North Idaho EdTech

Although it sounds very dry, data validation in Google Forms is actually a great help to anyone wanting to collect information or give assessments. Plus, it's only a couple of clicks away from making your forms work better for you and your target audience. What is data validation? To begin, we need to know what we are talking about. Data validation is basically a way for the person who is creating the form to "force" those that are filling it out to follow their directions, or they can't submit their answers. That's right! Forms won't allow them to submit until those criteria have been met. This creates predictable answers from your students so that using the information in the spreadsheet is simplified (numbers where you need numbers, text that is the correct length, the right number of answers in a specific question, etc.). How to make it happen: To begin, create a from in Google Forms and create a question in that form (data validation works in sho...

Recently, G Suite has updated some features that are very helpful to lots of people, not just educators. One of the features that I found to be very exciting is the ability to assign action items from within Google Docs, Sheets and Slides apps, even via the mobile versions! It even sends that person an email letting them know that they've been assigned an action item and adds a new icon on that document in Google Drive to show that there are assigned action items that need to be addressed.  At first, I was thinking of how this might play out in meeting agendas that I create and/or contribute to, but then I got to thinking about how teachers could leverage this powerful ability with students. Feedback to Students One way this could work for teachers is to start using it as you comment  on student work in Google Drive or Classroom. Once you have the student's document open, instead of just making a comment, you can assign a specific task that you want them to work on ...

As a teacher, one of the things that I looked forward to the most was the quiet after school got out or during my prep period. However, for me, the silence was sometimes too deafening. Even music, at times, would be too much. I had to find something that would help me relax and reflect on the day or start to think about what was coming up for me and my students. Even now, I need something other than music to help me reflect on what I've just done or have coming up soon. So, I turned to podcasts to help me out. Podcasts have been around a long time, but I don't consider them to be a dying technology. In fact, I feel like they are on the rise because they are portable and many include a video portion to them, for those that want to watch instead of just listen. When I first started listening to them, I was looking for distraction from work and something to help me unwind. So, I started listening to some that were unrelated to education and teaching. However, I soon realized...

I've learned a lot lately about what can and can't be done with a Google doc to manage what happens when I share it with other people. In most instances, I use the built in sharing settings when I want to collaborate or convert my docs to PDF and share that so that my original can't be changed by anyone. Recently, I found that this was not the only way to do this and really it probably wasn't the most convenient way to share my documents. I've tried publishing my Google docs, but have found mixed success with the formatting. It seems that publishing works best with Google Slides, but other file types are not as friendly. To get around these hurdles, adjusting the URL can be a really useful way to  make your work or your students' work available. Required Settings Be sure to set either the global sharing settings or the individual sharing settings to the desired access level before proceeding. To do this on any document type:  Click on the blue Shar...

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...

So, It's been a long time since my last post. I had a busy summer and the start of this school year has been the busiest that I can remember, which makes things go quickly. But in the spirit of the split lives that teachers live, here is a quick guide on using Chrome profiles to manage the important separation that teachers work to maintain between home and school. Why use Chrome Profiles? Chrome allows a user to create separate browser profiles for each google account. This allows users to keep work, school, and/or personal accounts all separate, but still use them at the same time. They will operate independently with their own settings, bookmarks, extensions and more.  In other words, there is no need to switch between accounts anymore – all of them can be open at the same time. *In addition, Add-Ons in Google Drive work better when profiles are kept separate (like Goobric). Set Up Profiles: Sign in, or see who is signed into Chrome: When Google Chrome is first o...

It's been a while since I posted, especially about Google Classroom updates. The team at Google Classroom has been busy and super responsive to feedback from its user community. Since the last time I wrote about it, they've made a bunch of changes. I just wanted to highlight the ones that I think make the most impact on teachers in my district, I've created the list below: Mobile app updates: Add/Edit assignments - This is big for users who want to be able to manage their Classroom pages from anywhere. Grade student work - This is also great for teachers who like to work via mobile devices or in our 1:1 iPad classrooms. Take a photo to post to the stream or on assignments - This also great for our mobile teachers who want to share products from other students, class notes, or anything else out to the class right from their mobile device. Add other teachers as co-teachers. Not only has the Classroom team worked on making it more mobile friendly, but they've d...