New Year of U5 Instructional Tech Updates

 

The end of last year and the beginning of 2024 have been busy to say the least.  January has already consisted of two E-Learning days and a snow day.  I think we will be in person a total of 13 days the whole month!  It is crazy how one month can be so chaotic. 

In this issue of the January Tech update you will find our Institute Day recordings. Many are from our vendors, but Matt and I did a training on AI.    There is also a great video about how AI could save education (not distroy).  It is about 15 minutes, but worth the watch.  

If you got a new phone or device over the holidays you are probably wondering how to connect it to our WIFI.  Check out the how to sheet, which will allow you to connect.  This is great for parts of the buildings where there is no outside signal.   If you are wanting to send your self a digital copy of an assignment, or picture, check out the video that shows you how to do it from our Follow Me printer/copier.  

This year Google is also celebrating 25 years.  Check out the most search items in 2023 in their video.  Also, with the E-Learning going on, we put together a couple of videos on how to generate and update your Google Meet link in Google Classroom.  Last there has been an update to practice sets in Classroom.  You can now use a Google Form to generate a practice set for students! What a great way to get formative feedback!  

G Suite to Google Workspace for Education Part 1

G Suite for Education officially changed their name to Google Workspace for Education.  This change will give more flexibility and updates to all users in the Fundamentals Workspace and the Plus Workspace (old Enterprise). Click here to read more. Since our district is already an Enterprise subscriber, there won't be a lot of changes for the end-user, but there are some really nice new features in the Google Admin Console. 

This update is also providing some changes in each of the apps for Workspace for Education.  Be prepared to see several changes happen to Drive, Chromebooks, Classroom, Meet, and Google Docs, Forms and Jamboards.  Most of these changes will role out later in 2021, but will be highlighted when they hit our domain.  

Drive:  Drive will have new storage capacities moving forward.  This means districts will have 100TB of pooled storage.  This may seem like a lot but in our District we are really close to this number.  With the pandemic, the number of videos created and stored on Google Drive has gone up over 10 times this year. But don't worry we will know who the high users are.  We will also look into removing student and staff data from our storage for those who are no longer in the district. 

Forms: Students will now be able to save their progress on a form.  Forms will automatically save a DRAFT for 30 days or until the form has been submitted.  This is great for students who typically take a little longer to take an assessment, or from faulty internet connection.  Sign up to be part of the beta testing.

Jamboard:   Revision history is coming which is really great since before this update, there was no way to track who was doing what on a Jam and no way to revert back to a previous version without using the undo button.

Docs: Citations was updated earlier this year, but now you can enter a URL and it will create a citation in the right format. Smart Compose & AutoCorrect are now available in other languages. Document Approval has been added so when an approval is needed before a document can be sent out district/school wide, you can now request approval from specific people and then see who has approved and who you need to follow up with.

As with all updates, some will hit our domain earlier then others, but many of these will roll out later in 2021. For an easy to use guide take a look at the graphic created by John R. Sowash of Chrmbook.com.

New Google Features including "File Upload" question type in Google Forms!

::The following blog post comes from the official Google Blog for Education::

New time-saving features in G Suite for Education

Ryan Weber

PRODUCT MANAGER

G Suite for Education helps students move from collecting ideas to creating projects and papers as quickly and easily as possible. Google Docs achieves this by facilitating collaboration, making it easy to work on any device, and weaving in machine intelligence to handle the more mundane elements of getting work done.

Today we’re introducing new time-saving features to Docs, Sheets and Slides designed to speed up and simplify the way teachers and students work, so they can focus on what’s really important—teaching and learning. These apps still have all of the same functionality that students and teachers love, with the addition of these new features.

Check it out Google Form Add On

I was recently watching a video from Richard Byrne who I follow on YouTube and on his blog Free Tech for Teachers. The video was how to setup a Google Form for a check in and check out system.

The first thing I thought of was classroom libraries and departmental equipment.  No more, who has that book, where are the ipads, or who borrowed the PE equipment.  Now you have a very easy check out/in system you can post to your website.

Using a Google Form add on called Check it out, allows teachers to create a very simple form and system for students and teachers to check out and check in items.  Take a look at this video it explains it very clearly and is less than 5 minutes.

Student Late Work Form Submission - Google Forms

On Tuesday, September 6th, Tera Pendleton a NCHS Business Education Teacher, talked about the form she makes the kids fill out if they have submitted late work.  Since she doesn't visit those assignments in Google Classroom after they have been check, she directs the student to fill out a Late Work Submission Form through Google Forms. Once a week on Thursday's, Tera goes through the submissions and reviews late student work.   

This process is geared for student accountability.  They fill in their names, class hour of assignment, assignment name and WHY it is late.   Thanks for sharing Tera.  

Here is the link.  If you think it is something you want to use, just make a copy in your Google Drive.