#BlackHistoryMonth + Templates in G Suite + ISD624 Twitter PLN

Black history month provides a tremendous opportunity to celebrate Black American culture and praise diversity and inclusion. Google Arts and Culture is one great resource available to us. Discover thousands of artworks, artifacts, and stories from cultural organizations across the United States. 

• Discover African American art
• Check out the story of inspiring choreographer and activist, Alvin Ailey, or Edmonia Lewis, the 19th Century African American Sculptor. 
• Take a virtual tour of key locations in civil rights, like Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma or Little Rock Central High School.
• Watch Key moments in civil rights history, like JFKs Adress to the nation on civil rights or a clip on the Tuskegee airmen in WWII.

Want to connect globally with other educators doing the same thing? Follow and Engage with the twitter hashtag #BlackHistoryMonth

(Google Apps For Education has recently been renamed to G Suite.)

G Suite has recently enabled the ability to create templates. A template is a file that serves as a starting point for a new document. When you open a template, it is pre-formatted in a useful way. Here are some examples of why you would want to create templates:

• Use a template in Google Docs, so AVID students could create a copy of a Cornell Notes template in one click. 
• Use a template in Google Forms, to start every Google Form by asking first name, last name, and email. 
• Use a template in Google Slides, so your students can work together to show mastery or create a resource by using a collaborative slide deck.

For step by step directions on G Suite templates click here

Here is how ISD 624 employees can access the templates specific to our domain.

 

Here is how you can add templates specific to our domain.

If you would like to go more in depth, from a comfortable source, check out what the Sync Sisters have to say about G Suite templates. 

To see more from the Sync Sisters youtube channel, click here. 

If you are interested in learning more about getting started with Twitter, check out our blog post from January

For those of you that have recently started your journey towards becoming a connected educator, here is a second chance to join the resource of twitter handles from ISD624 teachers to share across our district. Twitter handles collected from this form will be available to ISD624 employees via this blog and emails from your Digital Learning Specialist. Fill out this form if you are interested in sharing your twitter handle for other ISD 624 teachers to follow:

ISD624 Twitter PLN

Exploring Culture with Google + Schoology Course Pictures Hack

Google Cultural Institute

The Google Cultural Institute has a huge number of engaging resources for teachers and students to explore. Think of it like an online museum. Their content is arranged into collections within three different categories, art projects, historic moments and world wonders. Tools such as gigapixel photos, street views, and videos are used to tell different stories throughout history. 

Gigapixel Photos

These are extremely high resolution images that let you zoom in and see all of the miniscule details of famous paintings and artifacts.

 

          

 

One of the best features of the Cultural Institute is that you can organize items from the public collections into your own galleries. Annotations can be added to the items that you save. Creating a personal gallery would be a great feature to have students use during a project as they interact with content and add their own reflections or explanations. 

Get started with this intro video (1:49) and then head over to the site

Schoology Course Pictures Hack

I've had a few people ask me if it is possible to change the section name of each Schoology course so it is easier to figure out which hour it corresponds to. Unfortunately, you are unable to change that because it will revert back to the original every time it syncs with Skyward. The work around for that is to change the Schoology course picture for each class to include the hour which you teach that class. See the example below.

Follow these steps to make that happen:

1. Create a new Google Drawing in your Drive by click New then More and Google Drawing.
2. To resize the drawing to a profile picture size click File --> Page Setup and then select Custom. Enter the dimensions 170 x 170 pixels.
3. Add a picture by using the Insert menu and then clicking Image. You can upload an image that your already have or search for one. 
4. Crop the picture to fit in the square
5. To add the number to your picture click Insert and then Word Art. Type the number that you want on the picture and then hit enter. Change the font, size and color settings to your liking.
6. After it looks good, click File --> Download As and then select JPEG image. Choose the location where the file will download to your computer. 
7. Open Schoology and navigate to the course that you wish to change the picture for. 
8. Hover your mouse over the current course picture and you will see the Edit Picture button pop up in the top right corner of the square. Click that.
9. Select Attach File and then find the picture that you just downloaded. 
10. Repeat for any course that you wish to change.