Auto-synced grading in Google Classroom. Student engagement reports that you can share directly
with families. Hand-drawn annotations and videos of yourself superimposed directly
on top of Google Slides. Pre-created lessons teaching students about every single G-suite app.
And engaging games for them to practice digital citizenship. And those are just some of the
11 must-have tools for Google teachers that I'll be showing you in this video.
Hey everybody, this is Sam Kary with New EdTech Classroom, and on this channel we
show you how to use technology to create relevant, engaging, learning experiences for students. Oh,
and to make your job a lot more enjoyable, too. Big shout out to our video sponsor,
Wacom. Wacom makes Chromebook-compatible tablets that are ideal if you're a Google teacher. All of
us love them over here at New EdTech Classroom and use them pretty much on a daily basis. All right,
first up on this list of 11 must have tools for Google teachers is Screencastify. Now I'm
not going to lie, I was on the Loom train for a while, but Screencastify has been releasing
some significant upgrades over the past year, and they just came out with some brand new ones that
make this a must have for Google teachers. If you aren't already familiar, Screencastify is a Google
Chrome extension that you can use to make video tutorials for students, and students can also use
it to record their screen and show their thinking. Once you're actually recording your tutorial,
Screencastify has loads of different callouts that you can use to make your videos more engaging. So
for example, you have different options for what you can do with a mouse cursor to draw students'
attention to parts of the screen. You can even do things like set off some little fireworks here, if
you really want to point out a specific feature. And once you've finished recording your tutorial,
Screencastify has a pretty sophisticated browser-based video editor that allows you
to crop video out from the middle, do things like blur sections, and also add text. Now
Screencastify used to make you share your video link through Google Drive, which was one of the
things that I didn't really like about it. But now you can share the direct link to your video
that will take students over to the Screencastify page. You can still share videos via Google Drive,
but the benefit of using the Screencastify page is that that's going to allow you to pull a report
to see engagement data on that video. But what's even more impressive about this new Screencastify
update is that you can now add checks for understanding directly into your Screencastify
videos to make them interactive. It used to be that you had to download your Screencastify video
and then upload it into another program like Edpuzzle to make it interactive. One extra step
means one extra reason not to do it, but now the barrier to creating interactive video tutorials
is gone. So, Screencastify. If you're a Google teacher, you need it. Must-have tool number two,
Google's Applied Digital Skills. Somehow this program has flown under the radar for lots
of educators, but you should consider it your number one resource for teaching students about
the G-suite apps that you use in your classroom. It's 100% free to use, and because it's a Google
program, of course you can easily sync your Google Classroom roster to be able to upload assignments
into Google Classroom. Once inside, you'll find lessons with activities such as creating
a personal timeline in Google Drawings, making a promotional flyer, or designing a digital badge.
Although most of these lessons have students practice tech skills by doing some other activity,
there are also just some nuts and bolts lessons in here. So for example, if you need to just teach
students how to use an organized Google Drive, there's a lesson about that too. Each lesson
includes a lesson plan and sample rubric, and they're mostly made up of instructional videos
like this one. "To start, you will add a due date to complete each task. First, think of the order
you want to complete the tasks. For example, you may want to study the chapters before taking a
practice test." Now, if you want to assign this lesson to students, just click Add to Class,
and that's going to push the assignment directly to Google Classroom. So the next time you plan
to introduce a new G-suite app to students, or if you just want to advance their skills,
check to see if there's already a lesson you can take and use from Google's Applied Digital Skills.
Next up is Quizizz...is Quizizzis...Quizizz. Quizizz is not a Google program, however, it
does have a Google Classroom integration that I'm pretty certain you're going to love. Quizizz is a
game-based learning app with loads of pre-created quiz activities you can use for just a more
engaging way to review what students have learned. In Quizizz, you can browse quizzes teachers have
already made, and you can also use this search box up here to search for specific topics, as well as
filter by grade level and subject area. Before assigning a quiz, be sure to import your class
roster from Google Classroom. And this is where the magic happens. After you've imported your
roster, click on a quiz to assign it. And then in the Assignment Creator, you want to scroll down to
Assign to a Class, and choose one of your Google Classroom rosters. Click the purple Assign button,
and now when a student logs into Google Classroom, they just need to click on that assignment and
there'll be taken over to the quiz. Students are going to answer questions to play the game, and
then when they're finished, they'll immediately see their score. Now that the student has finished
the quiz, when you go back to your teacher Google Classroom and click on the Grades tab, you're
going to see the score the student got on their quiz automatically imported into your grade book.
Speaking of grades in Google Classroom, the next tool all Google teachers need is Schoolytics.
Schoolytics is a data analysis platform that syncs with Google Classroom. And it's going to help
you see student data trends, compare data across multiple classrooms, and more clearly understand
grade distribution. The most powerful version of Schoolytics has to be purchased at the district
level, but individual teachers can also get accounts for free. With the free teacher account,
you'll be able to see big picture data for your whole class, such as the percentage of assignments
that students turned in. And you can easily see the same information for individual students.
Click on an individual student, and you get an even more detailed report about all the
assignments that student has completed, which you can easily convert to a progress report. There
are lots of useful data points in Schoolytics. For example, you can pull a Missing Assignments
report, or you could pull a Disengaged Students report, so you could quickly see who needs
additional support. You can set up Schoolytics so that it auto-notifies teachers about risks
and patterns in their classroom, and you can also have it auto-notify students
about missing work or upcoming assignments. And there's a student-specific portal here
that they can use to monitor their own progress, as well as a parent portal, which allows parents
to click on each of their student's classes to see grades, percentage of work completed on time,
missing assignments, and so on. Next up, Flipgrid. Now you might be thinking to yourself, "Wait a
second, isn't Flipgrid a Microsoft product? Okay, maybe you're not thinking that, but it is. So why
is Flipgrid in a Google teacher's video? To start, Flipgrid does of course easily integrate with
Google classroom, but that's not all impressive in 2021, because pretty much every program does
that already. But Flipgrid does have a new feature that's going to allow you to create videos where
you put yourself directly on top of slides, just like I do in mine. The difference though, is that
with this new Flipgrid update, you don't need a green screen or fancy video editing software to
do it. With the new Flipgrid camera, you can now add your own custom background. That background
can be an image or a video, or you can share your screen as the background. Then let's say you had
a slide deck pulled up, all you need to do is select it, and you can see that you'll get that
green screen effect without actually using one. You can drag yourself around, size yourself down,
and then hit the Record button to record yourself making an instructional video. Making
video tutorials like this is not just for online learning either. Think remediation, accessibility,
or prerecording lessons that you can use to open up your time and space in class to pull small
groups and work with them. Oh, and this feature works for the student camera too. Since we're
on the topic of Google Slides, don't you wish you could draw on top of them? Well, you can, with one
of my all-time favorite Google Chrome extensions, Annotate.net. Open up Annotate.net, and just
like that, you can draw directly on top of your slides, and yes, this also works in Present mode.
Of course you aren't limited to slides. As long as you're in Google Chrome, you can pretty much draw
wherever you want. Now, the ability to draw on your screen with an extension is not entirely new,
but Annotate has a couple of key features that are the reason why it's made this must-have list. One
feature is this eraser tool, and when you pick it, it's going to erase the entire text with a single
stroke, rather than making you try to actually erase it, which I just find super annoying.
Importantly, your annotations are also sticky. So if you write on one slide and then click on
the next slide and write again, and then toggle back and forth, the writing is going to stick on
each slide. You can also quickly take screenshots of this directly with Annotate, and you can even
save your annotations, so that the next time you reopen your slides from the Annotate dashboard,
the exact same annotations show up. Next, if you really want to take annotations to the next level,
you're going to need to get yourself a pen tablet. I think pen tablets are pretty much
a must have for any teacher that uses technology, because they allow you to write with your hand,
the same way that you would with a pen or a marker. Wacom pen tablets are platform-agnostic,
so anytime there's a draw tool, you can select that draw tool and you can use your pen tablet
to write on the screen. So of course, it's going to work for programs like Google Jamboard,
or it would also work when using other Chrome extensions like Kami, and of course you could
use that Annotate extension and use Annotate to draw anywhere you want, in combination with your
pen tablet. So basically instead of looking like this....you want to look like this.
Now for Google teachers, I think Wacom is the way to go because Wacom tablets are fully
compatible with Chromebooks, and you can plug your Wacom tablet directly into Android devices,
which means you can write on your smartphone or tablet too. Pretty awesome. Speaking of awesome,
next up is Be Internet Awesome, a brand new, free online digital citizenship curriculum by
Google. Be Internet Awesome has undergone a rigorous review to receive the ISTE
seal of alignment. Be Internet Awesome teaches students important digital citizenship skills,
like being aware of sharing online, not falling for fake news, understanding how to secure your
secrets, treating others with respect and dignity online, and feeling comfortable to talk to
adults and teachers, if they come across something questionable online. Each of
the categories includes pre-created lessons, so you're not bound trying to recreate the wheel.
And students practice digital citizenship skills by playing these fun, interactive games.
Since you're watching this video, you almost certainly know about our next tool, Pear Deck,
which allows you to add interactive questions to your slides. And you probably also know that Pear
Deck has pre-created lesson templates, but you may not know that Pear Deck just released some
templates to help you teach Be Internet Awesome digital citizenship lessons. To find these,
just search "Pear Deck Be Internet Awesome" and then scroll down to Install Be Internet Awesome,
and that's going to add a bunch of files to your Google Drive. Open them up and you'll see Google's
Be Internet Awesome curriculum already created for you as interactive Pear Deck slides. Now,
another thing is that if you have Pear Deck Premium, there's also a relatively new Pear Deck
feature called Reflect and Review, that's going to allow you to review individual students' Pear
Deck slides and give them feedback on those slides for students to see. So Pear Deck's always been a
must-have tool for Google teachers, but they keep adding new features that make it even better. It
seems like every time I blink, one of the most powerful Google Chrome extensions, Mote, has added
some new features. Mote started out by allowing you to add voice notes in comments on Google Docs
with the simple click of a button. "Wow, these videos scripts must take you a really long time to
write." Then they added a voice notes feature in Google Slides, which allows you to record a voice
note and then drop it anywhere you want, "Hello!" And then they added their purple icon to Gmail to
help make your email more accessible. "Hey, that's pretty cool." And they also integrated with Forms,
so you can add voice notes there too. And now Mote even has an app. Why does this matter? Well, the
problem is that extensions and add-ons don't work when you're trying to access them via a tablet
or a mobile device. So if students only have smartphones and you leave them a voice note,
they'll have difficulty accessing your voice note from home. But now with the Mote app, you can
open up Google Docs, tap the purple m, and then you can leave a voice note from your phone that
students can also listen to from a smartphone. Last on the list is Google Arts & Culture,
an incredible resource for teaching students about art, science, history, geography, you name it. One
of the many things you can find in Google Arts & Culture are lots of these 360 degree videos. These
are just more interactive, immersive videos that students can watch to learn more about different,
important historical sites, or they can learn more about things like space shuttles, like this video.
"You would have one set of crew members who were hovering around the floor doing experiments,
another two that were up here, people floating down from the flight deck." You'll also find
interactive museum tours on Google Arts & Culture, as well as multimedia-rich information.
Really the main feature of Google Arts & Culture, though, is that they've gone in and photographed
all the major works of art from all the museums, really all around the world.
And what this looks like is that students can go in and they can check out works of art, and they
can zoom all the way in to see the contours of the paint on the canvas. It's pretty cool. They're
also just lots of different multimedia-rich resources about lots of different topics here,
so I definitely suggest you check out Google Arts & Culture as a supplement to your curriculum. And
if you're still looking up your Google teacher game and you want to learn more about the best
Google Chrome extensions for students, the best Chrome extensions for teachers, the best
Slides add-ons, the best Google Forms add-ons, then be sure to check out that playlist above.