 Hi, this is Stevie Barnes, and I'm here with Janelle Gauck to give you some insight into Google for Education. So with Google Meet, you obviously can create interactive class meets, video conference. You can use it on all your different devices as long as you have an internet connection, which makes it very accessible to people. And you can even join straight from Gmail. Google Meet has a lot of features that make it desirable for us to use what we need to do something virtual. There's no limit on calls. Everything is free. There's a tiled layout, which you can change the settings on so that you can see more people. They improve their video quality since the pandemic became. You can share your screen. If you look at this, Google Meet updates for remote learning. You can see all the things that they added in once the pandemic hit. So now we can raise our hand. We can do breakout sessions. We can do Q&A and polls, a lot of things that we weren't able to do in the past. So we've all been there. We're sitting and everybody's just got their screens off and no one's talking. And it's like you're talking to yourself, right? So when we were in the pandemic, initially in the beginning, what I would do is I would put them in breakout rooms. And I found that when I went into those rooms, they were actually talking to each other. So they were collaborating and working together the way they would if they were in school. But they were just uncomfortable at first doing it in the whole group setting. So that was really helpful. They have a built-in whiteboard now, which is really cool. So you can use the whiteboard to pose questions or to have them. If you look at the little video that I have here, what I did was I started a whiteboard. And I already had an image saved. So you can have an image. You can add an image. And then what I did was I put these little stickies on. And I'm just having them label what those individual post-its are. So that's just a quick way for me to assess whether they understood what I was giving them in the lesson. Did they meet that target? OK, so you can increase engagement in your Google Meet. When we were virtual, one of the things I found that was very helpful was putting students in break-out rooms are great for collaboration. But they're also really good for small group instruction. Because when you're joining one of those breakout rooms, you're in a small group. So I find a lot of times the kids are much more comfortable asking questions. It's a great way to get formative assessment in. You can do many presentations to those small groups. You don't have to do a presentation to the whole group and then send them in breakout rooms. You can randomly assign groups or you can hand-pick. And I love that because sometimes I'll select to randomly put them in groups. And then when you're looking at those groups, you're like, that kid doesn't really work well with that one or this student needs more high flyers with them. You can move people around, shuffle it, and it will work better for you. You can set a timer. And that timer will automatically close the breakout rooms and send everyone back to the main call. And then this at the bottom, I actually took from one of the science teachers here. I noticed that last year when we had everybody going out like crazy on quarantine when that second wave hit, she would have students at her tables. One student at each table would join a meet with the student that they had that was at home so that they could still collaborate and act as if they were sitting at their group in school. So she would have the student on the meet while she was doing instruction. And then the student at the table would join the meet. And she would just be in the room if they needed help. And I really liked that. And it's easy to schedule conferences with Google Meets. If you can't have a conference in person and you have a student that you really need to talk to their parent or guardian, you can schedule a meet. Obviously, you would talk to them first. But you can schedule a meet in your calendar. And then it will send them the invite and send a reminder so that they already have the link. And this is just a little video of how to do that. Google Sites, you can have grade level or subject one-stop shops, which are a lot of work initially to create. But then they're really helpful when you have them done. You can use them for e-portfolios. And some teachers use them for project-based learning, which then virtual labs. If you have a student who's not there, maybe you want to share it with quarantine students, things like that. All right, so this is our sixth grade one-stop shop at CMS. And we have our four subjects there. And we have everything that a parent would need. So if someone needs a conference, wants to find out admin's phone number, wants to know who the ELA teacher is or how they can set up a conference with them, everything they need, student handbook everything, is in this one-stop shop. And if you look, it's going to keep scrolling because it's a gift. But if you look at the video in the science section, I even have a link to the slides with weekly updates for science. So if a parent wants to know what they're doing in school that week, they just have to look at the updates. And so grade level one-stop shops make it a lot easier for parents to stay involved in their student's education while they're at middle or high school. And again, it takes a lot of cooperation. It is a little bit of work to set up, but it's definitely worth it. You can also create a QR code to make a stop shop and have that on a board at Open House or have it printed out and makes it super convenient for parents or students to access that. Yes, actually. We put them on our academic plans last year when we were handing them out so that parents had that QR code when the syllabus went home. OK, e-portfolios. So some of you may be familiar with an e-portfolio because you're teaching honors, science, eighth grade science. They have a portfolio. Everyone at CMS, prior to the pandemic, I'm not sure if they did it last year, but every student had a portfolio that they created that would follow them all the way to high school and keep their work in it so that they had a whole collection of everything by the time they graduated. So some e-portfolios focus on assessment of learning and then some focus on deepening student learning. So creating an e-portfolio is designed really to help them make connections between their content areas, because when they sit down to look at that portfolio, they're looking at social studies and science and math and ELA. So hopefully they're making connections across those content areas. And it's also a really good place for reflection. So in eighth grade honors, science, they have pre-assessments, and then they have reflections at the end that they have to fill out. So what did you learn? What is your take from that? It just really makes them think that one step further. Google Voice. If you don't use it, you should, because it is so much easier when you're on the run and you need to contact a parent and you don't want them to have your phone number. We don't want them to have our personal phone number. And you can always stay late at school to make calls. And maybe there's a situation that happened that you absolutely need to speak to a parent, but you've got to get your child to soccer, right? So Google Voice lets you send text messages. You can place phone calls. You can record phone calls. So if you are calling somebody you're nervous about or you can't get somebody to sit with you, you can record that call. You can screen them. They have really great screening tools. They have voicemail transcription, just like your smartphone. And you can actually start a call on one device and move to another device. And that can be really, you know, you're on your laptop and all of a sudden you notice your phone. Laptop's about to die and you don't have a charger. You switch to your phone, okay? So Google Voice, as I said, lets you stay connected with everyone no matter where you are, okay? One of the things that I like to do is I have a little bit of a commute home, right? Or to pick up my daughter. So I will use Google Voice to call a parent and then it'll be on my car speaker phone and I can make that call while I'm driving instead of staying at school late to get that phone call done, right? And I'm maintaining my privacy because I'm not sharing my cell phone number with them. You do initially need to link it to your cell phone when you set up, but that cell phone number is not gonna be shared with anyone. It's just because it's going to use that phone number to route things. So that nobody else will have access to your phone number. You just have to link it. Back on your web browser, if you click on the little waffle, you're gonna have access to all of the apps. And if you don't see it, you can say more from Google, all of your products or you could just type in Google Voice. One thing I like about Google Voice, as I was saying, is you can answer through Gmail. So if you're sitting and you see a call that's coming in, you can actually answer through your Gmail and just talk on your computers if you're on a phone. But you can also screen a call and pick up while a voicemail is being recorded, which is not something you can do on your cell phone, right? So I really like that. You're thinking, oh, I'm not sure do I wanna answer this now or not, oh no, it went to voicemail. You can still pick it up and it's 100% free. Now there are paid plans, but for what we use it for, we wouldn't need a paid plan, okay? And the setup for Google Voice is really easy. So you're gonna log in with Google, it's gonna ask you to choose a phone number. So you can input the area that you're calling from and then it will bring up a long list of phone numbers and you pick the one you want. It's gonna ask you to link your phone and then you can set office hours. So you can set it that you don't want anybody calling you after 4 p.m. or before 7. And you won't get notifications when they're calling or texting. The only thing that I wanna mention about this is if your phone number is inactive for a long period of time, it is going to kick it back. So you won't have it anymore. So over the summer not using it, that's fine, but if it's more than six months, you're gonna wanna log in just so that you keep that phone number. And if you type in the area, like if you type in Conway and the number doesn't pop up, you can type in 843 as well and it will give you numbers with our area code. So next on the list is Google Sheets. And a few reasons why you should definitely use Google Sheets is because you can track testing data, you can create live rubrics, you can organize field trips, you can select random students and create groups. And these are just a few of the really handy tools that you can do with this app. The first thing that I want to talk to you about is using Google Sheets to track testing data. We have some great friends at Conway Middle, Amy Porter and Leigh Ann Hagen. Last year they did a session on Google Sheets and they shared an already formatted spreadsheet to track your student's data. And so I'll link this in here when we share the presentation, you'll have access to this. Basically, this is what the template looks like and you will be able to put in your student's names, you can track, you know, are they SPED, ESOL, 504 GT, then you're gonna put in their fall score and then you would put in their goal and then you would put in their spring score as you go. So if they made 216, the Google Sheet is already formatted with conditional formatting. And so it tells you, yes, they met their goal, it tells you how much they have grown and then it's also color coded to let you know where do they fall as far as meets exceeds or does not meet and it would change based on the color or the number, I'm sorry. So 204 does not meet and you can change these numbers based on your grade level so that you have the right range. So my sheet is formatted for sixth grade ranges as far as ELA scores, but it's easy to change. Another awesome way that you can use Google Sheets is to create live rubrics. And so some of you may have heard of Alice Keeler. If you haven't, she is an ed tech guru and she is always blogging and putting a lot of great ideas out there for teachers. She created a quick and easy template for teachers to add a rubric in Google Classroom. I have the link for you here and you're just gonna click make a copy. And so she has already formatted it and done the formulas, done the hard part and all you would have to do is fill in what you need it and then whatever your criteria is, she said has glitter. It adds more criteria as you go automatically. And then when I am ready to use this template, I would go back to Google Classroom and I can go to edit assignment, click on rubric and then import from sheets and the sheet that I just used. But you could title your rubric and then back in Google Classroom, it's gonna pop up here as weak one rubric and you'll be able to add it and use it and it's super convenient. The video will be available for you to rewatch later too. But basically, she did the hard part and then you can reuse that rubric as many times as you need or you can create new rubrics with this link to be appropriate for your other assignments. And it's just supposed to be a quicker way rather than going in Google Classroom and typing the same rubric every single time just to make it a quicker, more efficient way of grading things. I have a few more tips for you with Google Sheets and some more templates that I was going to share with you. You can have students perform a self-assessment with this template and this is just a very basic template. But if you ever have an assignment where you would like them to check their answers themselves, you are going to open up this link and at the bottom you'll have your questions here and then the students will type in the answers and it will color code it red or green if it's correct or incorrect. And then these are the directions right here in the tab. And then also there's a box here for you to include hints. They make templates where it doesn't have a hint but if you would like your students to have a hint as they perform their self-assessment, you can also use that. And this template is already made so all you have to do is click it, reuse it for yourself and type in what you would like students to be self-assessed on. So basically I'm just trying to tell you that the hard work is done, all you are doing is inputting your information. Another great way you can use Google Sheets is to utilize the Rand between formula to select a student from your roster randomly. And I have a template for that as well. The code is put in this box but it's equals index. And then I put my numbers A2 through A11 and depending on how long my roster is I would change A11 to the bottom number. And then comma Rand between and you are going to do one through 10. I know that's a little bit confusing but I have 10 students total on this list Mickey through Larry. So I use the numbers one through 10. You put this formula right here and it automatically selects someone randomly. So anytime that you need to choose a random student you have that option. And you can also choose random groups. So at the bottom of the screen there's another tab and it says random groups. You can put your roster over here in this column and then these are formatted with the roster. And so anytime that you want to change your roster you can have that work for you as well. If you would like to do more and more research on Google Sheets I recommend learning about conditional formatting is a little bit tricky and there's a lot of ins and outs to it but it makes your life super easy and I'll put a little resource right there if you would like to check that out. And then also with Google Sheets there's a shortcut for almost everything. And so there's another link there that helps you learn all of the shortcuts that you would need to know for Google Sheets that would make building your spreadsheets and working in there super easy. The last thing that I was gonna talk to you about is Google Calendar. And so Google Calendar, most of you may be familiar with this but it can help you schedule meetings. You can create reminders and tasks. You can share your schedule with others and you can share and view other calendars. Okay, so one cool trick that you should do is sync your Google Calendar with your Outlook Calendar. So I noticed that your Outlook Calendar, a lot of times you'll get your work meetings, your department meetings, things like that will be scheduled on Outlook but you don't see it on your Google Calendar. So you can sync these calendars together and the steps to do that, you go to your settings, you click View All Outlook Settings, click on Calendar, Accounts, and then you're gonna select Google. Then once I select Google, it has all of my information synced over. If you create an event in Google Calendar, it's going to show up automatically in your Outlook Calendar as well. And so if that makes it super handy for you that way that you don't have to keep track with two different calendars, they're synced together. Another awesome thing that you can do with Google Calendar is create meetings. And so the great thing about Google is that it is, all of the apps are created seamlessly, I guess they're meant to work together. And so with Google Meet, it works together perfectly with Google Calendar. If you open up Google Calendar, you can click the Create button in the top left-hand corner. You can either click the date you'd like to schedule something or you can just click Create and change the date on the pop-up menu. But you can add your title, the time, any guests that you'd like to invite to your meeting. And then also if you want to add a Google Meet link, you have that option as well, which is super handy for scheduling parent meetings and such. And then once you create that event on Google Calendar, that is going to send a message to the people that you've invited as a reminder, which is also very helpful. And then, so this little gift that just popped up, I created a Google Calendar meeting with the parent and then on my Outlook calendar, it is already synced over. I didn't have to go in and double create the event. It syncs seamlessly that way. I can be working in my email and it's also gonna have that on my calendar. That helps to make sure that you're not double booking and then also so you're not having to keep track of so many different calendars. Another helpful and handy feature of Google Calendar is the task options, task option. So over here on the right-hand side of Google Calendar, there's a task icon and it looks just like this with the blue check mark. And you can create a to-do list here as well. And all you have to do is just add the desired task with the date and time you'd like to repeat it. So task would be really helpful to use if you need to do something every single Monday, like you need to be reminded, okay, every Monday I need to send a team email. I need to update the school website. You can put that on your task and it puts it on your calendar. That way you are reminded, okay, every Monday I know I've gotta do this and it may be a little bit difficult to see but you can check it off. And so once you've completed the task on Monday, you can check it and that's always satisfying. And then a few more helpful tips for you. On a Google Calendar, you can download the Google Calendar Disable Month Scroll Extension. And so what that means is that whenever you are in Google Calendar, it won't automatically go to the next month when you are scrolling. If you don't have that extension, it's very easy to, like if you touch your mouse pad or something, it can very easily send you over to the next month and then you're like, wait a minute, I was trying to look at August. So that's just a helpful tidbit. And that can be found in the Google Chrome Web Store. And then one more tip that I have for you is to uncheck show weekends to only focus on your work week. You click on month and instead of showing weekends, you can uncheck it and then you are only focusing on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, which can be helpful if you are using Google Calendar a lot for work. You can also change this tab up here to focus on the week so that you only see week by week basis for the month. And before I move on, the Disable Month Scroll means that it's not just gonna scroll over to the next month, you have to come up here and physically click the arrow to go to the next month. I prefer that, but it's totally up to you. Thanks for watching. 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