10 Googley Poetry Projects for National Poetry Month

April is the time of year

For kids to write a poem.
There's loads of fun activities
Here for you to show 'em.

Google tools can be used
To make the perfect rhyme,
With templates, tools, and writing prompts
To save your students time.

Draggable Drawings, random Sheets,
And Google Docs highlighting
Will give your students inspiration
For their creative writing.

So look below to find out more,
Then get your students on it,
Writing their ode, haiku, free verse,
Their ballad or their sonnet.

Google April Fools Videos

Most years Google releases a new set of prank videos for April Fools Day. I always look forward to these videos as they are so well produced and poke fun at current trends and technology and even at Google itself. Even better though, they provide more professional development materials for me.

Here's what I mean…

Technology training can be challenging for novices as well as seasoned users. There is a lot of content to cover and new features to learn. Depending on the school, organization, or event, the training may also last a long time, from a full day in-service to a multi-day bootcamp.

During any professional development training it is important to break things up, add some variety, and most importantly have some fun and laugh. Google's April Fools videos are perfect for that! As often as I can I try to insert one or more videos into the PD session depending on which ones relate to the content we are learning.

These videos can also be great for your next training session, or staff meeting, or technology instruction for your students, or even as examples of parody videos for your language arts or media classes.

Thankfully Google keeps producing new videos to add to this collection. I can't wait to see what they have made for us this time! In the meantime, see below for many of my favorite Google April Fools videos (in no particular order) and the PD topics they best relate to. Hopefully you can use these yourself to make your next teaching or learning experience more engaging.

Preset Google Meet Breakout Rooms in Calendar

Breakout rooms are a great feature in Google Meet, allowing you to take all of your meeting participants and split them up into smaller Meets where they can work on group projects, have small group discussions, and such.

One challenge though has been the time needed to set up the rooms, especially if you want to manually assign your attendees to specific rooms. In the past this had to be done during the actual live meeting, which can take up time and be distracting when you are trying to work with your students. 

Thankfully Google has now added an option to set up the breakout rooms ahead of time using Google Calendar. 

See below for detailed directions on how to use this feature, as well as a short 6-minute video that demonstrates all the steps.

What's New in Google - March 2021

Catch up on everything new in Google Workspace for Education from March 2021, and see great ideas and resources!

Below is the recorded video from our March 2021 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 March 2021 meeting:

Podcast Spotlight: Educational Duct Tape

I recently had the pleasure to be a guest on the Educational Duct Tape podcast with Jake Miller, and am excited to share the episode with you, as well as encourage you to dive into all the episodes of Jake's podcast!

"The podcast focuses on viewing edtech as a tool used to meet goals, address learning standards, and solve problems in the classroom, much as duct tape is used as a tool that solves a plethora of problems in our lives. Each episode features a different inspiring educator helping Jake answer teacher questions with awesome ideas for using tech in the classroom."

Jake and I have actually been friends for many years as we both live in northeast Ohio and have attended numerous conferences together. I have been so excited for all of the amazing things Jake shares online including his podcast and #EduGIFs and much more. It was an honor to be on the show!

See below for a link to the episode and other relevant resources...

My MACUL 2021 Sessions

I am excited and honored to once again present at the MACUL Conference this year.

This year MACUL 2021 is entirely virtual and runs from March 17th through 20th.

You can register on the conference website at: https://2021maculconference.sched.com/

Below is a list of sessions I will be presenting for MACUL 2021, along with any associated resources.  I look forward to sharing and learning with you!

My NEOTech 2021 Sessions

I am excited and honored to once again present at the NEOTech Conference (NEOTech 2021) this year.

This year NEOTech is entirely virtual and completely FREE! The conference will have both live sessions and pre-recorded sessions. The live sessions will air throughout the week of March 15th. All of the on-demand session and recorded live sessions will be available to watch until March 26th.

You can register for FREE until March 19th on the conference website at: https://www.neotechconference.org/

Below is a list of sessions I will be presenting live and pre-recorded for NEOTech 2021, along with any associated resources. Please feel free to join me for any of these sessions, or watch the recorded sessions. I look forward to sharing and learning with you!