyone. So if you want to do the mind mapping process in a completely digital format, take a look at the following options. 

Canva Whiteboard Templates

Canva's whiteboard templates include mind mapping templates that you and your students can use individually or collaboratively. Watch this video for an overview of how to access and use those templates. 

Google Jamboard Templates

Google Jamboard doesn't offer any pre-made mind mapping templates like Canva offers. However, it is easy to make and share your own mind mapping templates in Jamboard. This short video shows you how to do that. 

Google Drawings

Long before Google offered Jamboard, I used Google Drawings to create mind maps to share online. That's still a viable option for Google Workspace users. Here's a demo of how to do that. 

Transno

Transno is an interesting mind mapping tool because it will create mind maps based on your written outlines. Take a look at this video to see it in action. 

Forky

Forky is a minimalist mind mapping tool. I like the simplicity of it compared with some other mind mapping tools that you could use. It does offer an online collaboration option for those who want to use it. See Forky in action in this demo

GitMind 

GitMind is another mind mapping tool that will create printable outlines for you based on your mind maps. Here's a brief demo of it. 

Padlet

Last, but not least is Padlet. I've used Padlet for mind mapping longer than anything else on this list. If you want to include multimedia elements in your mind maps, Padlet is the tool for you. Watch my demo to see how it works. 



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Five Great Microsoft Forms Features for Teachers

22 de Agosto de 2023, 13:04

Most of the time I like Google Workspace tools better than the equivalent tools from Microsoft. There is one exception to that rule. That exception being forms. When it comes to making and publishing online forms, Microsoft Forms has more features that I like than Google Forms has. For example, there is nothing like the new live presentation mode in Microsoft Forms available in Google Forms. 

There are other aspects of Microsoft Forms that I also like that aren't equaled in Google Forms. Those features are demonstrated in my new video that is embedded below. 

1. Convert docs to forms.
2. Live mode
3. Timer
4. Start and end dates
5. Background music

Video - My Five Favorite Features of Microsoft Forms




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Five Tutorials on Google Earth Basics

21 de Agosto de 2023, 11:07

The start of the school year is when many of us are excited to try new and different things. If you're looking for something new to try this year, take a look at my Around the World With Google Earth activity. It's loosely based on The Amazing Race and it's a fun way to introduce students to the basics of using Google Earth. If you need some help getting started with Google Earth, take a look at the tutorials that I have embedded below. 

How to Measure in 2D and 3D in Google Earth



How to Add Videos to Your Google Earth Projects



How to Record a Narrated Google Earth Tour in Your Web Browser



How to Create a Simple Google Earth Tour



How to Measure Perimeter and Area in Google Earth



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Lesson Plans for Setting SMART Goals This Fall

20 de Agosto de 2023, 09:18

Storyboard That is a great tool that can be used for creating cartoons, flowcharts, timelines, and wireframes in addition to typical storyboards. Storyboard That also offers a huge library of lesson plans on everything from classic literature to history to cyber safety. One of those lesson plans is about helping students set and reach SMART goals. SMART stands for Specific, Measurable, Action, Realistic, Time.

The SMART goals lesson plans are designed for use in middle school settings. Each of the five lesson plans focuses on a different aspect of the goal setting and goal reaching processes. A significant component of any goal setting process is being able to identify and visualize the steps needed to reach a goal. That's where Storyboard That shines as it helps students create a clear picture of the steps they need to take in order to reach their goals.

Applications for Education
As the school year begins and you're talking with students about their aspirations for the year, using the SMART goals lesson plans could provide a great way to frame those conversations.

On a related note, Storyboard That is the online comic tool that I've used longer than any other. The tutorial that I made about it ten years ago is still accurate on a basic level. Ten years later there is much more that you can do with Storyboard That.



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Keep, Books, and Canva - The Week in Review

19 de Agosto de 2023, 09:24

Good morning from Maine where it's overcast and drizzly, again. It has been that kind of summer. Nonetheless, it has been a good summer filled with fun things for me and my family (my miserable cold not withstanding). I hope that it has been a good summer (or winter) for you as well. 

We have less than two weeks until school starts again. We're making the most of it. This week I took one of my daughters for a one-on-one trip to Story Land. Next week, I'm doing the same for my other daughter. If still have a bit of vacation, I hope you make the most of it as well. 

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. 18 Google Keep Tutorials for Teachers
2. How to Create and Share Canva Templates
3. 18 Google Calendar Tutorials for Teachers
4. How to Use AI in Google Slides
5. Five New Padlet Features to Try
6. Bring the Joy Back to School With Book Creator
7. 47,000 People Get Their Educational Technology Tips This Way

Self-paced Courses You Can Start Today

On Practical Ed Tech I have self-paced courses that you can start today and finish at your own pace. 
Workshops and Keynotes
If you'd like to have me speak at your school or conference, please send me an email at richard (at) byrne.media or fill out the form on this page.  

Other Places to Follow Me:
  • The Practical Ed Tech Newsletter comes out every Sunday evening/ Monday morning. It features my favorite tip of the week and the week's most popular posts from Free Technology for Teachers.
  • My YouTube channel has more than 46,000 subscribers watching my short tutorial videos on a wide array of educational technology tools. 
  • I've been Tweeting as @rmbyrne for fifteen years. 
  • I update my LinkedIn profile a time or two every week.
  • The Free Technology for Teachers Facebook page features new and old posts from this blog throughout the week. 
  • If you're curious about my life outside of education, you can follow me on Strava.
This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Featured image captured by Richard Byrne.


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Have Your List Cleared by Book Creator

19 de Agosto de 2023, 09:08

Earlier this week I shared a handful of ways to use Book Creator this fall. At the bottom of that blog post I mentioned Book Creator's #clearthelist campaign. If you missed it, it's a free opportunity to have Book Creator clear your classroom Amazon wishlist of up $500. All you have to do is enter by August 31st

This fall Book Creator is going to clear the classroom wish lists of three teachers. You can enter here and if you win, Book Creator will clear your Amazon wish list up to $500.

Disclosure: Book Creator is currently an advertiser on this blog. 


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Google Classroom Overview for Parents

18 de Agosto de 2023, 09:50

Last Friday I published a video in which I demonstrated the teacher view and student view of Google Classroom. A lot of people replied to ask if I had a similar one about the parent view of Google Classroom. I didn't have one, but I was happy to refer people to this section of Sam Cary's video How to Use Google Classroom for Parents

The whole video gives a complete walk-through of Google Classroom. The part that most teachers will care about is toward the end beginning around the 7:19 mark. It's at that point in the video that Sam begins to show the guardian summaries feature of Google Classroom. I've embedded the video below. You can also watch the whole thing on the New Ed Tech Classroom YouTube channel. 



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How to Use Microsoft Flip - Teacher and Student Views

18 de Agosto de 2023, 08:47

It's that time of year again when many of us are thinking about ways for our students to get to know each other and us. One popular way of doing that is through short video introductions. Microsoft Flip (formerly known as Flipgrid) provides a great platform on which to do that. As a teacher you can create a safe space for students to record and share short videos. 

If you've never used Microsoft Flip or you are a tech coach responsible for introducing it to other teachers, I have a new video for you. In the video that is embedded below I demonstrate the following:

  • How to create a Microsoft Flip account as a teacher.
  • How to create a Microsoft Flip group.
  • How to create a Microsoft Flip topic.
  • How to record a Microsoft Flip video.
  • How students can join your Microsoft Flip group. 
  • How students find your Microsoft Flip topic. 
  • How students respond to your Microsoft Flip topic. 
  • How to view and moderate your students' Microsoft Flip videos. 



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How Wastewater Gets Recycled

17 de Agosto de 2023, 10:55

This morning my YouTube subscriptions included a notification of a new TED-Ed lesson that caught my attention. That lesson is titled How the Water You Flush Becomes the Water You Drink. As the titled implies, the lesson is all about how wastewater gets cleaned and put back into the water cycle where we'll eventually drink it once more. 

The lesson introduces viewers to three types of wastewater and how wastewater is treated. The two key terms from the video are direct potable reuse and indirect potable reuse and the differences between the two. You can watch the lesson on YouTube or as embedded below. The full lesson with questions and additional resources can be found here on the TED-Ed website.


Here are some more resources and lessons related to the water cycle:


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47,000 People Get Their Educational Technology Tips This Way

17 de Agosto de 2023, 09:10
This morning when I checked my YouTube Studio account I noticed that my little channel had passed the 47,000 subscriber mark. Despite publishing videos on YouTube since at least 2009, I've never had a viral hit and probably never will. Instead of worrying about that I just try to make as many helpful videos as I can. To get a sense of the type of videos that I publish, take a look at the five most-watched videos of the last month. 

How to Use Google Takeout in 2023



How to Combine Audio Tracks Quickly & Easily



How to Change the Color of Google Calendar Events



How to Move Bookmarks from One Chrome Profile to Another



How to Use Google As a Countdown Timer



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All About Venice - Another Post Inspired by my Daughters

16 de Agosto de 2023, 14:46

A few days ago while driving home from seeing a community theater's musical production of The Little Mermaid one of my daughters asked me "why does Venice have canals instead of roads?" It was a question that I was happy to answer. The question also inspired me to revisit some items on the topic that I new were in my blog's archives, somewhere. Here's my updated list of resources for teaching and learning about Venice. 

And head here for more posts inspired by the questions my daughters ask me

Venice Backstage is a seventeen minute video that explains how the water is contained, how the buildings stay upright, and how residents of Venice travel about the city.

The Venice Backstage website offers additional articles and graphics to support the information presented in the video.



Students can virtually explore Venice through this Street View Trek. The Street View Trek through Venice lets students travel the city on foot and travel through the canals in gondolas. The Street View Trek through Venice also gives students the opportunity to step inside historic buildings in the city.

Google Arts & Culture has thousands of items tagged with "Venice" for students to explore. I'd recommend starting with 7 Amazing Things You Never Knew About Venice.

How Did They Really Build Venice? is a five minute animated explanation of how and why Venice was built.



On a related note, I offer a Practical Ed Tech course all about making animated explanations. You can start that course today by heading here.


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Five New Padlet Features to Try

16 de Agosto de 2023, 09:49

Along with Google Workspace tools, Padlet is one of the educational technology tools that I've used the most consistently over the last fifteen years. I've used it for everything from hosting online brainstorming sessions to digital mapping to distraction-free YouTube viewing and a whole lot more. Padlet recently add five new features for the new school year. 

The new features of Padlet are demonstrated in the two new videos that are embedded below. The new features include:

  • An AI drawing tool.
  • Scheduling notes.
  • Polling
  • Google Drive integration
  • Automated content moderation



Video - Three New Padlet Features to Try



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Bring the Joy Back to School With Book Creator

15 de Agosto de 2023, 09:40
Disclosure: Book Creator is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com

Book Creator has been one of my go-to multimedia creation tools for nearly a decade. For back-to-school season they’ve created a hub of resources arranged around the theme of bringing joy back to school. Amongst many excellent resources in that hub you’ll find registration links for a handful of free webinars.

Some of the webinars include Differentiation for Lesson Planning Using AI, Cultivating Kindness, and Creative Back-to-School Activities. If you don’t want to wait for those webinars or you can’t attend them, I have five suggestions and tutorials for using Book Creator at the start of the new school year.

“Who Am I?” Books

This is an idea that my friend Dr. Beth Holland wrote about rather extensively a handful of years ago. The idea is to have students introduce themselves to you and their new classmates by creating small multimedia books that answer the question “Who Am I?” In Book Creator students can answer that question with pictures, text, audio, and video.

Watch this short demo to see how students can create “Who Am I?” books.

“Who Are You?” Books

Instead of writing about themselves, have your students interview each other and create a short book about a classmate based on that interview. Keep it light and fun by using questions like, “what’s your secret talent?” and “would you rather be able to fly or be invisible?”

Create a Fun Lesson

Not all of our students are comfortable talking about themselves or writing about themselves. Those students might, however, be comfortable creating a fun, multimedia lesson about a favorite hobby, sport, or celebrity. For this type of Book Creator project it will probably be helpful to incorporate some clips from YouTube. This short video shows you how to add YouTube videos into Book Creator books. Book Creator also has some ready-made templates you can use to get started on creating your first lesson.

Grab a Graphic Organizer

I know you’re probably thinking that graphic organizers aren’t that exciting or fun. But you might change your mind after you take a look at the graphic organizer templates Book Creator now offers. Give students a list of words, terms, or events to organize with a template of their choosing. In doing so, you’ll gain some insight into how your students process and organize related pieces of information.

Create Healthy Online Friendships

Book Creator and Common Sense partnered to create a set of three digital citizenship activity books. One of those focuses on how to create healthy online friendships. You can get a copy of that book and the others in the series right here.

Bonus! #ClearTheList

This fall Book Creator is going to clear the classroom wish lists of three teachers. You can enter here and if you win, Book Creator will clear your Amazon wish list up to $500.


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18 Google Keep Tutorials for Teachers

14 de Agosto de 2023, 08:53

A couple of weeks ago I published a short tutorial on how to use Google Keep to scan and search handwritten notes. Publishing that tutorial prompted me to update my playlist of tutorials on ways that teachers and students can use Google Keep. The full playlist of 18 Google Keep tutorials can be seen here on my YouTube channel. Some highlights from the playlist are embedded below. 


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Ten Books That Shaped America

14 de Agosto de 2023, 08:31

Just like I do with my weekly newsletter, C-SPAN Classroom sends their weekly newsletter on Sunday evenings (Eastern Time). When I read it last night I learned about a new C-SPAN series that sounds great! It's called Books That Shaped America and it is presented by C-SPAN in conjunction with the Library of Congress.

Books That Shaped America is a ten-part weekly series that is beginning on September 18th. Each episode will feature one of ten books from American history that have shaped and impacted American society. The episodes will include commentary and analysis from experts on each book.

Thomas Paine's Common Sense is the first book that will be featured in the series. The Federalist Papers will be featured in the second episode. A couple of other works to be featured in the series are Their Eyes Were Watching God and Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass

Each episode of Books That Shaped America will air at 9pm ET and be available on-demand on C-SPAN.org afterward. There are lesson materials planned for release to accompany the series although those materials are not yet published. 

On a related note, most of the books in the series are available to find and read for free on Google Books and or at your local library. Complete copies of The Federalist Papers are available to read for free right here on the Avalon Project



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How to Create and Share Canva Templates

13 de Agosto de 2023, 10:02

In the winter of 2021-22 my kids and I conducted a winter bird survey at our house. Because my kids were little and because I thought it would be fun, I made a little observation journal that we put on our refrigerator. Last winter we did it again and I shared our observation template with a couple of friends who wanted to use it with their young children. 

The template is one that I created by modifying a design I found in Canva. I then simply shared the link to the template with my friends so that they could print it and or modify it as they needed. 

In this short video I explain and demonstrate how I created a template in Canva and shared it so that others can copy it and modify it without changing my original copy. 



Applications for Education
One of the many things that I love about Canva is the huge gallery of design templates that they provide for a wide variety of purposes including creating infographics, presentations, videos, and even basic worksheet-type activities. All of the templates are much better than anything that I'd create from scratch. If you find yourself, like me, looking for a way to create better-looking materials for your lessons, Canva's templates are a great place to start looking.


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Don't Let the Graphs Fool You

13 de Agosto de 2023, 09:56

Tools like Canva, Adobe Express, and even good ol' PowerPoint make it incredibly easy to quickly create good looking graphs. But as Randy Krum points out in his book, Cool Infographics, a graphic that looks good isn't necessarily a good graphic. In fact, many times a graphic is made to look good in order to distract from the reality of the information presented within it. That's a point that is made in a few ways in a TED-Ed lesson titled How to Spot a Misleading Graph

By watching How to Spot a Misleading Graph students can learn about three ways in which graphs can be misleading. Those ways are distorting the scale of the graph, manipulating the X or Y axis of a graph, and cherry-picking or not providing context for data in a graph. The whole lesson can be found here and the video is embedded below.



Applications for Education
This video could make a great addition to your list of resources for teaching students how to be savvy media consumers. After watching the video I'd have students do two things. First, I'd have them look through a few newspapers or journals (online or physical) to try to find some graphs that use one of the misleading techniques taught in the TED-Ed lesson. Second, I'd provide students with some datasets to try their hands at creating accurate graphs as well as slightly misleading graphs.


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Audio, Assessments, and Summer Cold - The Week in Review

12 de Agosto de 2023, 09:19

Good morning from Maine where the sun is rising on what should be a great summer day. Fortunately, I'm feeling much better than I did throughout the week as a struggled with a miserable cold that had me sleeping a lot more than normal and exercising a lot less than normal. I did get out for a few walks with my dogs. On one of those walks we stopped to help a salamander cross the road (to get to the other side, obviously). 

I hope that you had a great week. If you started school this week, I hope it went well. If you still have a bit more vacation, soak it up and enjoy it before the madness of the school year begins. 

These were the week's most popular posts:
1. Five Wolfram Alpha Tutorials for Teachers
2. Five Tools for Creating Automatically Scored Formative Assessments
3. Using AI for Creating Formative Assessments
4. Staying Organized With Google Drive Folder Descriptions
5. Five Uses for Google Docs Besides Essay Writing
6. How to Add Audio to Almost Anything in Google Workspace
7. A New Accessible PhET Simulation

Self-paced Courses You Can Start Today

On Practical Ed Tech I have self-paced courses that you can start today and finish at your own pace. 
Workshops and Keynotes
If you'd like to have me speak at your school or conference, please send me an email at richardbyrne (at) freetech4teachers.com or fill out the form on this page.  

Other Places to Follow Me:
  • The Practical Ed Tech Newsletter comes out every Sunday evening/ Monday morning. It features my favorite tip of the week and the week's most popular posts from Free Technology for Teachers.
  • My YouTube channel has more than 46,000 subscribers watching my short tutorial videos on a wide array of educational technology tools. 
  • I've been Tweeting as @rmbyrne for fifteen years. 
  • I update my LinkedIn profile a time or two every week.
  • The Free Technology for Teachers Facebook page features new and old posts from this blog throughout the week. 
  • If you're curious about my life outside of education, you can follow me on Strava.
This post originally appeared on FreeTech4Teachers.com. If you see it elsewhere, it has been used without permission. Featured image captured by Richard Byrne.


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Three Google Slides Accessibility Features You Should Know How to Enable

12 de Agosto de 2023, 09:17

As the new school year approaches it's a good idea to review some of the easily overlooked, but important features of some of the tools we use the most. Google Slides is one of those tools that I use a lot and has a lot of features that are easy to overlook. For example, unless you use them on a regular basis the accessibility features in Google Slides are easy to forget about. In a new video that is embedded below I provide and overview of three Google Slides accessibility features you should know how to enable. 

Video - Three Google Slides Accessibility Settings You Should Know How to Enable  


Learn even more about Google Slides through this playlist of 78 Google Slides tutorials for teachers


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By Request - Teacher and Student Views of Joining Google Classroom

11 de Agosto de 2023, 16:22

Twice this week readers emailed me to ask if I had any tutorials about how students join Google Classroom. I didn't have a current one so I made one. 

In my new video that is embedded below I demonstrate three ways to invite students to join Google Classroom and the three ways that students can join your Google Classroom classes. 

Video - Teacher and Student Views of Joining Google Classroom



Which method of inviting students is best depends on you and your students. If your students have previous experience with Google Classroom and they have active email addresses from your school, then I would send them email invitations before the first day of school. If your students are using mobile devices in your classroom, then I would use the invite link and generate a QR code for it for your students to scan. If your students don't have prior experience with Google Classroom and you want to be there to walk them through the process of joining Google Classroom, then I would use the join code option.

On a related note, here's a video overview of three ways to make QR codes.



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How to Use AI in Google Slides

11 de Agosto de 2023, 16:13

In case you haven't heard, AI is the buzzword of the year in education and technology. If you haven't tried any AI tools yet, Google Slides has one that it's easy to use and that you might actually want to use on a regular basis. 

The "insert images" menu in Google Slides now has an option titled "help me visualize." When you select that option you can type a description of the kind of image you would like to add to your slides. Once you've done that give Google twenty seconds and it will generate a small gallery of images for you to pick from. Pick one to add your slide and then you can crop it, resize it, and reposition it as you see fit. Watch my short video that is embedded below to see how the "help me visualize" feature in Google Slides works. 

Video - How to Use AI in Google Slides


Want to learn more about Google Slides? Check out my playlist of 77 more Google Slides tutorials for teachers


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Don't Rely Social Media for Distributing Important School Information

10 de Agosto de 2023, 13:02

Last year I wrote about the qualities of a good school district website. Unfortunately, the school district in which my kids go to school didn't read that blog post or didn't take any action based on it. That was driven home this week as we attempted to find the school supply lists and the schedule for the start of the school for our kids.

The obvious place to look for a school supply list and the schedule for the start of the school year is the school's website. Unfortunately, that has been updated since the end of the last school year. Supply lists? Nowhere to be found. Schedule? The calendar for August is completely blank. 

So how did we find the information that we needed? A friend who used to work in the district shared a Facebook post with me. At that point it was three days old! And what if I didn't use Facebook (like an increasing number of people)? We'd still be wondering about supply lists and schedules. 

As I wrote last year, make the information that parents need the first and most obvious thing on your school's website. Nobody is going to the school's website in August to find out the results of a fundraising challenge from the previous spring nor do they care about pictures from a staff development meeting. 

On a related note, here are my thoughts on newsletters versus social media and blogs for tech coaches

p.s. I still think it's criminal that public schools don't provide all of the resources that students need. Supply lists that cost families $50+ per student represent a financial hardship for many families and puts their children at a disadvantage from the first day of school. 



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18 Google Calendar Tutorials for Teachers

10 de Agosto de 2023, 12:38

Earlier this week I shared directions for creating appointment slots in Google Calendar. After doing that it occurred to me that I've made a lot of Google Calendar tutorials over the years. And while I have a big playlist of more than 700 Google Workspace tutorials, I've never broken out the Google Calendar tutorials into a playlist of its own. So this morning that's what I did. 

In this new playlist you'll find eighteen tutorials on how to use the various features of Google Calendar. I've embedded some of the highlights of the playlist below. 

How to Print a Guest List for Google Calendar Events



How to Use Google Classroom and Calendar to Schedule Individual Online Office Hours



How to Create a Reservation System in Google Calendar



How to Change the Color of Google Calendar Events



How to Change Google Calendar Notifications



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Five Uses for Google Docs Besides Essay Writing

9 de Agosto de 2023, 10:32

Over the last sixteen years I've used Google Docs and had students use Google Docs for lots of activities besides just writing essays. I've used Google Documents to facilitate analysis of primary sources, to create charts and diagrams, to facilitate group note-taking, to publish simple webpages, and to make collaborative task lists. All of those things are explained and demonstrated in the videos below. 

Guided Reading of Primary Sources
1. Find a digital copy, preferably in the Public Domain, of the primary source document that I want all of my students to read.

2. Copy and paste the primary source document into a Google Document.

3. Share the document with my students and allow them to comment on the document. I usually use the sharing setting of “anyone with the link” and then post the link on my blog. Alternatively, you could share by entering your students’ email addresses or by posting it in your Google Classroom.

4. I will highlight sections of the primary source document and insert a comment directly attached to the highlighted section. In my comments I will enter discussion prompts for students. They can then reply directly to my comments and each others' comments.

Here's a video of the process that is outlined above. 



Create Charts and Diagrams in Google Docs
In the Insert drop-down menu in Google Docs you will an option for inserting drawings. When you select the new drawing option you can create a chart or diagram from scratch. You can also use one of the premade charts that is found in the Insert menu. Watch this video to learn how to create charts and diagrams in Google Docs.



Publish Simple Websites
There are times when I want to make a document like a course syllabus or classroom expectations as easily accessible to as many people as possible. The easiest way to do that is to publish the document to the web instead of sharing it. Watch this short demo if you're not sure of the difference between sharing and publishing Google Docs.



Structure and Facilitate Group Notes
As I wrote the other day, I've tried a lot of methods for facilitating group note-taking in Google Docs. The method that works best for me and my students has been inserting a table and assigning students to squares within that table. Get the full explanation in this video.



Create Interactive Checklists in Google Docs
This is a relatively new capability within Google Documents. You can create a checklist and share it with collaborators to keep track of tasks for group projects. Watch this video to learn how to make interactive checklists in Google Documents.



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How to Create an Online Reservation System With Calendly

9 de Agosto de 2023, 10:22

In one of yesterday's posts I shared directions on how to create an online reservation system by using Google Calendar's appointment slots feature. If you don't have a Google Workspace account or you simply want an option for creating an online reservation system that doesn't rely on Google, Calendly is a good option for you. 

In Calendly you can create a calendar of meeting availability and let people click on it to book meetings with you. People can book meetings with you using any email account they want to use. In the video that is embedded below I demonstrate how to create an online reservation system by using Calendly.

Video - How to Create an Online Reservation System With Calendly

Applications for Education
Calendly does require people booking time with you to use an email address. For that reason, Calendly is best suited to high school age or higher. One of the most common uses for Calendly in school settings is for organizing parent-teacher conferences.


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