Need to Organize Your Google Drive? Shift Z Will Be Your Friend!

If you are ready to clean up your Google Drive before next school year, you can make the process a little faster by using SHIFT Z. If you highlight the file by clicking on it once and then press SHIFT Z, the Drive organization menu will open. No more clicking, locating a file, and dragging. Happy organizing!

Align Your Questions to State Standards in Quizizz

Quizizz now allows you to align your questions to state standards. When the quiz is complete, you can generate a report to see how your students scored on the tagged standards. Quizizz just keeps getting better and better! Click HERE for more information.

Record Meetings with Google Meet

If you need to record a meeting or lecture, consider Google Meet. According to Google's Meet Help page, "You can record video meetings for other people to watch later if you are the meeting organizer or in the organizer's domain." The recordings are saved in Google Drive. Click here for step-by-step instructions.

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Texas Gateway, Google Meet, and Flipgrid

Find Targeted Interactive Lessons for Specific TEKS

Skill level: beginner           Use: Curriculum resource

Texas Gateway is another resource to add to your teacher toolbox. Interactive lessons are continually being added to support grade level TEKS. As we prepare for STAAR testing and re-testing, Texas Gateway may be useful for finding a targeted lesson on a particular TEK. To get a feel for what's available, here is a lesson on summarizing informational/expository Text (English 6 Reading), an 8th grade science lesson on organizing data in scientific investigations, and an Algebra I lesson on solving quadratic equations with concrete models. The Texas Gateway site is definitely a work in progress. Lessons are not available for every TEK for every course, but as the site continues to grow, it is definitely worth perusing.

Google Meet

Skill level: beginner              Use: virtual meetings

Collaborating with a colleague on another campus just got a whole lot easier with Google Meet. Think Facetime or Skype with a screensharing capacity.  I found Meet to be much smoother and easier to navigate than Google Hangouts. Click HERE for instructions on how to get started.

If you're thinking, "Well, that's cool, but I don't need it," here are a few ways this tool may come in handy:

• Run into a problem with your Google-ness? We can use Meet to screenshare and work out the problem right away.
• Want to grow in your Google-ness outside of our regular tech integration meetings on campuses? Let's Meet when you have the time without having to leave your classroom or office, and you set the topic/time.
• Want your students to collaborate with students on another campus? Set up a whole class Meet so the students can see each other as they collaborate. Share stories, performances, activities. Screenshare on a collaborative Google Doc or Slide and see students on two campuses learn from each other.

  Encourage Your Students' Voices With Flipgrid

Skill Level: Intermediate          Use: Student collaboration & documentation of learning

Flipgrid is not a new tool in our district. Several of the BHS teachers have been using it in a variety of ways in their classrooms, and they're loving it! As the year winds down and you're looking for new ways to keep your students engaged in learning, you may want to try Flipgrid.
Flipgrid is a "video discussion community for your classroom....You add the topics, your students respond with short videos....Grids can be opened or locked." Flipgrid works on desktop, Chromebook, IOS, and Android devices.

Check out Amy Roediger's post on how her students used Flipgrid for a science experiment. Here's a 50 second explanation of FlipGrid.