Google Forms Quick Start Guide

If you are looking to start using Google Forms in your classroom, this post from Alice Keeler might be helpful.  It goes over how to add questions, the various questions types, formatting your form and more.

http://www.alicekeeler.com/teachertech/2015/04/06/google-forms-quick-start-guide/

7 more Tips for learning Google

The full post can be found at http://alicekeeler.com/2016/03/14/7-more-tricks-to-learn-during-spring-break/ Alice Keeler is great and always has the best tips and tricks.

This post will include:

• Hint Text in Google Forms
• Commenting in Google Docs
• formatting a cell in Google Sheets
• Editing the slide master in Google Slides
• Making straight lines in Google Drawing
• Quickly closing a number of tabs in Chrome
• Linking to assignments in Classroom 

ViewPure - Remove ads from YouTube

If you are concerned with showing YouTube videos in the classroom because of the related videos, ads and comments, try ViewPure.  Simply visit ViewPure and search for a video.  If you know the URL for the video you can also just paste it there.  It's that simple and you will be viewing your video without any distraction.

Rolling over your homework website to this school year

As a reminder, you'll want to roll over your homework website to this school year or create a new one.  Below is a quick video to show you how to do that.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact your TILs. 

SymbalooEDU - visual bookmarking tool

SymbalooEDU  is a visual bookmarking tool!   It's all about the tiles and students just click or touch the tile to navigate right where you want them to be online.  With a free account, one can access your bookmarks from anywhere with any device and share online resources with "yourself" other teachers, or your students for unique lessons.  Here is a screen shot of the WEBMIX for our NYS Teacher Centers with a tile/link to our Partner Companies.  Just search "New York State Teacher Centers" in the public webmixes and you can keep this as one of your tabs.  You can search SymbalooEDU for any topic and grab the tiles, like "Math Grade 3". https://www.symbaloo.com

Reducing the File size of a PDF

There are times when a pdf that you have created is too big for things like sharing via e-mail. You can use Preview to reduce the file size so that it is more manageable for the purpose that you need it for. You should note that this will also reduce the quality of the document.


1 -Open your PDF in Preview. If your PDF files are set to open in Preview, then simply double-click the file. If not, secondary/right click on the document and choose to open it in Preview. (If you aren't sure how to use secondary click you can view this video.)
Create a copy of the original file to test this method before applying it to your final PDF. This method can result in a lot of quality loss.

2 - Click File and select export. In the options, click the Quartz Filter menu, and select "Reduce File Size."

3 - Save the file. Select your desired location, then click Save. Your file will be saved in a much-reduced size. This may result in a noticeable drop in quality.

Flubaroo is an Add-On for Google Sheets spreadsheets that will automatically grade student responses to formative assessment submitted through a Google Form.  Flubaroo has the option to email students their results. Since not all schools have email turned on for students, Flubaroo has another option. Flubaroo recently added the feature to create a summary report on a Google Doc that is shared with the student through Google Drive. Click here to view the Flubaroo blog post.

To learn more about this and how to create an assessment in Google Forms, visit Alice Keeler's blog.