Welcome Back with More Google Classroom Features

From http://www.edudemic.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/google-classroom.png

Welcome back!  It was a short summer and it has been a fast school year so far.  Even though we've been in school for almost a month already, this is my first chance to get back to my weekly blogging.  This has been a whirlwind school year so far but things are finally settling down!

This blog post is actually a topic with some new tips that many of you who already use Google Classroom may be aware of.  However, there are even more new features that I just recently learned about from a colleague of mine, the tech coach at another school, and I think these new features are great and make Google Classroom even easier to use with other tools and sites!

So first, as many of you probably realized as you came back this school year, Google has added a number of new features to Classroom, making it easier to create and share assignments with students, but also to reuse assignments from year to year, which is a question I got A LOT last year from teachers.  In Classroom now, when you go to add content to a class and click the plus button at the bottom of the screen, there are some new options for asking questions and reusing posts.  Ask a question is a new option to start a discussion in class or do a quick formative assessment,  You can pose a question to the class, decide whether students just answer your question or can reply to each other, and then easily grade and give feedback in one place.  It also keeps the discussion stream in one place, instead of cluttering up the main classroom stream.

Along with the question feature, teachers can now reuse assignments.  This means that if you create a new class for each new year or semester, you can easily reuse assignments from last year, including creating new documents for your new students. Also, if you forget to assign a new assignment to multiple classes, you can easily fix that by reusing the assignment, instead of having to create it from scratch again.

Another new feature that has just been added here in September is the Calendar feature.  Each class now has a calendar and assignments are automatically there.  Additionally, teachers and students with multiple classes can view their Classroom Calendar to see all assignments and due dates for all classes at once.  This is an easy way to stay organized for both teachers and students.

And best of all, my favorite new feature to Classroom and one I think will continue to improve, is the ability to now easily add info from other online tools straight to your classroom.  Some online tools, such as Quizlet, PBS, Discovery Education, etc., have a button that allows you to share content from their sites directly to Chrome. So for instance, if I have a Quizlet review I have made, with one button I can share that to my Classroom for students to access. Check out the video below from my tech coach colleague at North for a walk through on how to do that.  
But it gets even better!  Now, Google has also created an extension for Chrome that lets you share any site and content from a site directly to your Google classroom.  So if I find a great resource to use or if I want all my students to access the same website at the same time, I no longer have to write it on the board and wait for them all to type it in, e-mail it to them all, or try and find another easy way for them to access it.  I can just post it to classroom with the extension button and they can all easily access it at once.  It makes things so much easier and faster.  Teachers have the option to Push the link to students and if they also have the extension it will actually open the website immediately, or use it in an announcement or assignment. There is so much potential for this extension!

Overall, the new features in Classroom means it just keeps getting better and easier!  It seems like every time I have a teacher tell me "it would be really nice if I could do this (insert thing they wish they could do) in classroom"... it eventually shows up.  So keep watching for more changes and updates, but for now, using Classroom continues to be an easy and effective way to manage content in the classroom.

Video for Using the Share Button in Online Tools:

Video for Using the Share to Classroom Extension:

Google Chrome Extensions

In an earlier post, I talked about some of the neat things you can do with Chrome tabs to make your browsing experience easier and more efficient (I still love being able to pin tabs!).  However, I thought I should spend a little time talking about some of the more helpful Chrome extensions that I really find useful.  This post is really more about making working in Chrome easier and saving time, as opposed to things you might actually use in the classroom; however, some of these might be useful for your students, too.

For those of you who don't use them, extensions are extra features that can be added to Chrome that can customize your use of it and help make the things you do regularly easier to do.

Extensity:

Managing extensions and apps can be overwhelming.  For most people, they end up with a long line of icons at the top of the browser, and let's be honest, some extensions can cause other programs or sites to do funky things.  In general, a good practice is to only keep enabled the extensions that you use frequently, and disable the rest until you actually need to use them.  But this also means the extra work of opening your settings and going to your extensions control page and then enabling or disabling what you need.  Extensity solves that problem by providing one-click access to all your extensions and apps.  You click the extensions icon to use it, click the extension to turn on or off (gray means it is disabled or off).  You can also launch your apps from the extension, which means you don't have to keep opening a new tab or going back to your apps page every time you want to access one.  It makes using extensions and apps in Chrome faster and easier.  See this Cool Cat Teacher One-Minute Youtube Video for more information about how to use it.

Awesome Screenshot:

This extension allows you to take online screenshots and edit them directly in your browser.  You can capture full or partial website pages, crop, add shapes, arrows and lines, write or highlight, and blur different areas of the screenshot. You can color code your annotations and then save them for future use or copy and paste them directly into an online document or web tool.  See this video for more information and a walk-through of how to use it.

OneTab:

Onetab is another extension that just makes the whole Chrome user experience easier.  If you are one of those people who always have about fifty tabs open in your browser (it's okay, I know you're out there), OneTab is for you.  OneTab will take all of your open tabs (except pinned ones) and pull them into a single tab with a list of all your open tabs.  That way, since we know you aren't working in all fifty of them at once, you can still go back and forth easily, but you don't have to keep so many open that you can't even tell what they are.  It's a nice, easy extension if you like a lot of tabs open at once.

There are many more extensions out there and I'm sure I'll do another post soon with some more, but these are three that are helpful, easy to use, and can make Chrome more efficient.  Hopefully you'll find at least one that you like and can start to use! 

Cool Things with Chrome Tabs

Tricks to Making Using Google Chrome Easier

This post is all about a few of the neat features Google Chrome has for their browsing tabs, which can make it easier to work in Chrome.

Pinning Tabs

First, pinning tabs.  We've all been there.  Working on a web page, you open a new tab, you are done with that tab and when you go to close it... you accidentally hit the red x and close all of your tabs.  Now you have to reopen your browser and start again.  Well, the pin tab feature helps prevent that.

When you pin a tab in Google Chrome, it will keep that tab from accidentally closing. If you accidentally close your browser, when you reopen it, that tab will still be there.  An added bonus is that when you pin a tab, it gets minimized so only the icon shows, which leaves you room for a lot more tabs!

To pin a tab, simply right click on the tab and choose "Pin Tab."

You will see the tab minimize and show just the icon. 

http://cdn.techgyd.com/2015/09/pin-tab.png

Toggle Between Tabs

Next, toggling between tabs.  Just like you can toggle between open programs on your computer using Alt+Tab, you can toggle between tabs in Chrome by using Control + Tab Number.  So, if I am in the first tab I have open and want to move to the second tab, instead of using my mouse to click on the second tab, I can use Control + 2 to move to that tab.  It's very handy when you're using your keyboard.  

Closing Tabs

Finally, we'll talk about how to easily close tabs in Chrome, without having to close the whole browser or close each tab individually by clicking on its little x.  There are a couple of ways to do this.  

If you want to close all of the tabs except the one you are on (or ones you have pinned), right click on the tab you want to keep open, and choose the option to "Close other tabs."

Your other option is to close all the tabs to the right of the tab you are on (sorry, you can only close the tabs to the right, not the left).  But remember, you can also drag tabs around to reorder them if needed.  To close all the tabs to the right, right click on the tab you are keeping open and choose "Close tabs to the right."

Hopefully these few tips will help make your Chrome experience a little faster, easier, and more efficient.