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Google Docs has recently added the Smart Chips to allow for more functionality in a document, allowing you to tag other people, pull templates, and have a document in a more collaborative environment. Now, Google has added the ability to draft an email in Google Docs and easily transfer this to Gmail for sending.  This update is extremely useful if you have an important email to send and you don't want to accidentally send it prior to it being done, you have an email to send as a team and you want everyone to have the ability to craft and have their say, or you have a list of running items that need to be included in the email over the course of time. Once you are ready to send it, click the Blue Gmail Logo and it will open in your Gmail. Once it is open, you only have to click send! No more accidentally sent too early emails! 

Google Forms has added updates to allow for more "secure" testing in Google Forms, with caveats of course. Forms now supports Locked Mode for their forms, meaning that students cannot open other apps, and if they leave the quiz for another tab, the teacher will be notified.  To enable, open a new Google Form at forms.google.com .  Once you have the settings page up, you can make sure that the form is set as a Quiz and then look for "Locked Mode." It is important to note that "Locked Mode" is only supported on managed Chromebooks, or the school issued devices. If a student is using a non-school issued device, their quiz will not be locked.  Once you have made your form a quiz, you just add your questions and set up the quiz as you normally would. Now, when you ask students to complete the quiz, they will be restricted and you will be notified if the students are off task. 

Photo by Ian Taylor on Unsplash When it comes to practicing what we preach, one of the areas where students could call us is citing our sources, especially when pulling pictures off of the internet. I was totally guilty of this in the classroom.  When asking students to be creative, we should be encouraging them to use items that are labeled for reuse or remixing. I wanted to share a list of resources that fit that category.  Photos Unsplash Pexels Pixabay New Old Stock Openverse Videos Pexels Pond5 Pixabay Videvo Audio Openverse YouTube Audio Library Free Music Archive While these are an excellent starter, it is still important to check licenses still. Overall, it is an excellent place to start with helping students find items to build their creative projects from.  I originally posted this, but attended a webinar the next day and we talked about this further. This list was shared during that meeting . 

Adobe Spark was one of my all time favorite EdTech tool. It allowed students to create without having to learn how to use complicated programs. This allowed for students to truly demonstrate their knowledge and not their technological know-how or ability.  The good news is that Adobe Spark is still around, it is now known as Creative Cloud Express . All of the awesome features still exist! You can still create graphics, websites, presentations, infographics, and videos quickly and easily. When we talk about novelty and allowing students to prove their knowledge in a different way and this tool allows content to shine through instead of the technology tool.  Not to mention, they have added a ton more functionality including:  The ability to remove backgrounds from images Convert to GIFs Resize Videos Resize Images Merge Videos Convert from PDF!! Combine Files and more!  The best news is, everyone in our district has a free upgrade to the premium version of the account! No need to apply

  Google Docs recently got an update that allows you to add a quick summary to longer documents that are in Google Docs format. Using Artificial Intelligence to scan and read the document and prepare a short summary of the document. If you are looking at it, and disagree, you can set your own! This is a cool feature. As students are writing an essay or paper, this tool can inform them if they are on topic and have written a comprehensive and understandable paper. If the summary is not their position, they might want to start over. From a staff standpoint, this is great to make sure that items match our intent and purpose as we prepare to share findings, data, and more!  To create, simply like the little icon in the corner and select summary. 

  Google Docs has recently launched a new feature that is perfect for a world in which our students are not printing! The Pageless Feature allows for larger photos, graphs, and tables without worrying about page constraints, as well as being able to move seamlessly through a document.  Applicable features in the classroom would be looking at large sets of data, large images, and formatting in tables without worrying about page breaks and how things might get messed up. In order to add it to your Google Document, you can use the GIF below to navigate to the Page Setup Menu and then select pageless. 

In our last post, we introduced the idea of adding a - between the t and the u in YouTube.  This got me to thinking about a few other cool URL tricks that I thought I would share.  If you or your students need to quickly create a new document, presentation, or spreadsheet, you can use this trick. Simply type in docs.new, slides.new, or sheets.new into your browsers URL bar, and you will be taken blank document ready for you to create! Try it out!  This can be useful when a thought comes to mind, or your class takes a turn for something amazing. I know that while I was in the classroom, we would take a turn for something and then have to get something to take some notes.