Search your Gmail and Drive/EduWin from Julia Pugliese

Do you spend too much time trying to find that e-mail from a  parent from last year, or about a particular topic that was sent last year when you did that unit? Lucky for you, Gmail is a Google product. And if there is one thing Google does well, it's search. Here is a quick video to find out how to find the e-mail you are looking for in a hurry.



You access Advanced Search to the right of the search field. Just click on the drop-down arrow,

to open up the menu.

If you know the approximate date of the e-mail you are looking, you can narrow your search. If you leave the date blank, your entire mailbox will be searched. It will even search mail that you migrated to Gmail.

You can also use Search to find Google Drive files. New Drive allows you to put in a key search term, and then narrow your search by file type, the application your file will open with (opens files you created using apps from Google Drive), and by owner. Here, I am searching for a Document file with the keyword "animal."

There are lots of operators you can use to search for a document, even if what you are looking for isn't in the title. For example, I went to a conference and took notes in a presentation given by "kristen berg." By putting the exact words in quotes, the search will look through all my files and return results that include that exact phrase. You can see here that the words, "kristen berg" don't appear in the title of either files.

There are lots other operators you can use to help narrow your search. If you want to know more, click here.

EduWin with Julia Pugliese and Google Translate

This year, one of the students in Julia Pugliese's second grade class spoke no English. Julia opened up Google Translate, and she and her students recorded short phrases in English, that Google translated to Japanese. While it wasn't perfect, Julia's student understood enough to be able to be able to know where the class was going when they left the room for PE, music, or lunch, and began to be able to follow along in class.

In this screenshot, you can see that I used Ingrid to speak a short sentence in Dutch. Google translated it to English, and I then starred it to save to the phrasebook.

There are also options to type, using the standard US keyboard, but it will also open language specific keyboards and a handwriting tool. 

While I wouldn't recommend using Google Translate for sensitive communication with parents, there are 70 languages available and Google is constantly trying to improve Translate's accuracy with feedback from its users.

And while you may not have occasion to use Google Translate in your classroom, anyone thinking of taking a trip abroad this coming summer? Might want to pack Google Translate with you.

If you or one of your colleagues are doing something in your class that uses edtech tools, please let me know. I'd love to share it with other teachers.

More Gmail/EduFun with Chris Asaro and Christine Barbera

Ever click send on an email and just then notice that you have a mistake or could have said something differently? I do it ALL the time. Luckily for me (and you), Gmail has Undo capability. Here's how to find it.

First, go the the gear on the upper right hand corner of your gmail page. Click on it and choose Settings.

Next,  make sure you a in the General tab. Then, find Undo Send. You can then chose the amount of time you'd like the delay to be after you press Send before your Gmail wings its way to your recipient.

And speaking of recipients, one of the teachers asked me how to send an email to a group while maintaining the privacy of the other group members' names and email addresses. Here is a short video to show you how to do it.












This week's Edu(Fun)Win

Chris Asaro and Christine Barbera both know the value of exercise and fun in education. They keep things moving in their classrooms with GoNoodle.  GoNoodle is a free online program which provides three different types of breaks for you to use with your students. Breaks are 3-5 minutes long and primarily appeal to younger students.

MovetoLearn is another free online program you might like to check out. It's upbeat, hip-hop music helps it to appeal to upper grade students.

Finally, if you are like me (and let's hope not), you may spend too much time in front of a computer. There is a Chrome Extension to help you remember to MoveIt. Find it in the Chrome Web Store and install it onto your Chrome Browser. At random times, the screen will tell you it is time to MoveIt, and suggest a random movement. Your screen then returns to let you get back to work.

If you or one of your colleagues are doing something in your class that uses edtech tools, please let me know. I'd love to share it with other teachers.

Now What Do I Do With all Those Email Addresses?/Carly Sturm's EduWin

The District Office folks were talking about how impressive you all were at Back-to-School Night. Congratulations on a great start to another school year.

So now that you'e collected all those parent e-mail addresses, you might be thinking that having a contact group to use for e-mail or to use to share documents might be a nice thing. Luckily, creating a group is pretty easy to do. Here is a screencast with directions on how to do it. You'll find Contacts in the drop down menu under Mail. Just click the arrow to find Contacts to get started:

A really nice thing about Gmail contact groups is they also work when you want to share a Google Drive file.

For those of you who prefer to read directions, here is a step-by-step post by Alice Keeler. 

Once you have a contact list set up, it is super easy to edit it during the year should your parent information change.

This Week's EduWin

This week, I'd like to recognize Carly Sturm. Carly is new to the Union School District. She is a fourth grade teacher at Lietz and is piloting the flexible furniture in her classroom. Lucky for Carly, being assigned a room with flexible furniture had the up-side of coming with a Chromebook cart. Carly jumped right in and had her students learning Google Drive. 

"The students learned how to use Google docs to word process and type a paragraph based on a community building activity we did the first week of school. (CCSS 5.W.6) I presented the lesson yesterday as students followed along on their Chrome Books. Today, I had "experts" come to the front of the room to explain basic word processing functions that we learned yesterday like how to center text, how to double space, etc." The students were excited to be "expert teachers" and the whole class was energized by the activity.

Giving students the spotlight is always motivating. Thanks, Carly, for sharing your EduWin. 

If you or one of your colleagues are doing something in your class that uses edtech tools, please let me know. I'd love to share it with other teachers.

Have a great weekend.