TwosDay - Shona - Creating Podcasts

Podcasts are a great way for students to showcase what they know, create an authentic audience, and apply real world applications. Twisted Wave is a great resource that allows students to record on their chrome books, store their podcast in their Google Drive, and share with others. In working with this resource, we found that if a student would like to incorporate their own musical introduction, or have music in the background, they could either use music from the chrome book or their phone if allowed.

HOTSpot - Cory - Image Collecting

Sometimes we have our students producing so many different items that there is not enough of us to go around and take a look at everything. Image collecting allows you to have students simply turn in an image on Google Classroom and then allow an extension called DriveShare to put all those images in a slide deck that is easy for your perusal.

VH HOTSpot - Amanda - Google Calendar and Classroom

As the year begins we’ve received several questions surrounding Google Calendar, especially regarding the calendar options in Google Classroom. Each classroom creates a calendar in which assignments from your stream are posted. However, it is our recommendation that you and your students use the actual “google calendar” link versus the “classroom calendar” link in the about section to view and edit calendars. The other option is to share a Google Calendar with your students. To do this, click on the arrow next to the calendar and select “share this calendar”, select “make this calendar public” and then click on calendar details to find the html link. Copy and paste and you’re all set!

VH HOTSpot - Sean - Google Whitelisting

Being on different Google domains than our students can create challenges at times. However, a feature that allows us to operate in a safe and happy space WITH our kids is available and implemented. This is especially nice on Google Forms which now allows us to automatically collect email addresses from students as they fill any form out, even though they are not on the same domain as we are. This allows us to eliminate a question (and variable) when having them fill out forms by just simply checking the “Collect email addresses” box under setting when you create the form.

Check it out...