Google Sites

This week in my Google Adventures I tackled Google Sites. I'll be honest here... I have not had positive experiences with this tool in the past and have felt that it is very clunky and not easily navigated. When I first got into this adventure this week I remember making several remarks about how the design and layout of the website itself looked like it was something directly out of 1998. 

Take a look below to see what I mean...

That being said, I did find myself really enjoying that process the more I got into it. Google Sites is a tool that allows you to basically build your own website for free. You can change the template, the look, and the layout of your website and individual pages. As mentioned before, the navigation is a little frustrating at first, but once you get the hang of it, the process is pretty painless. If you are starting from scratch on how to build your own site, the video below really helped me familiarize myself with some of the common tools and features that are available to you while you are building. 

Some of my favorite features within Google Sites include the ability to embed documents from your Google Drive directly into a page, HTML coding and embedding capabilities, and the ability to include direct, live links to any page. The image below is a screen grab from the site I created. I was able to include an example essay I had in my Google Drive directly onto one of the pages on the site. 

After playing around with the Google Sites and taking the time to actually sit down and build a site of my own, I definitely do see some of the benefits. As a teacher who previously used Blackboard and has switched to Google Classroom, one of the things that I really miss is the ability to have a place to store information and resources for my students all in one spot. Google Classroom is AMAZING in terms of learning management system that lets you turn in assignments and complete formative and summative assessments. My hangup has been not really having a well thought out way to deliver content and information to my students all in one place that was easy for THEM to navigate. I could add several folders into the "about" section of Google Classroom, but it doesn't look very clean and students often have a hard time locating specific information inside them. Realizing this, I chose to create a Google Site that would act as a storage space for content and resources that my students would need to have for an informative research and writing unit. On the site, students will have all of the information they need to learn how to READ informational texts and take notes on them, RESEARCH specific topics and find credible sources, and WRITE a strong, informative essay about the topic of their choice. The site houses important documents from my Google Drive, links to level-appropriate articles, a custom Google Search engine, videos, slideshows, and a plethora of other resources for my students to utilize. Click HERE to check it out!

Google Sites isn't perfect, but it ended up being exactly what I have been looking for. It was a lot of work up front, but I know that having all of these resources, tools, and information stored in one spot for my students will pay off exponentially in the long run! 

Google Earth and Google Tour Builder

I'll be honest, Google Earth and Google Tour Builder are two areas of Google that I do not feel exceptionally strong in. After fully immersing myself in the two this week, I now see the positive implications that both could have in the classroom. Both have different strengths, in my opinion, but are valuable and teachable in their own ways. Let's take a look at both...

Google Earth
If you're like me and feel like you need a beginners guide to how to even get started with Google Earth, click HERE. This short tutorial video really helped me understand the ins and outs of the program. The biggest takeaway I had from using Google Earth is that you really need to just play around with it for a short amount of time before you try to do any specific tasks. I had to click around and explore for about 7-10 minutes before I felt comfortable completing what I was truly trying to do. Because of this, I believe that the same would be true for my students using it in class. They're going to need some extra time to just play around and explore the program before completing assignments within it. This was an important "ah-ha" moment for me, as a teacher! In terms of teaching with Google Earth, I think one of the most powerful teaching tools it offers is the 3D models it allows students to understand. With a flat map in a textbook, students are only able to visualize so much. Google Earth really breaks that dilemma wide open and lets them have a much more detailed and accurate portrayal of the world in which they live. Personally, I see this as more of a TEACHER tool for teaching my students about specific areas of the world or pointing them to this tool to find specific information, but he possibilities are truly endless with this. Just in case you need a place to start from, click HERE to see how others are using Google Earth in their classrooms already! The video below is on the would be a great anticipatory set for introducing this tool to your students. 

Google Tour Builder

Google Tour Builder is a little more straight forward, if you ask me. I had very little experience with this tool prior to this week's exploration, so if you need a quick rundown on how to get started, I found THIS short video quite helpful. What I love the most about this tour is it's simplicity. Adding the locations for your tour is a breeze and all the other information that can be added is laid out in a format that is easy to follow and easy to accomplish. Google has done a great job of making this tool exceptionally user friendly! This tool, in my opinion, would be much easier for students to use to complete tasks. For example, it would be relatively simple for students to create their own tour over a specific region in Social Studies class, or over the settings and locations they read about in a novel in English class. I see this tool as much more of a STUDENT tool rather than a teacher too, and that is why I think it is even more powerful. The assessments that students could complete by creating an interactive tour of their learning is a pretty powerful tool! Below is a screenshot of a Google Tour over one of the novels in my students' current literature circles, The One and Only Ivan by Katherine Applegate. 

The complete tour, which can be accessed by clicking HERE, includes maps, street view images, still photos, and videos about each of the locations in the novel. This would be such a cool way for students to tell their own stories or to map the stories that others have created!

Overall, I think both of these tools have a lot of potential and would be excellent additions to any classroom. It was refreshing to see how many teachers outside of social studies and geography are using these tools in a meaningful way. Google is for EVERYONE, people!!!

YouTube in Google Classroom and Build with Chrome

This week's Google Adventures took me all over Google and it's partner companies to explore some lesser known tools. YouTube was my first stop. I thought I knew just about everything there was to know about YouTube, but just like with Google, the more I dug the more I learned. (If you're not already using YouTube in the classroom, click here to learn why you should be!) One of the coolest discoveries I made was the simplicity of integrating YouTube within Google Classroom. Ever since Google bought out YouTube the two have been working side by side and with Google Classroom, this could not be any easier. You are now able to quickly upload YouTube videos to your students' stream with just the click of a button. The screenshot below show what that looks like. 

As you can see, the YouTube button lets your easily add a video directly to any announcement, question, or assignment right when you are creating it. In the example above, I have asked my students to watch the short video clip and then answer a question about the type of conflict they are seeing in the clip. This will be a FANTASTIC tool for formative assessments that are quick and engaging for my students! I am so thankful that Classroom added in this feature and that YouTube is so easily accessible to both me, as the teacher, and my students! 

The second stop on my Google Adventure this week was a tool that I had never even heard about: Build with Chrome! I don't even know how to describe this in a way that will properly do it justice, so watch the short video below to understand what Build with Chrome actually is. 

You guys! It's LEGOs.... in the real world! Build with Chrome works alongside Google Maps to let you build ANYWHERE in the world. People are building national monuments, historical landmarks, famous buildings, etc. out of legos ALL across the globe and they're putting them in their geographically accurate locations! This means if you were studying ancient Egypt with your students they could go to Egypt in this program and build the pyramids right where they were actually build! This means if your students were reading a novel that was set in Paris and a major scene from the novel was centered around the Eiffel Tower, your students could go to Paris in this program and BUILD that entire scene right where it happened in the novel! I am so impressed with this program and the collaborative effects that it brings to the table. I think this is an extremely powerful creativity booster and the possibilities of the use of this tool in the classroom seem endless! Click HERE to see how an art teacher uses Build with Chrome! The best part (for me anyway) is that this program does NOT use Flash which means my students can do this from ANY of their devices, even their iPads and cell phones.

Do yourself a favor and go check it out. Explore. Spend a class period just building with your students. I promise you won't be disappointed. (P.S. Check out the builds that are in your local area. Odds are that someone has been building near you. I'm especially proud of whoever has been building in my area!) Rock Chalk!!!

Google Calendar

I've dabbled with Google Calendar many-a-time over the last few years. Since almost all of my devices are Apple products, I've had issues in the past with sync capabilities and seamless sharing. This week I took a deeper dive into the inner workings of Google Calendar to see what was new and how I could make this tool work better for me. (If you are new to Google Calendar, click HERE for a walk through on how to get started)

I started out on a mission to create a basic school calendar with building wide events as well as games and practice schedules. The initial goal was to then be able to share this calendar out with my students as well as their parents so everyone would be on the same page for when I would be available and what was going on in the upcoming weeks. I am the girls' basketball coach in my building so staying after school to work with students is sometimes tough with a hectic practice and game schedule. This calendar would help both students and parents see my availability during the season. What started out as a well intentioned idea, quickly became EXTREMELY frustrating as I realized that my district restricts viewing on Google Calendars created from a district account to ONLY those within the domain. This means that I would be able to share this calendar with my students, but parents would not have access to the calendar. After a few hours of trying work-arounds, I realized there was no way I could make this a reality. My tip for ANYONE creating a calendar they are wishing to share outside of their domain is to first check your settings to see if sharing to recipients is even an option for you. I created the video below to show you how to quickly do this with any Google Calendar you have created or that has been shared with you.

Because this was such a headache and I had to play with settings and options, I did learn a couple of new tricks in Google Calendar! (Silver Lining!) The first trick I stumbled across is customizing the calendar view that you can embed into other websites. This is fantastic because you can control the size of the calendar based on pixels and can even scale it down to where it looks pretty dang good on a mobile phone. See the screen grab below on how to do this. 

The second tip that I stumbled across when trying to figure a way out of this headache was that you can now export your Google Calendar to a .ICAL file. This is HUGE for Apple users everywhere. What this means is that you can now export a Google Calendar directly to your iCal app on your MacBook, iPhone, and iPad. I tried it with the new calendar I created and it works perfectly. This would be an AMAZINGLY easy way to send the calendar directly to my students who all have iPads this year. I could create a calendar for each unit and email it to students OR simply upload it to Google Classroom and then students would simply download the file and it would automatically sync with their iCal app on their iPads. I am SO happy that this feature now exists and feel that I truly will use Google Calendar more now that I know it is more cooperative with Apple products! To learn more about exporting your Google Calendars to the .ICAL file type, click HERE!

Google Drive

Google Drive seems to be an endless amount of awesome. Every time I feel like I have mastered Google Drive, Google releases something else that completely changes the game and makes my job as an educator a little easier than the day before. While exploring Google Forms this week in Google Drive, I found a newer, built in tool that does just that! (New to Google Forms? Click HERE for a Google Forms 101 session) Previously, I had used Google Forms to give my students quick assessments for quizzes, exit tickets, and to check for understanding. After creating the form, I could then easily export my students' answers into a Google Sheets document to grade. Last year I stumbled upon an "Add On" in Google Sheets that would AUTOMATICALLY grade those quizzes, exit tickets, and checks for understanding. This teacher's dream add on is called Flubaroo. The video below shows how it works!

Flubaroo works great, but my only real complaint was that it got to be a little time consuming when I was having to juggle two different programs and then run an "Add-On" and then also transfer those grades into my district's online grading system.What I found this week is an even easier way to make this happen IN Google Forms! Google has now added a "Quizzes" option to their Google Forms sheet that grades itself in the same program! Even though it is just a slight change, it eliminates two to three steps of the process. Nobody knows that time is precious more than a teacher! Watch the video below for a demo of the on-demand grading within Google Forms.

As much as I love Google Forms and the ease of the process, I will say that the one downfall of using Google Forms to self-grade over using Flubaroo in Google Sheets is that it limits the type of questions you can ask in your quiz. Multiple choice, checkboxes, and drop-down questions are the only options available for the Google Forms self-grading system. If you choose to use Google Sheets + Flubaroo instead, you can also add in short answer questions. As an English teacher, I REALLY appreciate that added question type that is ideal of fill in the blank questions and even single answer open ended questions. Both features have their strengths and I will continue to use both in my classroom! The immediate data that Google Forms lets teachers gather about their students is truly invaluable. Let Google do the hard stuff. You just reap the benefits!

Custom Google Search Engine

This week in my exploration of all things Google I dove into all the interesting features of the Google Search engine. Having done numerous research projects myself while getting my undergrad, I felt fairly comfortable with filtering through content to find specific file types, publication dates, and specific or generic titles (If you are not familiar with the filtering options available to you in your Google Searches already, Click HERE to see a step by step guide of how to do this). These are fantastic features and I use them frequently, but the one feature that I was not familiar with and that completely blew me away was that I could create a CUSTOM Google Search engine for my students to use when researching!

Each year I teach a research and informative writing unit over Computer Science topics. Computer Science is something that I feel is exceptionally relevant to my students and also something they really enjoy exploring and getting involved in. That being said, it is a constant battle to find up to date information and content that is also reading level appropriate for 6th grade students.... BUT. THIS. CHANGES. EVERYTHING. Google allows you to input specific websites that you want your students to be able to search within. From the list of website you put in, the search then looks for any keywords the students type in, but ONLY on those specific sites. Some of the sites I chose to use can be seen in the image below.

Since I have students at, above, and below grade level in reading, I included sites like News ELA, Scholastic News, TIME for kids, Discovery Ed, and Kids, Code, and Computer Science to ensure that the materials my students were finding were all appropriate for them to read. Give it a shot below! Since this was for a Computer Science research topic, type in any computer science related keyword (robotics, virtual reality, coding, 3D printing, etc.) and see what my custom Google Search Engine brings up for you!


This will make research so much easier for my students AND I will know that they are taking notes over quality material as well as citing quality sources. Additionally, this takes out the risk that they might stumble across articles that are way higher than their current reading level or articles that may not be age appropriate for them to be reading. You can also customize how the search bar looks in terms of color, font, size, etc., and you can manipulate the layout of how your students' search results will look on their screen! Interested in giving it a try for yourself (and your students!)? The video below gives a step-by-step tutorial on how to create your very own Custom Google Search Engine!

Google Chrome Browser

I have been a Google Chrome Browser user for several years now, but I feel like there are constantly new features and add-ons that I am learning about and exploring. If you do not use Chrome already, click here to download it for free! This week I focused on adding in some additional extensions to my browser, including Google Classroom and Google Translate. Last year I ran a completely blended classroom using Blackboard as my learning management system (LMS). This year, because my district has gone 1-to-1 with iPads, I have chosen to switch to Google Classroom as my LMS. The Google Classroom chrome extension allows me to quickly add articles, links, and videos to a specific class in the app for my students. Additionally, I also have ALL of the 6th grade ESL students on my team this year. Because of this, I have several students who speak little to no English in my English-Language Arts classroom. The Google Translate extension is going to be used an exceptional amount this year for readings and for discussion with classmates. If you have students who do not speak English as their first language, this extension and this app are a game changer for your classroom! Check out the short video below to see just one of the awesome features of this of extension and app called Tap to Translate!