💡 20 Google ideas for end of year

🎨✨ Turn memories into masterpieces! ✨🎨

Join the newest Adobe Creative Challenge!

Summarize your top five things from this school year using generative fill to create an eye-catching infographic.

Adobe provides a template and a step-by-step tutorial video for you and your students.

Why Participate? Celebrate your journey, showcase your creativity, and connect with fellow artists and educators. And you could win a prize!

📝 How to Get Started:

• 📽️ Watch the tutorial video: Adobe Creative Challenge Tutorial

• 🗃️ Grab the template.

• 🎨 Transform your top five moments into art!

Let’s make this year unforgettable! 🎉🌟

Get everything you need here!

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

🛠 Google tools to ROCK the end of the year

When the end of the school year is in sight, it's a time of excitement coupled with the importance of finishing the year STRONG.

The end of the year is a time unlike any other.

State tests are behind us.

Many students are working on big projects or papers.

It can be a great time of reflection on how far students have come.

It's review time!

Thankfully, some of the tried and true Google tools -- and some that we don't use that often -- can help us make the most of the end of the school year.

We have just updated our post 20 ways Google tools can make the end of the year ROCK and have gathered 5 of our favorites ideas below. Click on the link to the post for all 20 ideas.

1. Experiment with AI!

Since 2009, Google has been showcasing  showcasing experiments that leverage Chrome, Android, AI, and AR to break new ground. Although the original Experiments with Google site is now an archive, you can see the newest creations in Google Labs. 

• Say what you see! -- Learn the art of the prompt and improve your image-reading skills by looking at Google AI-generated images and describing what you see, in this experiment created by artist Jack Wild.

• Instrument Playground -- Generate, play and compose music inspired by instruments across the globe with the help of Google AI.

• Musical Canvas -- This experiment from Google Arts and Culture lets you generate soundtracks to your drawings with the help of Google AI.

2. Create stop-motion animation with Google Slides.

I'm such a sucker for this one and LOVE to suggest it any opportunity I get! Anything that students can envision in their minds IN MOTION, Google Slides will let them create in animation! Google Slides is your free animation creation tool. When students have created something great, have them use a screen recorder like Screencastify to capture it in video.

• Learn how to create stop motion animation with Google Slides with this post! Plus, check out the tutorial video below for more details.

• Want to take it to the next level? Here are 11 tips for creating AWESOME stop motion animations in Google Slides.

3. Create a yearbook in Google Slides. 

In this guest post by Jennifer Scott discover how savvy educators are harnessing Google Slides and local printers to craft stunning, budget-friendly school yearbooks at  SlidesYearbook.com. It’s a game-changer, empowering students to become graphic designers of their own memories, all while keeping costs down to as little as $4 per copy!

• Get the Slides Yearbook Create Add-on

• Get the Slides Yearbook templates

4. Digital escape rooms with Google Sites, Drawings, Slides, Docs and more. 

Digital escape rooms bring the fun of a physical escape room to your students anywhere through their devices. Google tools make it easy to create your own escape room or have students create their own!

• Visit our Digital Escape Rooms page for links to all of our escape room resources.

• Use this step-by-step guide to help students create their own escape rooms. It includes directions, templates and printable planning tools.

• Looking for more virtual escape rooms? Visit VirtualEscapeRooms.org created by Karly Moura. Check out: Summer Break OUT, Summer Camp Chaos and Epic Olympics: Summer Games for end of year fun.

5. Write choose your own adventure stories with Google Forms or Slides. 

By using branching (the “go to section based on answer” choice in the three-dots menu in a multiple-choice question), you can create fun Choose Your Own Adventure Story-type activities. Create them for your students or let students create their own!

Resources for creating choose your own adventure stories in class:

• Choice stories in Google Slides: How to + ideas for class 

• Learning math through story: Examples from one teacher’s classroom by Mandi Tolen.

• Write an If-Then Adventure Story with Google Applied Digital Skills. In this self guided lesson students will collaborate with classmates to create an interactive story using Google Slides. As with all of the Applied Digital Skills activities, this lesson comes with a lesson plan, video tutorials, sample rubric and certificate of completion.

🔗 20 ways Google tools can make the end of the year ROCK

🎯 Quick Teaching Strategy

🚥 The human opinion meter

Technology opens up lots of opportunities to assess, create and gather data in unique ways.

That doesn’t mean we HAVE to use technology, though. Sometimes, the data we want to gather can be done faster — or more meaningfully — without technology.

I learned this one from Teach Like a PIRATE by Dave Burgess.

Ask students their opinion about something and put the polar opposite answers at opposite corners of the room.

Students stand in the corner that demonstrates their response (or somewhere in the middle of the room for shades of responses).

Yep! It’s that easy 😁

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!