Learn to use the New Autocrat 3.0 to Make Certificates (or Anything Else)

Hi there, educators! I hope you enjoy this tutorial showing how to make certificates using Autocrat 3.0, which is quite different, and I think much easier, than the previous version. If you like it, please share it with others on social media, subscribe to you YouTube channel or leave a comment. Thanks in advance!

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Google Drawing Templates Galore from the Best of EdTech! (Redux)

Google Drawing Templates: Please do not request access, open the template you want and create a copy. Thanks to everyone who contributed to these set! Eric Curts, Kasey Bell, and Matt Miller.

http://bit.ly/GoogleDrawingTemplates

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The Definitive Guide to Google Classroom "Parent View" aka Guardian Summaries

In this guide, Mike Wallace and Amy Mayer seek to provide you with all the knowledge you need as a PARENT, TEACHER or GAFE SYS ADMIN to get the most out of Google Classroom Guardian Summaries. We sure hope it helps! If it does, please share this post and encourage your colleagues to get on our email list here.

All materials referred to in this post can be found here.



PARENTS: If your child's school is using Google Classroom and has enabled Guardian Summaries, your job is easy. All you have to do is click "Accept" when you receive the email from ...@classroom.google.com. It will look something like the screenshot you see below:

After you click the blue ACCEPT button, you'll get an option to choose the frequency of the emails you receive (daily or weekly) and your time zone. Presumably, this will keep the summaries from coming to you at 3 a.m. and waking you up. 

If you don't get the invite, check your email's SPAM folder. The email should come from a "no reply" email address and that may push it into SPAM. If you still don't get the invite, ask your child's teacher to remove your address and re-add you. This will remove you from all classes where you have been invited, but that's ok because you didn't get the invite anyway. If that STILL doesn't work, create a new Gmail email address and ask the teacher or system administrator to invite that address. Remember, you can always forward messages to your existing account so that you don't have to permanently change your address. 

If you STILL don't get the email, the problem most likely is that your email provider is blocking emails from Google at the server level before they get to your inbox. ​This is a problem that neither we nor Google will likely be able to solve; however, there are two possible workarounds.

1. Sign up for a Gmail account here. If you don't want to check another email address, you can use these directions to forward email from that account to your current account.

2. Contact your email provider and ask them to release the emails from Google Classroom. they will be looking for messages from @classroom.google.com.

If you choose to enact solution 1 above, you would then need ask your child's teacher to add your new Gmail address to Google Classroom.

TEACHERS: Your job is a bit more difficult, and depending on the settings your Google Apps System Administrator has chosen, this next step could be a tad time consuming. However, it will also be WORTH IT. 

Scenario 1: Your Admin has allowed YOU to invite guardians. Below you will see a gif showing you how to invite a guardian manually if this feature has been enabled for you. Here are some written directions. 

Scenario 2: Your Admin has added guardians to Classroom. This is a dream come true! In this case, just go to the Students tab in your classroom and toggle the switch beside "Include this class." You'll also need to decide if you want to add ALL the classes you teach or just this one. Both options are pictured below. 

GAFE SYS ADMINS: 

You also have some work to do, and as you can see from the directions above, everyone is counting on you (as usual)! There are also two scenarios for you to consider. 

Scenario 1: Teachers are already contacting students' guardians. They already know who those guardians are and presumably there is a system in place so that they know when a guardian becomes not a guardian anymore or is added. Considering this, it is possible to allow teachers to add guardians themselves. They may even ask you for this privilege because they will be able to keep this information updated themselves. In this case, please watch the video below to learn how to allow teachers to manually add guardians. 

Scenario 2: Your district collects and maintains guardian data and you take the responsibility seriously. You want there to be ONE system that houses this information and you want to maintain control of it. In this case, you will want to populate guardian data yourself.

Before you set up the script or begin the process, email parents AND teachers to let them know what's going on. Here are some email templates you can use. Don't forget to replace the GREEN text with your school's information.

FOR THE REAL TECHNICAL PEOPLE: In order to automate this process, you will have to install GAM (Google Apps Manager). You can get it from Github here and you can learn how to use it here. Once you get GAM installed, please see this example Script and CSV file Mike Wallace has generously provided.  This script will work for districts with up to 3000 students; larger districts will need a more complicated setup to mitigate the time it takes to download a list of invites from Google. If you need help with this process, please feel free to contact friEdTechnology for a quote here.


We sure hope this helps! Please let us know in the comments or on YouTube if you have any further questions or anything to add!

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What is Blended Learning?

My friend J.R. shared this infographic with our friEdTechnology Team yesterday and I thought it might be helpful to lots of other educators as well. Thanks to Knewton.com for the graphic and included rights to republish.

Created by Knewton

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GradGopher.com has just Changed the Game for Saving Google Apps Data

By Guest Blogger Carlos from Grad Gopher

(P.S. This is NOT a paid post! I asked Carlos to write this for us because Grad Gopher is going to save you TIME and make sure you get all your DATA. It really is AMAZING.)

Our new, game-changing software GradGopher.com was built out of the frustration of teachers and students looking to save their information with no easy solution. GradGopher.com copies your Google Drive (Shared & Owned files), Gmail emails (with attachments), Contacts, and Calendar events to another Google account of your choosing and it only takes a minute to set up!

Unlike Google Takeout,

• GradGopher copies all the files shared with you! 
• GradGopher saves you a ton of time! 

“GradGopher literally saved me about 40-50 hours worth of manual labor. I can't say enough about this. It is really everything you hoped for and more.” - Colin Davitt

• GradGopher puts all your stuff in folders just like it was in your school account, all your organization is saved! 
• GradGopher works really fast! 

Forwarding emails can take more than a month to get all emails. Do you have that amount of time before your account is deleted?

• GradGopher makes sure you can continue to access your files on your phone or wherever!

Within a minute of setup, GradGopher will begin copying for you. Once the copy begins, you have complete freedom; you can close your browser, shutdown your computer, or even go in and out of the accounts if you want!

People are telling us that GradGopher is like magic, but actually it’s just thoughtfully designed software to help you move forward in your life without any hassles! :)

Here’s our “How it Works” video if you want to see it in action! 

If you have any questions, please follow and tweet at us twitter.com/GradGopher!

Like us on facebook: Facebook.com/GradGopher

Check out reviews from teachers, students, and IT admins: Facebook.com/GradGopher/reviews!

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What's the Difference Between Training and Professional Development?

My friends Mike Patterson and Pete Logli got me thinking about how to quickly, easily describe the difference between "training" and "professional development" lately, and I think this is it. What do you think?

Download the PDF version

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Part 3: Get your Computer (and Files) Ready for Summer (Download ALL Your Google Files)

Part 3 of the series "Get your Computer Ready For Summer" explores how to download all of your files from your Google Apps for Education (or Work) account. This lets you take all of your files with you when your GAFE account is ending. After you download your zip files, you can unzip them and upload them to a Gmail account or your new GAFE account.

Links you'll need:

http://bit.ly/Google-Takeout

http://bit.ly/FileStorageGoogle

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Get the Most out of Google Apps for Education with Synergyse Training (NOW FREE!) by Guest Blogger Michael Wallace

Guest Post by friEdTech Technical Guru Michael Wallace reposted from Mike's blog here.

Synergyse is Free!

Synergyse is now free. For those of you who are not familiar with Synergyse, it is a Chrome extension that can supplement Google training. There are hours of videos that cover basic tasks a person new to Google would want to learn about. They also cover a few in depth topics. At The Village School we purchased Synergyse for the entire staff. I did find the price a bit high, but now that it's free I would recommend it to any organization. There are two ways to install Synergyse, individually, or by Google OU,  I'll cover both.

The first way is to install it for your self. In Chrome go to the Chrome Web Store and search for Synergyse. You should see an extension that looks like this:

Click the "Add to Chrome Button" and you should get a pop up like this:

Click "Add Extension" and that's it. Now when you go to Gmail, Drive, or a host of other Google pages you should see the Synergyse logo next to your profile photo like this:

If you don't see it the first time refresh the page and it should load.

This is all great and dandy for one or two people, but what if you have hundreds or even thousands that you want to share this great tool with? If you're an admin for your Google Apps domain you can push it out to the entire organization or any Google OU you wish. You start at admin.google.com and click on Apps. Then you go to "Additional Google Services" -> "Chrome Management" -> "User Settings." On the left of this page it should have your organizational structure like this:

My structure here is simple, yours may be more complex. Select the OU you want to push Synergyse to. Press CTRL+f  (Command+f for Mac) and type force-installed in the find box.

You should see the "Force-Installed Apps and Extensions" setting.

Click on "Manage force-installed apps" and select "Chrome Web Store." Type Synergyse in the box then click add.

Click Save to close this window and make sure to click save again on the Chrome User Settings page.

That's all there is to it. The next time a user in the OU you pushed it to loads Gmail, Drive, or one of the other supported Google services they will see the Synergyse logo and can click on it to learn about working in the Google environment.

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Part 2: Get your Computer (and Files) Ready for Summer (Install Google Drive)

Part 2 of the series "Get your Computer Ready For Summer" explores the best way to upload ALL your files (or a whole bunch of files) over a longer period of time without having to drag and drop or babysit the process. We'll do this using the downloaded version of Google Drive which you'll install on your computer.

This video is for educators who need to back up their files so that their computers can be refreshed for the summer. Don't lose your valuable files, back up now to the cloud! This technique will also let you access your files from any computer or from your phone.

Links you'll need:

https://www.google.com/drive/download/

http://bit.ly/FileStorageGoogle

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Part 1: Get your Computer (and Files) Ready for Summer

Part 1 of the series "Get your Computer Ready For Summer" explores the fastest and easiest way to upload your files to Google Drive. If you have a whole lot of files, wait for Part 2, which will show how to install Google Drive and sync files from your computer's hard drive to the cloud. If this video helps you, then share it!

This video is for educators who need to back up their files so that their computers can be refreshed for the summer. Don't lose your valuable files, back up now to Google Drive! This technique will also let you access your files from any computer or from your phone.

Links you'll need:

http://drive.google.com

http://bit.ly/FileStorageGoogle

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Project Based Learning (PBL): How Do I Know if I'm Doing it Right?!?

This video seeks to answer the #1 question I get about Project Based Learning, and that is, "Am I Doing This Right?!?" The question speaks to the integrity of my favorite people, educators, and their desire to do the best they can by the students they teach. I hope this video helps you know where to focus your energy when you are trying to shift your teaching practices.

Special (and HUGE) thanks to my colleague Kristy Edgar for the amazing animations, graphics, and visuals for this video. She made a simple soundtrack come alive and be entertaining.

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Handy Google URLs from @friEdTechnology Amy

Until I started researching for this infographic, I didn't even know some of these handy URLs existed. Did you? Do you have one to add? Let me know in the comments!

Thanks,
Amy

Version 4...

Download various versions of this file here

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