Google Workshop Screencast

For those of you unable to attend the Google Workshops last week, I've put together a screencast of the presentation.
Here's a table of contents so you can skip ahead (that I created using a tool called Videonot.es thanks to Sarah Strack for the tip!):

0:40 Part 1- Using Templates in Google Slides and Docs
3:35 Part 2- Migration to cssu.org-- remaining issues (YouTube, Google Plus and Chrome logins)
4:27 Part 3- Using 3rd-party applications with Google Drive (it's more than Google Docs!)

I'd love to hear any questions or comments or to help you get started or move forward with any of this!
Thanks for reading,

What's New With Google 2105 Workshop

Here are the slides from this week's workshop.  I'll be updating them as I go through the workshops.

Accessing student schedules

Teachers,

Here's an easy way to access the schedule for a student in your class;

1. Go to the MMS attendance portal
2. Choose the appropriate class (or advisory)
3. Click Attendance...View...Student Schedule
4. Choose the student whose schedule you need.

Note that you can also use Student Biographical Profile to access parent addresses and phone numbers.

Doctopus & Google Classroom

I've posted (and done workshops) before about Doctopus.  I'm sharing again because more and more
teachers are now using it.  I also want to clear up any confusion about Doctpus vs. Google Classroom.

So, first of all, what is Doctopus exactly?  It's an add-on to Google Sheets that essentially allows a teacher to create documents from templates that are individualized for each student in a class, then (optionally) put the docs into folders in Google Drive that are shared between each student and the teacher.  It automates (and saves the hassle of) each student individually making a copy of a file, renaming it, then sharing it back with the teacher.

What's Google Classroom?  It's a tool developed by Google that is designed for teacher to post messages to their classes and to manage assignments.  It actually integrates with Doctopus. I would recommend using Doctopus on its own for now.  As Google Classroom develops more features, it may be worth looking into later.

I decided to make a screencast about setting up and using Doctopus (click the upper right to expand it).  It's longer than my usual, but I cover both initial setup and regular use.  One thing I left out of the video is that once you set up a roster for a class, you can just recall that roster in the future (so the first 4:25 of the video you only have to do once per class).

Please let me know if you'd like to get started and I'd be happy to help.  I can also direct you to colleagues who are currently using the tool.

PollEverywhere now embeds in Google Slides

There are lots of good tools out there for assessing and getting instant student/audience feedback via technology, but PollEverywhere has been around (probably) the longest.  They just announced today that you can now embed the results of a "poll" into a Google Slides presentation.  It's still in "Labs," but worth checking out.  Good to know, as we use Slides more and more in place Powerpoint.
Here's a how-to:


Gathering audience feedback directly from Google Slides from Poll Everywhere on Vimeo.