🎂 Google updates + Classroom is 10 years old

🚌 Back to School Prep? TeachAid’s AI is the Solution

As the new school year begins, we know you're busy planning to meet your students' diverse needs. TeachAid is here to help.

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• Develop Unit Plans: Effortlessly create detailed unit plans aligned with your standards.

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• Design Activities and Presentations: Generate dynamic activities and presentations.

• Support Tiered Instruction and Differentiation: Provide tailored instructional materials for all students.

TeachAid’s mission is to create equitable curricula, enhance teacher efficiency, and support tiered and IEP instruction.

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• Effortless Planning: Create scaffolded lesson plans aligned to your standards.  Start Creating Now

• Comprehensive Assessments: Craft assessments easily. Sign Up for Free

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💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

💥 10 Google updates for the classroom

Google keeps updating its products. And now’s a busy time for Google updates — especially for education.

It seems like there are always new features and news at back to school time AND during the ISTE Conference in June.

It can be tough to keep up with everything! You can always watch Google’s Learning & Education blog or its product updates page.

Here are 10 new (or newish) updates that have my attention:

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1) Google Vids — This video editing tool lets users create their own custom videos. Use your own images, videos, and audio — or let Google’s AI create content for you. Vids lets you create a video with a simple line of text description. Vids is being beta tested now but will be available in Google Workspace eventually.

2) AI coming to Google Classroom for educators — Google Classroom will soon feature a space for educators inside Classroom for kickstarting lesson ideas, brainstorming engaging activities, differentiating content for students, and more. (image above)

3) New media literacy lessons — Google has updated its media literacy curriculum, Be Internet Awesome, to reflect the growing influence of generative artificial intelligence. It includes this free 52-page PDF with six detailed media literacy lessons in four units.

4) Send a classwork preview link to guardians — All Classroom users can send classwork email summaries to guardians (if enabled). But if your school/district has Workspace for Education Plus, you can send a direct “View in Classroom” link for guardians.

5) Record a screencast or animated GIF on Chromebook — Just use this shortcut: Shift + Ctrl + “Show windows” button (rectange with two lines). Choose how much of the screen to record. Adjust settings (audio, camera, etc.). If you select a part of your screen to record, you can choose to record video or an animated GIF. More details here.

6) Access and read PDFs with a screen reader — If a PDF file was inaccessible by a screen reader to read the file aloud, the Chrome PDF Viewer’s OCR feature can help. OCR (optical character recognition) can convert it to readable text. Learn more here.

7) New Google Classroom add-ons — New official integrations are now available in Google Classroom, including Kami, Quizizz, Screencastify, ReadWorks, and more. To use these Google Classroom add-ons, your school must have Workspace for Education Plus or the Teaching and Learning upgrade.

8) Reading mode in Google Chrome — Reading mode lets you read text on the page easier by simplifying the page, adjusting the font and size, and even changing the background color. It’s built into Google Chrome. Find it in Google Chrome by clicking the three dots menu button, then “More tools,” then “Reading mode.

9) Control your Chromebook hands-free — This looks pretty cool. (We’ll see if it’s effective and if anyone actually uses it.) Google is developing a tool that lets you control your Chromebook with your face. Tilt your face to move the mouse. Stretch your mouth to the side to click. Open your mouth to enable dictation. They say it’s coming later this year. (image above)

10) New fonts to help teach handwriting — Google has released Playwrite, a series of fonts that display handwriting as it’s used in a variety of regions across the world. They reflect the uniqueness of handwriting in different countries and areas. You can find them now in Google Fonts (and in Google Workspace products).

Learn more about the 10-year journey of Google Classroom and what’s to come in this post by Google.

🎯 QUICK TEACHING STRATEGY 🎯

👂 Listen to students — and learn from them

In the book UDL and Blended Learning by Katie Novak and Catlin R. Tucker, Catlin discusses meeting with an architect to rebuild her family’s house that was destroyed by fire.

Just as the architect took time to understand me — my values, my preferences, my likes and dislikes — educators who want to design learning experiences that honor learner variability must invest time and energy into getting to know their students.

Design work begins with building relationships and understanding the people we are designing for.

We must strive to construct a learner profile that captures each student’s “individual skills, gaps, strengths, weaknesses, interests” as well as their hopes, fears, and goals.

The more accurate the profile, the more effective the design will be.

Personalization demands that we ask questions: “What do you need?” “What will work best for you?”.

👋 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!