Month: April 2020

As we enter our 5th week of working from home / teaching from home, I wanted to take a few moments to remind teachers of 5 things that might make your life a bit easier when using Google Classroom as the information hub for you at home learners.

Turn off Classwork on the Stream Notifications  
Your students will find it easier to find your assignments if you have them organized by topic on the classwork page. If you are posting only announcements in the stream your students will find it easier to find them.

Click on the gear (top right in classroom) and set Classwork on the stream to “Hide Notifications” read more

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With students ending the school year with remote learning instead of being in the classroom, teachers are looking for ways to interact and engage with students face-to-face. 

While Zoom has many more useful features for learning, it was originally created for business. Many schools that already have G Suite have adopted Google Meet as their tool of choice. Even though Meet is lacking many of the features of Zoom, there are a number of extensions that have been created to replicate these features in Meet. read more

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As school building closures continue throughout Ohio, many teachers are using videoconferencing tools such as Zoom and Google Meet to connect virtually with their students. Google announced some new features last week, including the ability to manage Meet from within Google Classroom.

From Google’s blog:

Educators can create a unique Meet link for each class, which is displayed on the Classroom Stream and Classwork pages. The link acts as a dedicated meeting space for each class, making it easy for both teachers and students to join. read more

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When adding text to an image, you will want to make sure the text is readable. Writing over a picture slide can be challenging when the picture is busy and full of color. To effectively add text over images, add an image overlay to your Google Slide. The examples below show a slide without and with an image overlay.

No Image Overlay
With Image Overlay

To accomplish this effect, follow the below steps:

Insert an image to a slide. Resize image so that it covers the slide  Add a rectangle and resize to cover the image

  • Recolor the image by clicking on the Fill Color. Select a color. The rectangle shape will be filled in with the color selected

  • Next, return to the Fill Color screen. Select Custom. Move the Transparency slider so that the fill color becomes more transparent. Then, click the OK button

    • Here’s an animation that shows you the entire process: read more

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