My 2022 Great Plains Summit Sessions

I am excited and honored to once again be presenting at the 2022 Great Plains Summit in Lincoln, Nebraska this July 14th and 15th, 2022. 

I always look forward to an opportunity to see old friends, make new friends, share some ideas, and learn so many new things from others.

You can learn more about the conference and register at: https://gpsummit.org/

And view the full list of amazing presenters at: https://gpsummit.org/presenters/

And view the full summit schedule at: https://lps.org/gpsummit/2022/

Below is a list of sessions I will be presenting at the 2022 Great Plains Summit, along with any associated resources. Please feel free to join me for any of these sessions. I look forward to sharing, learning, and chatting with you!

Create "Cloze Reading" Activities with Google Docs Dropdown Chips

Cloze reading is an activity where a student is given a reading passage with certain words removed. Usually the student is also provided with a word bank, listing the missing words. The task is for the student to fill in the missing words.

This is a great activity to help develop and assess a student's reading comprehension skills. It is necessary for the student to read the passage carefully and consider the context to try to determine what words would best fill in the blanks.

There are lots of excellent resources online for creating your own cloze reading activities, but recently Google Docs has added a new feature called "dropdown chips" that makes it super easy to create a cloze reading activity right in Docs. This is especially helpful since many students are already familiar with Google Docs, and these activities can be pushed out through Google Classroom so each student gets their own copy.

See below for a short 8-minute tutorial video and detailed written directions on how to create a cloze reading activity in Docs using the new dropdown chips tool.

Get the Most out of Google Meet

I recently had the privilege to present a session for Google's series of "Did You Know?" webinars. These are a collection of 8 sessions covering a wide range of Google tools for schools.

You can learn more about the entire "Did You Know?" series in my earlier blog post here: Free Google Webinars - "Did You Know" Series

For my third session I presented the following webinar:

Better engage students and save time with new Google Meet features

Description: New features in Google Meet can save educators time and increase students engagement. In this session we will explore options including breakout rooms, polls, Q&A, translated captions, recording, attendance tracking, live streaming, and more, as well as see new features coming soon to Google Meet.

See below to watch the recorded webinar, as well as access the session slideshow and resources.

What's New in Google - April 2022

Catch up on everything new in Google Workspace for Education from April 2022, and see great ideas and resources!

Below is the recorded video from our April 2022 Google User Meeting, along with the meeting agenda with all the awesome resources and Google updates from the last few months. This includes lots of new Google updates and Google resources for your class.

The monthly meetings are hosted by the Google Educator Group of Ohio, but are open to anyone from any location. The purpose of these meetings is to:

• Connect Google-using educators
• Share the latest Google Workspace news and features
• Provide tutorials, demonstrations, and how-to’s
• Share best practices of how Google Workspace is being used within schools
• Ask questions and get answers

The video from the meeting is recorded and available for later viewing for those who cannot attend or connect live. See below to view the recorded video, agenda, and all the resources from the April 2022 meeting:

Fake News! Evaluating Online Information

As adults we (hopefully) know that not everything online is true. For our students though, this is a concept they need to learn.

Students can use Google to quickly find millions of websites matching their search request, but are they able to determine which sites actually contain information that is accurate, unbiased, up to date, and written by someone with authority?

Thankfully there are many helpful resources to assist our students (and ourselves) to increase digital literacy. See below for a collection of many of these resources that I have found to be valuable. If you have some favorite resources for evaluating online information, please consider sharing those in the comments at the bottom of the post.

Get the Most out of Google Classroom

I recently had the privilege to present a session for Google's series of "Did You Know?" webinars. These are a collection of 8 sessions covering a wide range of Google tools for schools.

You can learn more about the entire "Did You Know?" series in my earlier blog post here: Free Google Webinars - "Did You Know" Series

For my second session I presented the following webinar:

Get the Most out of Google Classroom

Description: Learn how Google Classroom can supercharge your assignments with differentiation, topics, rubrics, originality reports, comment banks, digital markup, and more! Also get a look at the latest and greatest new features coming to Classroom.

See below to watch the recorded webinar, as well as access the session slideshow and resources.

You can do that with Docs, Slides, and Sheets?!

I recently had the privilege to present a session for Google's series of "Did You Know?" webinars. These are a collection of 8 sessions covering a wide range of Google tools for schools. 

You can learn more about the entire "Did You Know?" series in my earlier blog post here: Free Google Webinars - "Did You Know" Series

For my first session I presented the following webinar:

You can do that with Docs, Slides, and Sheets?!

Description: We use Docs, Slides, and Sheets everyday, but may not be taking advantage of all the impactful features available. In this session we will explore many of their lesser-known features such as default font, video previews, embedded Drawings, maximizing space, live captions, publishing to the web, splitting text, pivot tables, conditional formatting, and more!

See below to watch the recorded webinar, as well as access the session slideshow and resources.