October 7, 2025 - "Learning Guide" in Notebook LM

A new chat feature has been added to Notebook LM that changes the chatbot from an answer giving "expert" to a "learning guide" who will help students think through the important points of a topic. This could be something you have students use in a Notebook that you've designed for them to use as a study tool.

To create this study resource for a class:

Create a new Notebook and load in the sources that are relevant to your topic. (Instructions for using Notebook LM in general can be found here.)
Click on the Controls icon in the Chat box in the center of the Notebook screen.
Under "Define your conversational style", click on Learning Guide.
- For the record, you can also customize how you want to the Chatbot to interact with students by choosing "Custom". You can tell it at what level or in what style you want the chatbot to respond, what role it should play, etc. Examples given when you click into Custom include "respond at a PhD student level" and "pretend to be a role-playing game host".
You can also choose how long you want the responses to be.
I recommend using your chatbot as though you were a student to see how it responds so you can tweak it before sharing with students.
Once you have it set how you would like you can click on Share in the upper right corner and change the share settings how you would share any other Google file. For now, you will share that link with students however you normally share links.
- Some nice changes are coming in this area down the road. Keep your eyes on the tech tips!

Don't forget - students will also still have the option to use all the other features on the right side of the notebook screen: Audio overview, Video overview, Mind map, Reports, Flashcards, and Quiz!

September 30, 2025 - Securly Classroom

QUICK TROUBLESHOOTING TIPS:

If you have students that aren’t showing up as being online, even though you can see they are - have them restart their Chromebooks.
- Pro tip - before any online assessment where you want to be able to see everyone in Classroom, have the whole class restart before having them start the assessment. This will guarantee that they’ve got the most updated settings for Chrome and for the Chromebook operating system.
If you have not renamed your classes in Canvas, you may want to do that as otherwise you will see the same Skyward name for all years of classes. Once you know which classes are your current classes, you can "pin" them to the top of your Classes dashboard.

GENERAL REMINDERS:

Remember to deselect any students in your class that are not in class during your session. If you don’t and they are elsewhere trying to use their computer, it will take their computer over and not allow them to work. So, be sure you’re not taking control from afar!
Don’t be afraid to explore! You will see as you use the program that there are many options to enable and disable to customize how you use Securly Classroom. Click around!
But, don’t forget that you cannot run a “just for fun” session to do that clicking around. Any session you start will take over their Chromebooks wherever they may be.
Also - be sure you’re either making sure to close the session when you’re done OR set it to end after a certain period of time/at a certain time if you think you’ll forget. If you don’t release a class session, those students will not be able to use their Chromebooks properly in their subsequent classes.

WEB LINKS / BLOCKING PLANS:

Consider your class/material and choose which makes more sense for you and what you’re trying to accomplish.
- If you have a specific set of websites that your students need to be able to access for an assignment/project, create a list of those. For example, in our Adobe class, they would need access to Adobe, a couple of sites for free HD photos, etc.
  - Before your class, click on “Web Links” on the left side of your dashboard.
  - Click on “Add collection” in the upper right corner.
  - Name your collection and describe it (this is for your information when you go back to use it again) and then add the links you want to keep your class in on the right.
  - Once you’re in class, you’d click on the “site lock” icon at the top (a chain with a padlock), and choose the collection you want to have them work within.
- If you have a particular site/group of sites that you DON’T want them to access, you can also create a blocking plan. This will allow kids to get to nearly anything, except the sites you block.
  - Before your class, click on “Blocking plans” on the left side of your dashboard.
  - Click on “Add blocking plan” in the upper right corner.
  - Give the blocking plan a name and description and then add any sites or apps that you want to block.
  - Once you’re in a class, click next to where it says “Blocking plan” and choose the one you have created.

SUPER QUICK CANVAS ASSESSMENT TRICK:

If you are giving an assessment in Canvas and the students do not need to be able to move elsewhere online after they finish that assessment, you can push that Canvas assessment from the Push URL menu to them all at the same time and they will not be able to access any other sites until you release that lock.
You might use this if students will be moving to paper based work after they finish.

NEED THEIR ATTENTION QUICKLY?:

If your students are all working on their screens and you need to grab the class’s attention for something, simply click on the Screen lock icon (screen with lock - first icon on the left). That will basically block anything they’re looking at and show them a message (you can set what it will say). You can also set it to auto release after a minute or two if you just want to send a message and don’t need their attention.

GENERAL INFO:

Check out Securly’s “Cheat sheet” for a basic explanation of what you’ll see when you’re in Securly Classroom.

September 23, 2025 - Web Content Accessibility

You may be hearing more these days about "Web Content Accessibility". In a nutshell, to comply with web content accessbility guidelines, you want to make sure any content that you have online/on a screen can be perceived, understood, navigated and interacted with by everyone, including people with disabilities.

One of the first places that you can start making sure your content is accessible is through a couple of "checkers" that will look at what you have and tell you where there might be accessibility issues. If you are a bare bones, large font, black and white type designer, you will be fine. 😊 If you love a good seasonal color palette, you may want to check some of those out. (Hi, it's me. I fit in this group!)

One very simple tool is a color contrast analyzer provided by Adobe. You simply put in the hex code for your text color and your background color, and it will tell you whether you pass the accessiblity test for regular text size, large text size, and graphics. The two colors on the left are just an example from a doc I have for myself. You can see the results it gave based on the hues below the screenshot of the color hex codes.

If you are using Canva for graphics and presentations, they now have a built-in Accessibility menu under the File menu in any design.

"Check design accessibility" will look at your typography (font size), color contrast and alternative text. A green check mark means it passes. If there are issues, it will list them out for you.
- "Alternative text" is text added to images that is not visible in its graphic form, but will be read by a screen reader to help someone with a visual impairment.
"Reduce motion" will remove distracting animations and motion transitions from presentations when enabled.
"Navigate by layer order" would again relate to the alternative text and in what order it would be read by a screen reader.
These last two would be most useful if you know you have a visually impaired student in your class.

September 16, 2025 - Removing students in Canvas

Thank you again to everybody for all your patience and help today. I hope you all had a productive day!

Today's tech tip is a bit of a cheat on my end due to the busy day. 😄 But, I think it's timely as schedule changes are officially over! In case you have any kids that are still in your Canvas course that are no longer in your class, do the following to remove them:

Click on People in the left-hand navigation bar.
Find the student for whom you want to conclude the enrollment.
Click on the three dots on the far right and click User Details.
Click on More User Details.
Click on Conclude this Enrollment and confirm.

September 9, 2025 - New year, New updates

Welcome back! Today's tech tip is less tip and more just a Canvas update. I promise to be more exciting after next week's testing day. 😄

Canvas:

Two new integrations are available to everyone this year: Canva and WeVIdeo. Basically this means you can assign projects to your students that they would complete with those platforms, right in Canvas. Training opportunities to come!
It's not you, it's Speedgrader. Many of you may have noticed that when you try to switch between sections in a course in Speedgrader, it instead goes from showing you one section to showing you multiple. The Canvas discussion boards are flooded with complaints about this. And Canvas says they're working on "a fix". Unfortunately, that means that for now we have to deal with some extra clicks. Here is what's happening:
- When you go to Speedgrader from the gradebook view, it will take on the same filters. So, if you're only looking at your 2nd block, only your second block will initially show in Speedgrader. If you're looking at all of your sections, they will all show. Etc.
- Once you're in Speedgrader and go to where you'd normally switch sections, imagine there is an invisible set of checkboxes. When you click on a different section, instead of switching to it like it always has, it now activates/deactivates it.
  - Which wouldn't be so bad if you could activate and deactive sections all at once. When you click on a new section, it adds it and closes that dropdown. You then have to open it again to deactivate the original section to just get the new section you want to view.
- Yes, IT IS VERY ANNOYING. 🤪
- You can see which sections you are viewing in that dropdown because those that are activated are bolded while those that aren't active are not bolded.
- If you deactivate all sections, it defaults back to viewing all sections.
- I promise to keep you posted on any changes to this.
In good news, they did add more functionality to accommodations and modifications, including the much desired ability to add extra time to a quiz while the student is taking it. Here is a doc for you with instructions for setting accommodations permanently for a student, how to add time to an attempt in progress, and how to let a student close an attempt and pick it back up in the same spot later on.
As we start a new year, you may get requests from parents for a pairing code in Canvas. Instructions to generate one are here.

And in case you missed it in the body of the email, here is the link to my survey I'd really appreciate you all filling out. I'd love to dive into more hands on tech training for you and more integrations with your students this year. Thank you in advance!

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