IHMS Tech Tips

Google Meet is yet another option for meeting during distance learning.  It is new so somewhat glitchy, but I did not find it much glitchier than WebEx Teams.  Please note that WebEx is still the district-suggested medium to use. Meet is now available for all Google Classrooms, though you choose whether or not you want to enable it and if and when you want students to have access to the meeting link.  To get to the Meet info in Classroom, first choose settings: Scroll down until you see the Meet information.  Click "generate link" and then decide if you want to this link visible to students at all times or not.  If you toggle it on, the link will appear in the banner of your Google Classroom.  If you have it turned off, you can still post the link at a later time, or even change the link each time you want to Meet.  Be sure to save your changes. If visible to students, they will see the Meet link in the banner: To start your meeting, ...

As we continue to work with students through virtual learning, choice boards are a great way to provide asynchronous options to students that may have limitations (time, connectivity) in some regard, but they still want to be engaged in the content. You should be familiar with choice boards as our last PD day was a choice board using Blendspace .  Blendspace is a great tool to use if this is something you want to implement in your Week at a Glance, but you can always stick to Google Docs and make it even more simple. The easiest way would be to download one of these templates .  Be sure to make a copy for yourself. The template uses a Google Doc and a tic-tac-toe format which we know students understand.  Within the choice board, you can ask students to produce something using another digital tool they may be familiar with (FlipGrid, PearDeck, etc.) or ask them to explore a new digital tool on their own. The above choice board asks students to start with ...

In these interesting times now, more than ever, it's important to know which students are engaging in what is posted online.  In Google, this is easy! If you have posted a Google Doc or Google Slides in Google Classroom for your students to open and or edit, it's simple to see the activity that document has received.  1. Within your Google Doc or Slides, click on the lightning arrow in the tool bar. 2. The default tab is on Viewers .  This shows you every single person that has accessed this particular document at some point.  It does not necessarily mean they are live on the document right then.  "Shared with" tab indicates those you have actually shared the document with while "All viewers" will show you every person that has accessed the document in history.  3.  View trend tab shows the number of views to this document over a time period. 4.  Comment trend shows the history of comments over a period of time and whether...

If you have students that need modified or differentiated assignments, follow the directions below to easily get those assignments to specific students or groups of students.  These modifications are not visible to anyone else in the Classroom, just the student(s) receiving it. First, create the different versions of the assignment that you will issue to students.  You can do this in Docs, Slides, Forms, whatever you like.  Try to come up with unique naming so that you will always know which version of the document you are looking at; modified or not. Next, create an assignment post in Google Classroom: Give the assignment a title, directions, and attach the needed file.  Be sure to make note of which version of the assignment you are working with (modified or not). Then you will choose which students will receive this version of the assignment.  On the right, click on "All Students".  Uncheck "All Students" and check only those students that sh...