Google Gooru

If you have not already, I highly recommend Google Gooru as a valuable resource for learning to make the most of your Google Apps - Gmail, Drive, Calendar, etc.  I subscribe to their newsletter and I am always finding useful, relevant tutorials and helps.

Here is an article they posted today that I found very useful.

4 Things You Can Do Right Now To Create A Perfectly Organized Google Drive


Check them out today.

Start Your Google Classroom

Just in case I haven't mentioned this enough, Google Classroom is a product that came out this past fall.  It is not so much a "new product" as it is a nicely put together LMS (learning management system) that combines what Gmail, Drive and Calendar do into one easy to use communication device.  I am hearing teachers starting to use this in their own classroom environments more and more now.  Many teachers are choosing to try it on a smaller, easy to run class until they become more comfortable with it.  Though Google Classroom may not necessarily be "loaded" full of digital tools, it's simplicity and practicality make it a very valuable tool for communicating with your classroom digitally.  If you are flipping your classroom, this will come in very handy.

I couldn't give it a better description or do a better demo of Google Classroom than Google themselves, so preview the video below.  No need to worry whether there is enough help online in using Google Classroom; just search for it in YouTube.  There have already been hundreds of teachers sharing their view and experience of Google Classroom

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me.

Recent Changes in Google Forms

If you have not introduced yourself to Google Forms, you are missing out on a very handy feature of your Google Drive.  Google Forms is a part of your Google Docs suite.  Create a Google Form for quizzes, survey, gathering information, getting a better understanding of a group of people, and many other creative uses.  And because it is part of our GAFE (Google Apps for Education) domain, it is so easy to share with students and staff.

Recently Google has been doing some upgrading with Forms and have added some great new features, like Add Ons.  Below are links to Google Drive's blog describing some of these great new changes with Forms, making Forms much more inviting to use.

• Your Forms, your way
• A few more ways to make Forms you own
• Add ons for Forms bring a little something extra to your surveys

Google Search Tips Infographic

This infographic, originally posted by HackCollege, is an older creation, however is an amazing visual and tool for learning how to create an effective web search.

Update (5.29.14):  Because of the issues I had with the embedding of the infographic previously posted, I had to post an image of the infographic.

To view the original infographic in full size, please go to HackCollege.com

Google News

If you haven't already, you should check out Google News.  Yes, you can get news from many different sources depending on what kind of news you are looking for.  And, you can search a topic in Google and select News on the Google Menu.  However, the news.google.com News is different.  I'll tell you why.

Google News not only sources news from hundreds of popular news sources for the latest national and global news, but you can customize your Google News.  If you are more interested in sports, or business, or entertainment, you can customize your Google News to view articles regarding one of these topics only.  Or, you could include all of these topics, but make adjustments to how much of news from each of these aforementioned topics is presented in your Google News.

You can, also, add in your own customized News "section".  A devoted section of news pertaining to a customized topic you pick.  For example, I love reading about the global coffee market, so I added in a section devoted to Coffee Futures.  All new in this personalized section is devoted to the coffee market.

Ok, one more thing I like about Google News.  Be sure to check out "Realtime Coverage" in any of the news sections.  In realtime you can see up-to-the-minute articles as well as Google+ posts regarding the news topic of that section.

Read more features from Google's About page on Google News.

Here's a helpful video (Update:  this tutorial is actually rather dated; there have been recent changes since the posting of this video):

Google Nutrition Search

About a week ago Google announced they were going to feature nutritional information on foods as part of your search results, so that you can instantly access this nutritional information any time.  You can pretty much find the nutritional value from almost any food - from apples to ramen noodles.  The nutrition stats are brought to you by the USDA.  Also, Wikipedia contributes a piece about the searched product.

This video I put together demonstrates how to use the new Google nutritional search.  You will notice that the nutrition results allow for other options - i.e. size, type and preparation of the searched products; and results populate when you make adjustments to these.

Google Image Search Revamped

Google just announced yesterday their new design to their image search.  Before, when you or your students were searching for images, you would have to click on the image to get more information on the image, or to be able to save it in its original size (incase you didn't know, before when you saved an image from Google's image search right from the thumbnail, you were not getting the original size; only the thumbnail size).

Now with Google's beautiful design layout, you do not have leave your image search to another page location.  You can simply browse through the list of thumbnail images; find one you like; click on it to enlarge and for more information without leaving the page.  Use your arrow keys while the enlarged image is open to toggle through all of the other images and view them and their information instantly.

Review CNET's article from yesterday morning for more details.

Try it out

Calculate While You Google

While I was assisting a classroom today with a video conference with NASA, I decided to Google the term "golden ratio" (which was a topic that was brought up for the students) on my iPad. My search returned this pretty cool interactive calculator right in my search results.

This feature was introduced in July 2012 after Google launched their weather OneBox.

It's not a fully equipped scientific calculator, but can do most general Maths with a few advanced Math functions like SIN, COS, and TAN.

Yes, typically, calculators are pretty accessible in the classroom, however if you or your students are doing some online research, what a great tool to have by simply opening a new tab in your browser and calculate some general Math, like conversions, distance or amounts of time. By the way, Google also has a unit conversion OneBox.

Try it out. Google an expression OR search "calculator".

Google's Newspaper Archive

Just streaming the news this morning through Google News and stumbled across their "archived articles".  You can search for old newspapers.

I created a search for - world war germany berlin.  My search gave me some decent return.  I found a newspaper from April 2, 1962 talking about conflict in Berlin between East and West Germany and liquidating World War II.

Full Screen

Google allows you to easily scroll or flip through each newspaper page easily, highlighting your search terms.

I also searched for - kennedy president jfk.  From the search return, I found an article from The Harper Herald from Nov 22, 1963, the day JFK was assassinated.

Be sure to check out the Related Articles section for more.

What a great way to involve primary source material with your history topics.  Each article has its own web link.  Post and share them on your Moodle course or website for student access.

Google Inside Search

I just recently held a workshop on how to teach students the 21st Centry skill of Search; and how teachers can help their students learn its art with some simple tricks and wording.

I just stumble upon a nice, new change and directory to Google's Inside Search help pages.  Go to Google Inside Search and view the Features tab.  You will find a long list of search tips, tricks, and ways to format your search in an easy to navigate directory.  A lot of what Google offers for tips is often used in other major and popular search engines as well.

You will find these tip extremely helpful when teaching your students how to make smart web searches.

Here is a sample shot:

Google Elections

Google Elections is a great way to keep you and your students up to date when following the Iowa Caucuses.

Google Elections is a huge resource of news and information.

Not only does it provide up-to-date results through an interactive map,

but you can follow Google search trends (which candidates are being searched for),

students can see who the running candidates are; view news articles and video on current issues like economy, healthcare, and national security.

On the Ground provides video news coverage throughout the caucuses from various places and sources in the country.

PBS Newshour provides a Google Calendar of the candidates' itinerary and whereabouts that you can add to your own Google Calendar.

For more information go to Google Elections. 

Also, for those who utilize Twitter, add @mentionmachine to your list to follow.  @mentionmachine monitors Twitter for political candidates mentions and and trends.

New From Google. Merry Christmas!

How to follow Twitter hashtags through Google's Realtime

You don't have to have a Twitter account to follow educators and colleagues in your field or to see what is going on instantly during major events - sports, major political speeches, catastrophes, etc.


Simply find a Twitter hashtag that you would like to search - i.e. #edchat.  Type the hashtag into the search and instantly you can follow conversations and chat about your particular search. 

Practical Use:  This is a great feature for searching new ideas, lesson plans, or classroom activities from other professionals from around the world in your related field without the need of a Twitter account; or when you want to follow a major event and see comments or links to other web pages from around the world.  This will also serve as a great means for collecting Twitter names to follow on your own Twitter account.



What is Twitter and how does it benefit me?

What is a Twitter hashtag and how does it work?

What is Google Realtime?

Google's Nigeria Election Page

Something that just came out last Thursday, is Google has provided an amazing resource for keeping up on the details of the ongoing election in Nigeria for 2011.  Below is a video explaining how to make the most of it.


Be sure to check out Google's own Africa Blog for more information.

Google Realtime

Google Realtime is one of their Search products that you can find in their left-hand menu column.

I use this tool as an up-to-the-second report of any particular subject, topic, or news feature.  Realtime uses Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, MySpace, etc social media posts from everywhere around the world.  "How are these social networks going to provide for me anything worth looking at that would be considered news-worthy or for my own serious research", you may be asking.  With this application, I can get instant updates and news not only from news publications, but even from people associated with the news event or person.  If I am keeping up to date with any major event for my students, this is a great tool to help me with that.  I can then keep my students informed.  Each post also provides links to other articles and publications that can provide more useful information and may introduce you to a new favorite news source.  Realtime is live and auto-refreshes, so you will receive any new update as soon as it happens.  It even tells you how long ago the post was updated; in days, hours, minutes, and seconds.  You may want to refresh  your browser periodically if Realtime is kept open for an extended period of time, just to ensure that your live feed is continuous.

You may find that some of the posts become a bit redundant (as anything in society), however you do find some gold nuggets of material.  You can, also, view the Timeline on the right of the Google Realtime page where it will indicate peaks of activity by time.  Click anywhere on the Timeline to go back in time to view past updates where update activity peaks.

The video explains more of Realtime's features and how to customize your Realtime search.

Google Reader

Another great procduct from Google than can save headaches and time.

Do you like to follow Blogs or any news-related web site like CNN or The New York Times?  Do you utilize RSS?  Then Google Reader is right up your ally.

In a nutshell Google Reader collects all of those feeds, news, and updates and organizes (aggregates) them in one location that you can easily manage.  I follow almost 100 blogs, news sites and RSS feeds for information of various kinds.  Instead of bookmarking all of these sites and scrolling and flipping through web pages to find material, I can view and save snippets that lead me to the main articles.  I can sort and manage all of these updates and read the ones that I find pertinent for me.  You can also share your favorites with others.


Another great feature is that I can tie in my Google Alerts.  When I apply for a Google Alert, I have them sent to my Reader, so that I can view and manage them in one place.

For more information on Google Alerts view my post.


For more details visit Google Reader Help

For more information on RSS, please visit my RSS blog post.

Google Alerts

Google Alerts is a great tool to stay in the loop on any current event faster than the morning paper or TV news.  It's a great tool professionally and personally.  Great for Social Studies teachers.

Google's Help explains.

I have been collecting Alerts on Wikileaks, Ai Weiwei (Chinese government detained Artist), and the Government Shutdown.  I have put my Alert settings to send me any kind of news the moment it comes out.  You can, also, set it to send you a daily or weekly digest and you can just set your Alerts for News, Blogs, Realtime, Video or Discussions only.

Google Alerts also can be tracked in your Google Reader, making your news or information flow more directed and in one place.  Google Reader will update for you automatically.  I can now keep my Reader open and toggle back to it to view any new updates.  For more information on how Google Reader makes your news/info/rss/blogs much easier to collect and saves headaches, go to my Google Reader post.

Firefox Add-on Feature - Readability

Readability.com is a powerful tool that pulls online news articles and cleans them up.  In other words, gets rid of any other content on that web page - i.e. advertisements, other headlines, comment posts, or links - and displays a "clean" article with any images that pertain to it.  Readability.com, also, allows you to print, share on social networks, and customize appearance.  You, now, have the ability to save your chosen articles as PDF, add annotations for your students; or have your students add annotations.  The document below covers more detail.

This Add-on tool will be embedded right into your Firefox browser for easy use.  No Admin needed.

The document is very easy to read and user-friendly.  I have the web link in the document, however simply go to readability.com

Open publication - Free publishing - More add-on