Monday, December 6, 2021

Free Webinar - Google Sheets Activities for all Subjects

I had the opportunity to present the following webinar recently:

Holy Sheets! Google Sheets Activities for all Subjects
Google Sheets is not just a tool for crunching numbers. It is a powerful tool for learning, inquiry, exploration, and inspiration in any subject area. In this session we take a look at several practical activities for a wide range of content areas including random writing prompts, flash cards, educational games, student-created learning databases, art and creativity, conditional formatting feedback for students, task lists, and of course analyzing data to draw conclusions and make predictions.

In the training I covered lots of creative ways that Google Sheets can be used for student activities including:

📊 Analyzing Data
💡 Learning Databases
🕹️ Educational Games and Activities
🎲 Random Generator Activities
🖼️ Art Activities
✔️ Tasks Checklists
💬 Conditional Formatting Feedback
💻 Activities from Google's Applied Digital Skills

See below to view the full 1-hour recorded webinar, and access to all of the links, templates, and resources covered in the session.

Sunday, December 5, 2021

8 Googley Wintertime Activities for Kids

[Updated as of December 2022]

As we get closer to the holiday break, it is expected and understandable that our students start getting a little distracted. They are looking forward to lots of days off, holiday celebrations, gifts, and more. Let's be honest … we may be a little distracted as well.
 
This is a time of year when we look for some fun activities to keep our students focused and active. But we don't just want busy work. If possible it is great to find projects that are fun, tie into wintertime themes, and still provide our students with a chance to be creative, write, or improve some content area skills.

To help out with that, I have put together eight wintertime-themed activities that use free Google tools, including Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Drawings:

⛄ Activity #1 - Build a Snowman with Google Slides
🎄 Activity #2 - Decorate a Holiday Tree with Google Slides
🧲 Activity #3 - Wintertime Magnetic Poetry with Google Drawings
📬 Activity #4 - Holiday Greeting Cards with Google Drawings
🎁 Activity #5 - "12 Days of Christmas" Guided Google Sheets Math Activity
🌟 Activity #6 - Pixel Art Ornaments with Google Sheets
❄️ Activity #7 - Wintertime Emoji Rebus Stories with Google Docs
💡 Activity #8 - Holiday Lights Writing with Google Docs

Some of these are projects I have shared in the past, while others are new twists on previous posts. Hopefully some of these will be a good match for your students to keep them busy AND learning as we head into the holidays.

Thursday, December 2, 2021

How to Maximize Space in Google Slides for Manipulative Drag and Drop Activities

Although Google Slides is great for presentations, there are so many other creative activities it can be used for such as stop-motion animation, Choose Your Own Adventure stories, eBooks, comic strips, and one of my favorite uses … drag-and-drop manipulative activities.

Over the years I have enjoyed creating many of these manipulative activities including:
As awesome as these are, one challenge can be the limited space available in Google Slides for the activity itself. Because these are drag-and-drop activities, you can't switch into presentation mode, but have to stay in edit mode to be able to move things around.

So if a student is working on this by themselves on a small Chromebook screen, or if you are presenting the project through a Google Meet, or if you have it projected onto a board in your classroom for a whole group activity, it would really be helpful to have more space for that actual interaction.

Thankfully you can do this! Google Slides has four built-in settings that can be used to clear away all the extra panels and menus and such and give you and your students all the space you need for your activity. See below for a short tutorial video and written directions on how to adjust each of these four settings.