Tech Tips for Teachers

Be sure to check out the Tech Tips for Students to tell your students.

Google Classroom

  • You can invite student123@lasdk8.org to your Google Classroom if you ever want to login to your Google Classroom as a student in order to do or see something in your Google Classroom as a student instead of as the teacher. I find this helpful, for example, to video tape for my students what they should see in Google Classroom as a student or to test certain features of Google Classroom (desktop or app version) as a student. The password for this test student is student4lasd. I was given this account by Bao at the DO office to use. Anyone can use it. One other potential benefit is that if we all add this student to our Google Classrooms, we as teachers can see each others Google Classrooms to get ideas from each other (for example, I can see what Kris is doing for his math Question of the Day in his Algebra class).

  • You can create a posting in Google Classroom (see screenshot below) that lists the times you will have regular Google Meets as office hours (if that is what you decide to do). The posting should include a link to the Google Meet as shown in the screenshot below. See the Tech Tip below under "Google Meet" for how to easily create a Google Meet (and get the link to it) for each class or for each type of class (i.e., I create one recurring Google Meet for all my Math CC8 classes and one for all my Algebra classes.)

Google Meet

  • In order for a Google Meet link to never expire, create it as a recurring Google Meet in a recurring Google Calendar event as shown in the screen shots shown in this google doc. Just click where the red arrows are shown until it creates a Google Meet automatically for you. Make sure you create your Google Calendar event so that it is *recurring* (repeats). Once you get the URL for the Google Meet from your Google Calendar event, make sure to add "https://" to the beginning of it when copying and pasting the link to your Google Classroom post so that it appears as a link that students can select in Google Classroom. See example of a Google Classroom post above that has the link to a Google Meet.

Recording Lessons

  • Open Broadcaster Software (www.obsproject.com) is a video recording tool that produces much smaller video MP4 files to upload than QuickTime Player.

  • Open Broadcaster Software is a free video recording tool that allows you to easily create a video that blends video feeds from your computer camera, an external webcam (for showing you writing down content on paper), and any window on your computer, such as a powerpoint presentation or browser window. I put a tutorial video on my google drive at https://drive.google.com/open?id=1eoF8PhPOBqBo3uaCojLyRjUtFrtbL7oW.​ Instead of playing the video in your browser, I recommend you download the video and play it on your computer using QuickTime Player so that you can make the video image bigger to make it easier to see the steps that I show in the video.

  • If you use a mac and are using OBS to capture audio from your desktop and not just from your microphone (say, a youtube video or audio that you play in a google slide/ppt presentation), I just installed an extension that allows you to do just that with good results. I followed the instructions at https://obsproject.com/forum/resources/os-x-capture-audio-with-ishowu-audio-capture.505/​ that include a video that shows you what to do.

Miscellaneous

  • (Not yet verified) If you have the premium version of Kahoot!​, you can assign quizzes as Challenges that kids can complete at their own pace (with a set deadline) and then the teacher gets a report. You can even play a game live via Google Meet or Zoom, but that might be a little crazy. [Thank you Riley for the tip]