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From the first day of Google Classroom teachers have wanted to incorporate Google Forms into their assignments. Since forms are saved in the Google Drive, the assumption was that forms could be attached to assignments just like docs, slides or sheets could be. That was not the case....until today. With today's update, teachers can now directly attach a Google Form to an assignment instead of linking to the assignment. The video below show what it looks like.

Google added a very helpful update to Docs this last week. When you open a Google Doc and click on Tools in the Menu Bar you will now see and extra option that wasn't there before.  Voice Typing is a new tool added to Google Docs. You can see in the video below how it works. This tool will help those students that struggle with typing or even students where english is not their first language.

A few weeks ago I posted about the first Google Classroom extension called Add to Google Classroom . This was a great addition to a teacher's toolbox and took advantage to Google's Classroom API. The Add to Google Classroom extension allows a teacher to attach a website (or anything with an URL) to a Google Classroom stream in the form of an announcement or assignment without leaving the website and going to the classroom stream. This week a new Classroom extension called Share to Classroom became available. This extension does the same thing the Add to Google Classroom extension does, but with one really cool addition. With the Share to Classroom extension a teacher can push a website (or any other URL) to an entire group of students and that site will load in Chrome on the students Chromebook or computer. NOTE: at this point I have not tried it with pushing sites to iPads. The video below I found on YouTube shows you how the new extension works. Teachers need to make sure t

Google came out with some pretty big updates this week. The video below takes you through what's new. In the coming weeks teachers will see Calendar integration in Classroom and the ability to directly add a Google Form to an assignment or announcement instead of linking to it. As always you can send the Google Classroom team feedback on what you would like to see. They listen to all teachers and make improvements based on what you want.

The great thing about Google is the ease of sharing documents and files . You can share not only Google documents (Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawing), but you can also share other files you upload to your Google Drive folder. The infographic below shows you the differences in the sharing permissions within Google Drive. This is my first attempt at an infographic using www.picktochart.com

At the ISTE Conference this past June, Google made a HUGE announcement that deals with Google Classroom . Google now allows website and web content developers to add an "Add to Google Classroom" link/button to any webpage. This link allows teachers to imediately add that page to any of their Google Classroom pages as a link.This saves teachers from having to copy and paste the website URL into their Google Classroom pages. On of the very first tools that was developed was a Chrome Extension named " Add to Google Classroom " developed by Andrew Caffrey . When you add this extension to your Chrome Browser or Chromebook any website you are on can be shared with your students via Google Classroom. This video is very short but shows how quickly a webpage can be shared to a Google Classroom page. Student can also utilize this button to share resources with their classmates. I am excited to see how Google Classroom improves throughout the school year. Classroom is a year

Flubaroo is an add-on for Google Sheets that will grade responses from a Google Form test. It has been one of the most popular Google add-ons with teachers in the last year. In the last week, Flubaroo received a much needed update. You can now change point value of a student's response directly on the spreadsheet and the change will be calculated. This is referred to "Grade By Hand". Here is information about this new feature from the Flubaroo Blog.

Every summer I reflect back on the previous school year and set goals for the upcoming year. This upcoming school year (2015/2016) is going to be an exciting year for me. Starting the middle of August we will be deploying nearly 7,000 Chromebooks to our 6th - 12th graders. Also ALL classroom teachers will begin the year with a new laptop. We are trying to make our teachers as mobile as possible and hopefully they take advantage of the new laptop and GAFE to create awesome engaging lessons / projects for their students. One of my goals for this year is to focus on blogging and keeping a blog up-to-date. This blog will be a place for me to share things I learn from the world of technology education and keep you up-to-date with technology news from the district. Travis.