We are Google Girls, In a Canvas World

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Teachers are very comfortable using the Google suite so Kristine and Jen talk about how easy it is to utilize google tools within Canvas.

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Video Transcript
>> Welcome to We Are Goggle Girls in a Canvas World, otherwise known as how Chesterfield County Schools incorporated Google into Canvas. My name is Kristine Vester and I'm joined by Jennifer Ward. We are both instructional designers for Chesterfield County Schools located in the Commonwealth of Virginia near the capital city of Richmond. Our county represents around 63,000 students and nearly 8,000 employees. Chesterfield County has been using Chromebooks for their secondary and upper elementary students in a one-to-one setup for many years. As of fall 2020, every grade level in Chesterfield has been supplied a Chromebook.

Now during the 2018-2019 school year, Chesterfield started its plan to move from Google classroom to Canvas with a soft rollout. This rollout enabled teachers to start playing with Canvas and see how their Google app creations could merge. Our job as instructional designers was to assist them in this adventure. As we tell our story, please use bit. ly/CanvasCon20 with capital Cs to record any questions you have and to see any posted resources including this presentation slide deck.

Chesterfield County teachers love their Google apps and creations. So today we're going to focus on the most popular Google apps our teachers and students use. And end with the evermore popular trend, the Bitmoji Classroom. Now being that we are Google County, the first thing we needed was to have our district admin turn on the Google LTI. All we are about to present is dependent on this tool.

When you turn it on, your Rich Content Editor will really become your best friend. You'll go to the three dots and find the plug. The plug is the app icon. When you click on the plug, it will take you to a selection of apps. Select Google Apps.

This will give you easy access to embed your Google drive creation. Let's start with Google Slides. Google Slides is probably one of my most favorite Google products to use in Canvas. You can easily embed a Google Slide into any Rich Content Editor and it appears in presentation mode. This is great for avid Google users.

I work in an elementary school and there's a lot of small group time where students rotate the different activities. Teachers like to work off a rotation schedule based on time or charts to direct students where to go. I can create a daily Google slide and embed it on a page in my Canvas course using that plug. Some groups can log into Canvas to see what and where they need to be without interrupting other groups. If the schedule changes, I can open my drive, edit the Google slide and it updates in real time.

With a lot of school districts going virtual to start, having quick access to a schedule or daily to do list on the homepage allows for students and observers to see what is expected. It also allows students who have missed this instruction block to refer to this slide deck and see what was assigned. Other examples where this might be beneficial is with assignments or projects. I can embed a slide deck into the Rich Content Editor using that plug when creating an assignment so my students can refer to it for directions, notes, or project examples. Then I can give them the slide template as a Doc Cloud or Course Kit assignment.

So each student gets their own copy. Now the example and the editable template are all in one place for students and teachers. There are so many possibilities with integrating slides into Canvas. On the billboard is a picture of an embedded slide deck of a mini Canvas training I did with my staff last year. Notice the tool bar is all that they can see.

Staff can be a part of my live training and then refer back to the presentation anytime through my school's Canvas training course. By doing this in a live training, I'm modeling what my teachers could do too. The road signs on the right contain editable templates. One of the scheduled templates is for elementary and the other is an interactive notebook for secondary students. As you can tell, this Google girl is a huge fan.

The next extremely popular Google app is Google Docs. Many of our teachers have created learning assignments such as choice boards and HyperDocs using Google Docs. Even our curriculum specialists have embedded our instructional document using that plug into a Canvas course for each grade level. The ease of adding documents as Doc Cloud or Course Kit assignments is amazing. One of my favorite uses for Google Docs in elementary is using a blank document for a writing prompt.

Teachers create it using Doc Cloud assignment and students can work on their own copy and send it when time is up or when they think they've finished. The next day, they can go back to that assignment and keep working or read the feedback that I provided from the last submission. For secondary students, we dove down even deeper, and we use Google Course Kit assignments to create long-term writing assignments and reading logs. With the Course Kit assignment, teachers have live access to the document throughout the duration of the assignment allowing for constant collaboration between the student and the teacher. This presentation is all about not recreating the wheel just because you have a new [inaudible].

Teachers across the world are creating HyperDocs and sharing them on the teachers-give-teachers section of the HyperDoc web page. The creators of HyperDocs also want you to be able to build your own. So check out their website linked in this presentation for learning opportunities, which can also be found in our bit. ly. >> Google Sheets covers the majority of your spreadsheet needs and our science teachers use that functionality to the max with their data collections and science experiments.

If you are doing any assignments with Google Sheets in Canvas, I highly recommend your assignment submission be sent to website url. If the submission is turned into a pdf by Speedgrader, the teacher is unable to see the formulas and functions used by the students. Now a group at Chesterfield's instructional designers utilize that formula function to a whole new dimension and created color by number formative assignments. With a color by number formative assignment, students answer questions on a Google Sheet. When they've put the correct answer in, colors appear on the right hand side of the sheet to show it's correct.

If they put in an incorrect answer, no colors will appear. When they have finished the assignment, a complete design will appear on the right hand side. It's a great way for students to self-check their work. Check out the two links on this presentation for templates you can adapt for your own class as well as directions on how to make your own color by number. For Chesterfield County teachers Google Forms was always more than just an assessment.

K through 12 teachers use Forms for their exit tickets and temperature checks, their digital breakout activities, and their branch form assessments. While many of our K through to quickly transfer their exit tickets and temperature checks to quick quizzes or discussion posts in Canvas, Google Forms will never lose its functionality. It just has so many applications for our curriculum. On this screen, you can see what a Google Form looks like when you use it in Canvas. On the left, I embedded the form into my Rich Content Editor using the Send Embed code.

On the right, I used the external link setting to add the Google Form to my module lessons and activities. Both setups allow the student to use the form and the results will go to that Google Sheet. >> With virtual learning, easy access, and design have never been more important. All of our teachers love to make the navigation more visual. So Google Draw was used in creating buttons and banners for home pages.

As instructional designers, we created a folder of button templates for teachers to copy and modify for their Canvas course. To help our teachers, we've put some simple directions on how to edit and save their buttons in the margins. A lot of teachers appreciate these simple reminders. Don't forget to visit the bit. ly to access this slide deck because we are providing templates that you can use.

This slide includes a sample of a Course Card template so students can easily identify which course is in which on the dashboard. The next two resources are the Banner Buttons for creating homepages, which I would highly recommend. Last is using a Google Draw as an assignment. I have had teachers use Google Draw as sorting activities, graphic organizers, picture or diagram labeling, and even designing their own memes. While Google Drawing can be tricky in Canvas, we have found setting it up as a Doc Cloud assignment can be beneficial for our students.

>> During this pandemic, Google Meets was a lifesaver for Chesterfield County and its students. Admin set up Google Meets as an external tool in our Rich Content Editor. Remember the plug. Teachers were able to quickly create an assignment for the day as well as a link for a meet to discuss the material and the direction. Teachers also use as functionality to quickly create meets for office hours, student check-ins, and class meetings.

By setting it up as an assignment with a due date, information was placed on the students' to do list and their calendar. Directions for this setup can be found on our bit. ly. >> Who hasn't jumped into this craze? Yes, it's a glorified choice board, but what a cool way to bring your classroom to your students. Teachers have done some amazing classrooms.

I have seen their homerooms, map small groups, libraries, social emotional rooms, and so many more. If you've not seen some of these amazing classrooms, I would recommend joining the Facebook group Bitmoji Craze. Now that so many teachers have Bitmoji Classrooms, there are a couple of different options on how to share them in your Canvas course. There are ways to be fancy and add your classroom through the HTML editor, but for most teachers, this is overwhelming. So as we discussed earlier, using Google Slides, which was my favorite, Sorry, that was just so exciting.

Using Google Slides as embedding it into your classroom on a page, remember using that plug, is a simple way to provide access for all students. You can also download your Bitmoji Classroom as a pdf and embed it. >> All right. Thank you guys so much for joining us today as Jen and I discussed the different ways our teachers were able to integrate Google apps with our awesome Canvas LMFs. You can see how exited we get talking about these awesome apps and the ways they can be used in Canvas.

Let's go ahead and keep that conversation going on our bit. ly, bit. ly/CanvasCon20 with capital Cs and remember, this is a great way to access resources and this presentation's slide deck. Thank you so much for joining us.
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