Student Created News Stories / Social Media Profiles Part 2

Assessing students with test, quizzes, presentations, or essays can be so boring not just for the teachers who read or grade all the assignments, but for the students who are doing the same thing in many different classes day in and day out. So what are we to do you ask?

Try using one of the templates for Google slides from the site of Ryan O'Donnell.

There are so many different templates to choose. You can use social media posts, like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. Maybe having students create a Magazines like Time or National Geographic. These are not just covers, they are full articles or a series of articles that could be assigned to a team. How about a Time Magazine issue from the Gettysburg Address?

But my absolute favorite template is for a comic book, it looks so real. He uses LunaPic a photo editor to make images look like a comic by using the effects tool and comic book setting.

Then using the template Ryan provides, you can create awesome comic covers or whole comic books. Think of the possibilities!  Ryan also has a link for a superhero creator website so students can create their own superhero. Again think of the possibilities!

Fix Your Bookmarks or Favorites Bar

Whether you call them bookmarks or favorites, I have a ton of them. I don't know about you, but I am always bookmarking websites and the space Google gives you on the bookmarks bar (or favorites bar) is really limited. Well, there is a solution for that and you can organize and minimize the amount of space those take up. Check out the screencast below to see how to get more crammed into that small space. As a bonus I am also creating a link to a previous post about organizing tabs. I am a self proclaimed tab hoarder, I always have a bunch open and that realestate gets crowded as well. So click this link TABS to find out about those solutions.

TRICKS WITH BOOKMARKS

https://www.wevideo.com/view/1331586228

Encourage Creativity In Your Writers

How many of you wish there was a way to encourage your reluctant writers? How about a way to reward those students who publish a finished work. What if they could not only create a story, but could add a soundtrack to their work? Do you think this would help?

What if they could add sound effects to their published story and this story was then stored in a virtual library belonging to the class?

Well, all those features are available on Booktrack Classroom. Booktrack is a Google for Education Partner and teachers can create classes and have students join via a class code similar to Google classroom. Students can then create stories, read stories with soundtracks, and even access a class library.

If you would like to see and listen to an example please join Booktrack as a teacher using Google to sign-in. Then click on your name in the upper right corner and click join class and enter this class code wKEMcJ (this is case sensitive).

Here is a screencast showing how to use booktrack.

Give Booktrack Classroom a try with your writers.

BONUS

Have you ever typed something in a Google Doc and wanted to change the case? I know I have. Well, there's an add-on for that!

When in Google Docs, go to Add-ons, scroll down to get add-ons, and search for "Case Changer"

and click the free button. You will then be able to highlight word, letters, or entire sections and change the case. 

Student Created News Stories / Social Media Profiles

Would you like to better engage students in an assessment or class activity? Using the following few links will help these are links that allow students to create news headlines, or Facebook profiles and download a printable or shareable image.

May be useful for social studies, science, or language arts classes.

Follow these steps to have student's in the headline:

1. Students can use Chromebooks to take a picture in Google Drawing
2. Edit out the background (https://www.remove.bg/)
3. Go to file "download as"
4. Download the image as a JPEG
5. Then upload to the linked sites below. 

Follow these steps to use online images:

1. Find an image via a Google image search
2. Add to Google Drawing
3. Use other PNG images (images without backgrounds) 
4. Go to file "download as"
5. Download the image as a JPEG
6. Then upload to the linked sites below.

https://www.classtools.net/headline_generator/

https://www.classtools.net/breakingnews/

https://www.classtools.net/FB/home-page

Please share what your students have created!

Update to Classroom

As many of you may have noticed there have been some updates to Google Classroom. Classroom has a new look with lots of white space which, research has shown, is is a positive for web design, readability, and accessibility.

If you go to the header space and click theme there are now over 75 different headers to choose from separated into different categories. You can still create and load your own, but there are many premade ones, enough to fit most any class.

NEW CLASSROOM HEADERS

Another change is that you can display your class join code directly from the STREAM page. You can click on the box next to your code and it will open a display window for better viewing.

The biggest and best change is that you can now move topics, assignments, materials, and questions up and down in the Classwork section just by dragging and dropping. (See Video Below)

Organize those Tabs

In the screencast, I show some tips and tricks to keep tabs organized and reopen one that were accidentally closed. Hope you enjoy and this helps keep you organized!

Adding Animated GIF and transparent background images to Slides or Drawings.

In the following screencast I show how to add animated GIFs, animated images, and transparent images to Google Drawings or Slides.

Click the link below to watch the screencast.

Screencast