North Idaho EdTech

I've often been asked about an easy way to share out documents that students have worked on in Google Classroom to a whole class for peer reviews, product showcases, virtual gallery walks, etc. without having students share directly with each other or the teacher having to manually share them out student by student. So, here's a way to do this en masse for an entire class worth of documents/files. Start with an assignment that students have already completed in Google Classroom. It won't matter if they've turned them in or not (or if you've returned them or not). Create a new assignment that will share out all of the documents to the entire class. Select all of the documents at one time from the Google Drive attachment icon by holding down the Ctrl button (Command on a Mac) while you select each document to share. Be sure to give specific instructions on what  the students are to do with each other's work once it is shared out. It should be clear how...

I prepared this Forms walk-through as a source for teachers in my district to learn the basic use of Google Forms. Please feel free to use and share it as you need.

Well, it seems as though the folks behind Google Classroom have been listening and making improvements as we get into the start of the second half of the school year. Wednesday of this week, Google announced the newest updates to Classroom , which include a new iOS and Android app. Today, though, I'm going to specifically mention the things that they've done to boost the teacher experience in Classroom. Assignments for Teachers: In the student version of Classroom, there is an option for students to view all of the pending assignments that they have for all of their classes. For the teacher, however, we used to have to go to each class to see what assignments are pending and how many students have completed them. Now, we have our own Assignments section (actually two of them...one for our teaching classes and one for the classes that we are enrolled in as students). Here, we get to see all the pending assignments for all of our classes and the number of students who have...

One of the many aspects of Google Drive that I enjoy is that they keep track of the history of all of my revisions on Google files. However, I stumbled upon a way (while watching Google's The Apps Show ) that I can also keep track of my non-Google file revisions without having multiple copies of that document in my Drive. I like this because it helps with people who may not want to switch over to Google's document editing and still want to easily manage their drafts of Office documents or PDFs. Here's how to make this happen: Go to your Google Drive  Select the file that is not a Google file Click the menu button (also known as the actions button) or right click Choose "Manage Versions" Here you can see a list of all the versions of that document as well as Upload new versions Delete old versions Download a version (doesn't have to be the current one) Permanently save an older version (Google drive only keeps older versions for 30 days or the ...

Google has responded to may of our user feedback submissions and has updated Classroom with some very handy options. While I'm sure there are still many things that we'd all like to see, it's nice to see some response to many of our requests. Here is my explanation of the changes: Teachers can now control what students are able to do on the Stream. Teachers can allow full access, comment only access or make it so students cannot post at all on the Stream. This is available in the Student section for the teacher. Teachers can also "mute" individual students who may need to be restricted from making comments for one reason or another. This can be done in the Stream on a specific student's comment or from the Actions menu in the Student section. Also in the Student section in Classroom, teachers can now sort the class names by last name or first name. In the Assignments section, teachers can now download grades by each assignment or downloa...

As the school year begins this year, there is much buzz about the new classroom management suite from Google called Classroom. I know I'm as excited about it as anyone could be! Being able to manage student work and your own teacher workflow without knowledge of scripts and Add-ons makes my life as an instructional technology specialist much easier. One of the really great features in Google docs, and how Google Classroom integrates that as part of the assignment work/submission process, is the "Suggesting" mode in docs. While a student is completing an assignment, the teacher has the ability to open student documents and make suggestions. This is very handy during editing and revising periods, before a paper would be turned in. When a teacher makes a suggestion, the student will see the suggestion and the parts that have been changed will show up with a strike-through (see screenshot above). Students can then compare their text with the suggestion and make a d...

One of the most handy functions in Google Drive is the sharing settings. This allows me to share any document that I own in my Google Drive with anyone that I want to who also has a Google Drive; but, sometimes I want to share a document with a wider audience (i.e., parents, community members, etc.). So how can I do this and still control how that document in viewed. One great option that is provided in Google Drive is the Publish option. This is available for documents that are part of the Google Apps family (i.e., documents, presentations, spreadsheets and drawings). When you do this, it creates a page where anyone can view your document, presentation, spreadsheet or drawing for informational purposes. This also makes a nice, web-friendly, version of your file that allows for easy embedding into your website, blog, or other online space. I really like to use this when I want students to create something that they are going to share on our website, blogs or wikis. Another reason f...