Mike Mohammad joined me in episode 28 of the Educational Duct Tape Podcast to discuss 2 questions that an educator might have.  One of the topics that we discussed was learner profiles.  Mike posed the question, "How can students create a profile of themselves as a learner to share with an audience beyond the classroom?"

Tools for Learner Profiles Title Image

While Mike and I did not discuss the it during the show, I want to quickly compare and contrast the termslearner profile anddigital portfolio.  While there are similarities (both are typically curated by the student, both showcase the students work in school and both are often done digitally) there are also some differences (typically, digital portfolios are a showcase of academic work and growth while learner profiles also often focus on the students' capabilities, characteristics and aptitudes as a learner).

Regardless of which end result you're looking to cultivate in your school (learner profile, digital portfolio or a blend of both), there are plenty of tools that you can leverage.

A week after the episode in which Mike and I discusssed this aired, I hosted a Twitter chat about the questions from our talk.

Here are some of the participants' responses to the question about learner profiles:

Continue reading 8+ Tools for Developing Learner Profiles

There are lots of reasons that you might need images with transparent backgrounds! Maybe it's for a #StopMotionSlides project!  Maybe it's for a graphic design project!  Maybe it's for a green screen video or image!

No matter what your reason is for wanting an image with a transparent background, the easiest option is the same: do a Google Image Search for images with a transparent background!

There are ways to take images andremove their background, but if we can start withno background, that's even better!

Search in Google > Images > Tools > Color > Transparent

Note: Unfortunately, this is not a perfect process.  Using this strategy misses some images with transparent backgrounds and includes some images that it should have left out.

Check out the #EduGIF below.  A Pausable #EduGIF is available here.

Google Transparent Image Search Animation

On the Google Teacher Tribe podcast (one of my favorite podcasts) Kasey Bell & Matt Miller often refer to Google Slides as the "Swiss Army Knife of gSuite."  And I agree!  There are so many things that you can do in Google Slides.  In this post, I'm going to show you 3 super useful Graphic Design tools that are available in Slides.

Align –When you select 2+ objects (images, shapes, text boxes, etc.) you can align them horizontally (left, right or center) or vertically (top, bottom or center) with each other!

Distribute – When you select 3+ objects (images, shapes, text boxes, etc.) you can distribute them horizontally or vertically in relation to each other.  This spaces the objects out evenly.  It's important to note that it's based off of the positions of the leftmost and rightmost objects.  So, get your left and right objects into place and then use this tool to distribute everything else out evenly in between.

Center on Page –This tool does exactly what you'd expect it to, but with one nice bonus – if you have multiple objects selected it will center them as a group.  So, the objects themselves may not be in the center of the slide, but they will be arranged with the center of the group at the center of the slide.

A note for the Google Drawings fans out there: each of these items are also available there and work in the same manner.

Check out the EduGIF of these 3 tools in action below and, if it moves too fast, check out the Pausable EduGIF here.

Align, Distribute & Center in Slides Animation

Adjacent Possible .  Have you heard of it?  If you listen to the Educational Duct Tape Podcast, you probably have.  It's this theory that a new set of possibilities is enabled by taking one step beyond the current state of things.  Every step opens up new possibilities, just like every conversation with a person can lead to new possibilities that you had not considered.

Well, I had an Adjacent Possible experience a few days ago while interviewing Tony Vincent for Episode 26 of the Educational Duct Tape podcast.  Tony was responding to a question about how to help students get to know each other.  He shared with me about this activity that he had done where his students took side profile pictures of themselves and then turned them into silhouettes of in Google Slides.  They then added in images and words that showed their interests.  The students presented their slides to their classmates and, later, those same slides were played on a loop on a screen in the room.  What I love about this activity is that, on the surface, it's a great "getting to know each other" activity.  But, underneath that, it's also a fantastic way to teacher kids some new skills with a tool that the teacher planned on using in class.

This is actually an activity that Tony teaches participants in his fantastic Classy Graphics course. If you're interested in learning Graphic Design with Google Tools, you should check it out!

There are certainly ways to make these silhouettes that would be easier.  But that's not the point. The point is, opening students' eyes to the possibilities within the tools that they have access to.  As Tony shared in the episode, his students became highly capable at using Slides to create all sorts of things.  I don't know about you, but I'm not surprised.  By doing this activity, his students saw slides as more than just a tool for presentations.  They saw it as a creation space.

Well, as you have probably already guessed, I was compelled to turn this into an #EduGIF, so here it is.  After the GIF, I'll share step-by-step instructions for making these.  By the way, I'd be honored if you used this GIF and these instructions with your own students in class.  You can repay me by showing me some of their creations!

Continue reading Making Silhouettes in Google Slides

On 1/7/19, Google announced that you could now embed previously created Google Drawings into Google Docs.  Before this announcement, you could create new Drawings from within a Doc, but you could not pull in Drawings created in the regular Drawings platform.

This was limiting, because the Drawings tool within Docs was only provided a small workspace and had less tools.  It was also frustrating that a Drawing couldn't be in both places – a Drawing and Doc – without copying and pasting or using the following workaround.

Up to this point, the best workaround was to download the Drawing as an image and then insert that image into the Doc.  This was frustrating for a few reasons: it involved inconvenient extra steps and it meant that the Drawing in the Doc would not update if the actual Drawing was updated.

Well, now Google has made good on fixing this.  In the Google Docs Insert menu, go to Drawing and now you can select New to create a new one or From Drive to select one that you created in the Google Drawings platform.  When the drawing is changed in Drawings, you'll see an Update option in the Doc to show the changes (unless you selected Unlink when you added the Drawing).  Check it out in the animated GIF below:

Embed Drawings into Docs GIF

Sometimes, I think a trick, hack or shortcut that I do with technology is unimpressive and something that everyone either knows or doesn't care about.  But then, when I mention it to someone, and they're like "Whoa!" I think "Welp, this should be an EduGIF."

Recently, I had the good fortune to be recording a guest appearance on the Shukes & Giff Podcast (er, maybe it's the Shukes & Jake Podcast, now!? Kidding!).  When I was chatting about Emoji Bullets with Kim Pollishuke (a.k.a. "Shukes"), I mentioned, "So, I'll just click Shift+Command+8 and then…" and she said "Wait, What!?"  And then I knew it, EduGIF time.  So here it is . . .

in most Google Tools:

  • Click CTRL (Command on Mac) + Shift + 7 for Numbering
  • Click it again to undo numbering
  • Click CTRL (Command on Mac) + Shift + 8 for Bullets
  • Click it again to undo bullets

Here's the EduGIF!

Shortcuts for Bullets and Numbering GIF

On the Google Teacher Tribe podcast and on his site DitchThatTextbook.com, Matt Miller shared about his recommended use of thought bubbles (and speech bubbles) in Google Drawings.  When I first heard it, I thought – "Whoa!  What a simple, but powerful application of a technology tool."  Think about it: students being able to comprehend a story or historical event well enough to synthesize the information back into what they predict a character/person may have been thinking or saying?  Not to mention, it's quick and it's much more engaging that writing it on a worksheet or in a Google Doc.  Matt recommends this as a Bell Ringer activity, which I think is an awesome idea, but certainly not the only way it can be used. Teachers these days are incorporating kindergarten worksheets for kids to help them learn better.

This can also be done in Google Slides–it would be neat to have each kid have their own slide–and through the "Insert > Drawing" option on Google Docs.  Just like with Google Docs, you can have students make copies of your drawing to add their own thought bubbles or you can use them as assignments in Google Classroom or other LMS's.

Check it out in the Animated GIF below and then, after the GIF, is a published version of that Drawing, just to show how easy it is to post the completed project.

Speech & Thought Bubbles in Google Drawings Animation

Continue reading Speech & Thought Bubbles in Google Drawings

Most people wouldn't see a need for videos in Google Drawings, but a teacher – especially one that uses HyperDocs – could probably think of thousands of reasons it'd be useful.  That's why I was excited when I heard Joli Boucher share about it during a recent episode of the Google Teacher Tribe podcast (You can hear it here as well, all cued up to her part).  It's a super slick, simple hack and when doing HyperDrawings it's super useful too.  I just had to capture this in a GIF . . . so, here it is:

Video in Google Drawings Animation

Joli also shares about this in her post here and her video here. For proof that it works, here's a link to the Drawing that I show in the GIF.

They're on your phone.  They're in a movie.  They're on clothes.  They're on social media.  They're probably tattooed on people.  And yes . . . they're in Google Docs.

Here's how to enter Emoji (and other symbols) in Google Docs, Slides or Drawings. Once you click Insert > Special Characters you have 3 options:

  1. Change the dropdown that initially says "Symbol" to say "Emoji" and navigate to the Emoji that you want.
  2. Search by keyword.
  3. Search by drawing the Emoji.

Tip: The emojis are text items, not pictures.  That means that their size is dependent on your selected font size.

Emoji in Docs Animation

Google Drawings is a great place for quick, simple, visual activities.  Add shapes to a diagram, tell students to double-click in those shapes and –voila – they're text boxes!

Tips:

  • before sending them out to your kiddos, click into those shapes and format the text size so it'll fit in the boxes.
  • Once you've made one box the way you like it, use command+d (ctrl+d on non-Mac) to duplicate it.
  • If this isn't being used in Google Classroom, make it anyone with the link can view, copy the link, change the "edit" to "copy" and send it out.

Google Drawings - Fill in the blank Animation