Google Draw

Good Morning,

Google Draw is another great Google feature.  Your students can make webs, Venn diagrams or a graphic organizer within their document.  There are many features available within Google Draw including multiple shapes, arrows, bubbles and color variations.  You can search for and add images within Google Draw too.  Students can make timelines of historic events or character transformations within a story or create a web of the life cycle of a butterfly.  Your students can build webs as study guides, for assessment purposes and much more!

To access Google Draw:

Open a document

Select Insert/Drawing

Begin to add and manipulate shapes, arrows, colors, word art or images to your diagram

Select Save and Close - drawing will appear in your document

If you need to make changes to your drawing, double click on the drawing in your document, Google Draw will automatically re-open.

K-2 teachers......Popplet is an iPad app for creating similar webs and diagrams.  

Have a great day!

Add-ons

Good Morning,

You may have noticed Google has added a new option in your Google Documents menu bar call Add-ons.  You may find some useful apps to use within your documents.  Track Changes allows you to track the changes a student makes in his/her document.  This is a great tool for the editing and revising phase of the writing process!

Some other add-ons you may like are Charts, Easy Bib, Thesaurus, VexTab Music Notation or TextHelp's highlighting feature. Once you download the add-on, there is a Learn More button with a helpful video.  If you have a student with a particular need, we can discuss adding an add-on to his or her drive.  

Donna Santabarbara, ITC at the Thurston Middle School created this helpful Add-ons Tip Sheet.

Please let me know if I can help in any way.  Have an awesome day!

Mary

Templates

Good Morning,

Last week I shared some great templates that are available through Google. But I also know that everyday teachers are creating documents to meet the needs of their students.  It's easy to turn your documents into a template.  Just follow these 5 simple steps.

1. Open your Google Drive
2. Check the document you want to convert to a template
3. Select More/Submit to Template Gallery
4. Describe and categorize your template
5. Check Submit

You can then share with your students and have each student save their copy with their name or initials.

Are you a visual learner like me?  Watch this 90 second screencast.

Just a reminder that all of my Tuesday Tech Tips are available on the Elementary Tech Tools Page.  Please let me know if there is any topic, tool or resource you would like me to investigate.  

Thanks,

Mary

Google Templates

Good Morning,

I have attached some Google templates that you may find helpful in your classroom.  You may need to tweak them for the specific needs of your students or lesson.  Google has provided many templates in the gallery or you can search the Westwood Public School Templates or the Public Templates for graphic organizers to meet your needs.  

Tune in next week to learn how to turn your documents into templates!

 Elementary Google Templates