Learning in the Lou

You will need your full school email address and your password. Make sure you have them before moving to the first step. Open Chrome or Safari. Open Gmail  and log in. Open a new tab and go to classroom.google.com Make sure you see the student email. Then click Continue . Choose Student . Click the plus icon in the upper right. Enter the Class Code your teacher sent. Most everything you need will be found in the center of the screen.

When you create a Google Doc to share with families, remember to set the share settings so that anyone with the link can view the document.  It's an easily forgotten step that will cause much frustration for families.  Look for the blue "share" setting in the upper right hand corner of your Google apps and watch the video for more help. Bonus!   Want to know how this video was made?  Check out this post on how to Teach with Screencastify .

This post was created to help the Sappington 5th grade as they worked on their Genius Time projects. Sites can be used for just about anything you want it to be. Some use it to teach fellow students about a topic while others have created sites as a summary of a book series they are reading. One strong recommendation is to start your planning on a simple piece of paper and post-it notes before creating on a computer. We have seen many start creating on a laptop and soon get bogged down in too many disjointed pages. Planning I highly recommend starting your planning on paper. In my example, I am creating a Google Site to house all my photographs and videos. I can easily add a page by sticking on another post-it. I drew lines to show which page connects where. If you are creating a site with someone else, paper helps both of you collectively plan before you build. Think, they are starting to build the new high school on paper first before they ever dig in the ground. ...

We have posted before about Google Assistant . It is one of those apps that is stretching beyond what we thought was possible for an app to do. It does have some downfalls like it can't call someone for me to schedule appointments or book a table at great places like Russell's   or can it? Check out what Google showed the world this week. I pretty much jumped out of my chair in excitement. I can just talk to my phone and everything else just happens. In the time it takes you to walk from one end of your classroom to the next some of your tasks can be handled by Google Assistant. AMAZING! If you really want to see the power check out this post on the Google AI blog . It offers some audio clips of actual calls similar to the above video. I'm not sure when it will be rolled out but I will be the first to schedule a haircut and reserve table. I do wonder if it can call my kids to remind them about cleaning their rooms and to stop playing Fortnite because it is...

I buy tons of notebooks and Post-It notes every year. Sometimes I keep notes and other times it is a to-do list. My issue is many of my thoughts and ideas happen when my paper products are far away. At the gym, no notebook. Driving in the car, no notebook on hand. There are times when things get missed and ideas float out the window which is pretty unfortunate. I have used Google Keep but it just wasn't right to track my tasks. There is a new app that might just solve these issue and it can be used by the students too! What I am most excited for is the integration into the new version of Gmail. There isn't a release date for the educational version but you can check it out with your personal Gmail account. Google Tasks have been around for about ten years but never as an app until now. Getting Started Start by installing the Android or iOS app. You should see this screen when you open the app. 1. Click the hamburger icon to switch between your accoun...

There was a time in my life where I was required to get my haircut every single week. During that time I was forced out of bed at 5:30, which I used to think was early, to run. I made a silent promise every single day that I would never cut my hair or run ever again. I kept that promise for two solid years. I now cut my hair every few weeks. I also started running again in the wee hours of the morning when it is wicked dark. There are times when I need to text the family how much longer I would be out so they wouldn't worry. I know you really shouldn't text and drive, but texting and running leads to crashing into cars, trash cans and bushes. Check out what I started doing using the Google Assistant app on my phone. The great thing is the app will even work on those lesser-known Apple devices! This is one of those apps that is underutilized and could play a huge part in your classroom tomorrow. This post describes how I use it personally and I'm sure once you star...

You have this sweet Google Site and you need to add some classroom images to it. This is wicked easy as long as you are using Google Photos. Check out some of our older Google Photos posts.       Google Photos - Maybe the best photo app of all       Making Beautiful Art (Summer 2017 class) Google Photos - First Step Open Google Photos . Start by clicking on the images you want to add to your site. Once all your images have been selected, click the plus symbol in the upper right. Click Album . Either add to an existing album or create a new one. New Album Creation Name the album. Click the check to save. Second Step - Google Sites Open your Google Site. Double click on any blank spot. Click Image . Click Your albums at the top. Select the album of images you want to add. Choose your images. Click the blue select button at the bottom of the screen. The images appear righ...