A much requested feature has finally been added to New Quizzes in Canvas! 

One feature a lot of people missed from Classic Quizzes was the ability to have a text block between sections of your quiz. In New Quizzes, we've had the stimulus option, but you had to attach questions to it for it to show in the quiz, and sometimes people just wanted a place for info.

"Text Block" has finally arrived in New Quizzes! When you click on the + button in a New Quiz, Text Block has been added at the bottom of the options, as shown to the right. It gives you space to put in a title and your informational text and becomes its own thing wherever you place it in your quiz. 

You may have noticed a slight change in the side panel in Google Slides over the last week or so. What you see to the left here is the new side panel, and it has more quick access options than in the past. From the top:

1. Templates. Google expanded their slideshow template choices quite a bit this year, and you can access those by click on that top icon.

2. Building blocks. Here you will find easy to insert templates for elements such as agendas, lists, key statistic infographics, badges, and more. Just click on the one you like and personalize it.

3. Stock & Web. Find stickers, GIFs and stock images in this tab that you can use in your presentation. Even the Google Photos section in here contains only images that are labeled for "commercial use with modification". So, using this as your image source is another way to make sure you're not infringing on anyone's copyright! (Credit is still always appreciated, though - there is an option to visit the source so you can grab the photographer's name!)

4. Drive & Photos. Use this to pull in resources from your own Google Drive and your own Google Photos accounts.

5. Slides recording. Use this to create a screencast of your slideshow at your own pace. You will control the slideshow and you will talk over the slides. This will default to include an embedded webcam view of you unless you turn that off before you begin recording. You can see reminders on all the controls in the recording screen here. 

6. Speaker spotlight. If you do include your webcam view in your recording, you can choose from 14 different shapes for that video here. (See the second screenshot on the left for examples.)

Today's tip is one of Google's "experiments" - Whisk. Whisk is an AI image generator that allows you to use both words and images to prompt its generation of the image you want. (You can even "roll the dice" for a random generation.) 

On the right, you'll see what it did with my prompts. I started with just text input, not giving it any photographic guidance.

1. First I just added a subject and setting: "A grandma making tamales in a large, sunny Mexican kitchen with wide open patio doors." It gave me a relatively realistic looking photo.

2. Next, I added on a style: "A grandma making tamales in a large, sunny Mexican kitchen with wide open patio doors in a cartoon drawing style." It kept all my initial prompts and changed the style. 

3. Finally, in the text-input only version, I specified that I wanted a specific style of cartoon - the Simpsons. "A grandma making tamales in a large, sunny Mexican kitchen with wide open patio doors in the style of the Simpsons cartoon." It did pretty well! 

   • I will admit - this one took a few versions to not get one with her eyes closed and not with two pupils pointed in different directions. It's not perfect. 😅

4. Last, I give it my initial prompt, but then added a photo of a tropical patio under "Scene" and added Anime as my style. The final image on the right is that product. You can see the kitchen got a little lost, but the photo was definitely mimicked and the anime attempt is there!

You can change your prompt as much as you'd like. It will always generate two versions from each prompt you enter. Once you have images that you like, you can simply download them (they download as .png files) and use them wherever you need them! 

* You will see a button saying "animate" on the Whisk screen. That is not a feature we have access to currently. 

Some of you may already be familiar with Flippity, a website with a bunch of different educational tools linked to Google Sheets. Why do we love it?

• Tons of options - 32 options and growing!

• No log-in needed. Each tool is just a Google spreadsheet that you copy, personalize, and use as instructed for in-class activities.

• It's completely free! 

I highly encourage you to check the site out in general as you'll probably find multiple tools you can utilize in your classes.

But today, in honor of the Madness that is March, I'm going to highlight their Tournament Bracket maker.  You can take whatever category of people/events/items/ideas/etc. and create a bracket for your class.  

• When you click on Tournament Bracket, it will offer you a quick route (just enter your list of "contestants") or you can make a copy of their Google Sheets template and go from there.

  • You can enter anywhere from 4 to 64 items. If you enter an uneven number, the generator will automatically put byes in for you. 

  • Once your bracket is initially generated, at the top you will see the 5 icons on the left. 

    • Click the circle arrow to clear your bracket.

    • Click the 1/16 icon to seed your contenders so you have your biggest battles at the end. (You need to create your list from "strongest contender" at the top to "weakest contender" at the end to have this work correctly.)

    • Click the ?? icon to get a random reshuffling of the contenders. 

    • Click the printer icon to print a bracket with the choices made.

    • Click the disk/save icon to save the bracket at the point it is filled in. 

• With either input method, you will wind up with a link to share with your students. (Copy the URL from the generated bracket in the quick route, or copy the link given to you in the Google Sheet) When they click on that link, they will get an interactive bracket to fill out. 

  • Have students fill out their own bracket and print or save it for future reference.

  • You might have them use a Google Form for each round of voting.

  • You can use the print/save functions to create the next round based on the results of the voting so you can come back to it.

There are tons of ideas out there about how to use brackets in class, but here are a few ideas:

• Ranking best presidents/world leaders

• Ranking historical events based on importance or lasting effects

• Ranking scientific discoveries

• Ranking authors or artists based on their work

• Voting on the best pop songs out of France, Germany, etc.

Canvas continues to update and streamline its migration functions to move Classic Quizzes to New Quizzes. The most recent change now lets you convert Question Banks from a classic quiz to Item Banks in a new quiz right in the import process, no extra steps needed.

If you import a classic quiz from a previous course and click on the "Convert content to New Quizzes" option, this will now convert everything to the new format, not just the questions. In the past, if you were using a random pull of questions from a question bank, you'd be left with an unlinked/unupdated resource. Now, it will convert the question bank as well, leaving the randomized section of the quiz intact.

As an example, I added an old question bank to a classic quiz. The first screenshot to the right shows the original classic bank, after I had added those questions to a question group on the Classic Quiz. I set it to randomly pull 8 of the 16 questions, valued at one point each.

When I imported that quiz into another course, I clicked on the Convert content to New Quizzes option. You can click the info button there for their messaging, but basically it says that it now converts all parts of the quiz.

Once the quiz imported as a New Quiz, that question bank now shows as an Item Bank, accessible for New Quizzes, in the current course. The grouping with it pulling 8 random questions from the bank at one point each also came through to the quiz. 

The great last frontier on this is that Classic Quizzes had basically "text headers" that some people used as sections headers to divide the quiz visually. Currently, it turns that text header into a stimulus, but the following questions in the classic quiz are not automatically added to that stimulus. (They are added to the quiz!) So, you would need to drag and drop those into the stimulus, which will then make that text header and any instructions held in it visible to students. It is fortunately just a drop and drag process, and you can set the stimulus to display the questions to the right of the stimulus or under the stimulus. An added benefit of stimulus over text header is that those instructions - or graphic, or media, or whatever you include - will remain visible to students throughout the questions that are attached to it, so they won't have to scroll back and forth incessantly.  The last screenshot on the right shows a version of this where the stimulus contains a video that needs to be watched while answering the questions. The video stays put while the questions are scrollable.

As always, please let me know if you have any questions about quiz conversion!

In the fall of 2023, Google added a variety of ways to customize your Chrome. (Tech tip on that here.) Recently, they added another way to customize, creating a way to add simple shortcuts to your Chrome toolbar to do a variety of tasks. 

To customize the toolbar, open a new tab and click on the pencil icon in the lower right. (If you hover over it, you will see "Customize this page".)

Scroll down past the design elements and click on the Toolbar option. You will see options for "Navigation", "Your chrome", and "Tools and actions". We'll start with the last one, as there may be some Chrome tools here that are new to some.

Tools and actions:

• Print - a one-click way to print whatever page you're on.

• Search with Google Lens - one click to search Google for something you're seeing on that page. 

  • If you haven't played with Google Lens yet, it's pretty fun. If you're looking at a page and there's a photo and you can't quite place the background or an element, just use Google Lens to highlight the object you want to search for, and it will use the photo to search. It also works on your phone so you can take a photo of something you want to identify. (I have used this to figure out who manufactured some antiques I got from an aunt and from what time period they came.)

• Translate - one click to translate the whole page. (Please don't tell our world language students about this! 😂)

• Create QR code - with this button Google will create a QR code for the page you're on that can be copied/pasted and downloaded.

• Reading mode - you can toggle into reading mode easily when you want to remove all the ads/distractors from a page you're trying to read.

• Copy link - a button to take the relatively simple task of highlighting and copying the link for the page you're on down to one click. 

• Send to your devices - use this if you have other devices where you are signed into the same account in Chrome. You'll be able to pick the page up on that other device.

• Task manager - this brings up a window of all your tabs, extensions, etc. Similar to the Task Manager that shows open programs in Windows.

• Developer tools - you have fun with this if it's your thing. 😃 

You will also have the ability to toggle on buttons the following features:

Navigation:

• Home button (Takes you back to the new tab/Google search screen without opening a new tab)

• Page forward button (really only useful if you regularly toggle back and forth in a series of pages.)

• New Incognito window

Your chrome:

• Google Password Manager (A much quicker way to see and change the passwords you've saved.)

• Payment methods (Add, delete or edit saved credit cards here. I'd recommend you make sure this is empty on your school account and only use it with your personal address.)

• Addresses and more (This is where Google pulls those autofills from.)

• Bookmarks

• Reading list (Save pages you want to come back to here.)

• History

• Delete browsing data (One click to do this instead of searching the settings to find the option.)

And you can rearrange those icons on your tool bar by dragging and dropping the icons on the toolbar!

Canva has added a function that allows you to insert one question quizzes (where there is a correct answer) and polls into your designs. It works across all design types except "docs" and "websites". But it does work in presentations and all other graphic designs. This may be a good way to have students do something at home that you did in class when they are absent. I wouldn't use this for an actual grade, but it would be good for formative assessment data gathering, as I will explain later how to see the responses. It could also be a good way to post a simple poll to gather opinions from any group you are wanting to hear from!

To find these, once you're in a design, click on the Elements icon to the left of your design, and find the section labeled "Polls & Quizzes". Click "See all" to see the options. The main difference is design/color, as they are all for one question. Click on any to add it to your design.

Once you've added a question to your design and have it selected (by clicking on it), you will see a tool bar at the top. Choose "Edit" to change the question and response options (you can have up to 10 options), and also to set the correct answer if you have a quiz question. 

There are a couple of ways you can give your students/people access to interact with these.

1. Share the Public View link with them. (Click on Share --> Public view link --> Create public view link) You can link this anywhere you normally distribute digital material. They will be able to access the design in a new window and interact with any polls or questions.

2. Embed your design. (Click on Share --> See all --> Embed --> Make embed public) Copy the HTML embed code (not the Smart code) and insert it into a Canvas page (or other site) like you do any embed code. You can see to the right my embed in Canvas of a one question poll that I created as a "Postcard" in Canva.

   • As long as you only put this embed code into a password-protected space like Canvas, you don't need to worry about the fact that it is public access. Keep in mind that if you put it on an open website, such as the school website, you'd be opening it up to anyone to respond to. This is not a security issue, but could make your results invalid if you're trying to collect formative data.

Once people have interacted with your question, choose "Responses" in your original design to see who has answered and what they answered. In the responses window, you will see an overall breakdown of submitted responses, along with individual responses if the respondents are logged-in to their Canva account. 

• When I was playing with this in my AHS Chrome profile, it recorded my response with my name. When I looked at it in a different Chrome profile, it tried to have me login through Launchpad when I first added the question. As I didn't log in, it recorded my response as Anonymous.

There is also an option to download the responses as a CSV file if you want to use the data.

For the first time in quite a while, Google has added a fully new product to its Google Suite. When you click on "New" in your Google Drive, you will now the see the addition of "Google Vids", which is Google's new video creator/editor product. You can create videos up to 10 minutes long without any extra software. Creators can collaborate on the video creation, and the finished videos can be shared easily. Below you will find a basic tutorial on this new feature, which is available to staff and students. 

When you create a new Google Vid, the screen you will first see offers templates, a record button and an upload button. You can have all of these things in the same video - this is just your initial starting point.

• Choose a template if you'd like to have the aesthetics of your video in place for you already. There are many to choose from.

  • You can also choose to add elements from a template after you've begun to edit a video with a recording or media you already had.

• Choose Record if you'd like to make a webcam recording directly into your Google Vid. You can also share your screen while recording.

• Choose Upload if you already have video clips that you want to add and edit.

If you choose a template, you will see that it offers you various "slides" to put into your project. In a lot of ways, you will build your video like you're building a slide deck. But, once you click play on your video, it will do just that. There is no ability to "click through" the video - it launches and plays through. One difference from other video platforms is that there is no need to "publish" the video like in other editing software if you just plan to play it yourself.. It just automatically launches as a video if you use the Play button at the top. You will need to export it as an MP4 to share the finished video, which I explain below.

Once you're in a video editing screen, on the right you will see a vertical tool bar. These icons, from top to bottom, are:

• Templates - Click this to access the template you're currently using or to access others. You can use elements from more than one template in a Vid!

• Text - Click this to add a caption/title/text to your video.

• Shapes - Click this to add shapes and lines to your video.

• Stock Media - Click this for videos, images, stickers, GIFs, music and sound effects. Once you click on that you will get a search bar so you can find just what your video needs. 

• My Media - Click this to access images and videos stored in your Google Drive and Google Photos.

• Recording - Click this to record video, your screen and/or audio. See the screen shot to the left of your four options.

• Scripts - Click this to type out your script right into a text box and to record your own voice over that slide. 

Once you have added elements, you can clip videos and adjust timing in the timeline at the bottom, you can change captions and any other elements on the slide - the video is fully customizable and you can personalize as much or as little as you want. 

To play your own video, as mentioned above, you can simply click play. To share your video project with others so they can collaborate on it, you will share it just as you do any other Google file, by clicking on the Share button and changin those settings. To share the finished video for others to watch, you will click on the arrow next to the lock/Share button, where you will see two options: Copy link and Export to Drive. The Copy Link is the same as sharing the project - it will take viewers to the raw video edit, not the finished video. To send the finished video, you will click on Export to Drive, and share the mp4 file from there as you would any other file stored in your Google Drive. There is also an option in the File menu to Download as MP4 - this will download an actual video file to your computer that can be used as needed, as opposed to just having a Google share URL. 

I recommend going in and playing around - as most of us are so used to Google products, it is quite intuitive. If you have specific questions, let me know!

Info on Google Vids from Google Workspace Learning Center

A couple of recent updates in Google aren't exactly earth shattering, but they might save you a few minutes, and we'll take all the saved time we can get these days!

First, an option was added to Google Slides for starting a show with the Presenter view. Presenter view has been an option for a long time (Tech tip from April 2023), but when you started it the original way (the way in the maroon box to the right), you then had to move windows around to get the presentation onto the screen that would be showing to the audience and to get your presenter view on a screen that only you can see. The new version (in the green box), gives you the option to tell Google where to put those windows automatically.

• When you click on "Presentation display options", you will see the pop-up to the right.

• Enable Presenter view so you get both of those views.

  • You do need to have your laptop open and docked to get that option, as otherwise it won't recognize a second display.

• Click on Full screen so that the view the audience has doesn't have the rest of the Chrome window around it.

• Choose which display you want the slideshow on. The icons should make it clear which is the projected screen and which is your laptop.

• Click slideshow, and Google will automatically open the full-screen slideshow and presenter views on the different screens.

The second update is that Google has added a "Citation" function under the tools menu in Google Docs. It will both create citations and it can add the in-text citations where you want them. 

• Once you have a source that you want to cite, go into your Google Doc, click on Tools, and choose "Citations". This will open a pop-out panel on the right.

• Choose which version of citation you want (MLA, APA or the ever mysterious Chicago) from the drop-down menu.

• Click on "+Add citation source" and choose the source type and how you accessed it from the drop-down menus. There is a decent list of source types, as seen to the right. 

• Add your URL, ISBN number or manually add the necessary info, and click "Continue".

  • You will have a chance here to add any extra info Google didn't pull or change anything that doesn't look quite right. 

  • Click on "Add Citation Source" and Google will add the source to your list of resources.

    • What is really nice here is that it just creates a resource list for you to start, organizing the list as you add. You don't need to worry about alphabetizing and moving things around on a Works cited page. You can just add resources as you use them and Google takes care of the rest.

• Once you have all of the resources in your list, place your cursor in your document where you want the Works Cited/References list, and click on the Insert References button at the bottom of the right panel. It will automatically create the entire works cited in the format you have chosen at that point in your document. 

  • Also, if you realize you are using the wrong citation format, just change that in the drop down and click "Insert References" again. It will insert the same info in the newly selected format.

• If you want to insert an in-text citation, place your cursor where you need the citation in your document. Hover over the correct resource on the right and click on the "Cite" button that pops up. 

  • One thing to note - if you click on the three dot menu next to that, you'll see options to edit and delete. Those edit and delete the resource, not the citation you just inserted. Just edit or delete that in the document itself. 

There are a ton of good videos/shows/movies out there that add to the educational experience and help us bring topics to life for students. Unfortunately, not all of them can be showed in class legally through the services we use every day in our homes. 

There is an exemption to the U.S. Copyright Law that permits the use of streaming services and other performance displays in the course of face-to-face teaching activities in a nonprofit educational institution, classroom, or similar place devoted to instruction. In other words, you can show your students a movie in your classroom as long as it has an educational purpose, according to the law. That said, the terms and conditions for some streaming services indicate they are for "individual use" only, and supersede fair use. (For the record, that was Donna's concise wording of this idea!) The following are just a few of the services that have specifically noted in their terms of use that your account is for personal use only:

• Netflix

• Peacock

• Hulu

• HBO Max

• Amazon Prime Video

So how do we show videos in class? Fortunately, we have a couple of subscriptions at Arrowhead that are available to everyone to use. The first is SWANK, which has a large library of movies and TV shows that we can request to have licensed to show in class. I wrote a more descriptive tech tip on it last year. To take a look at SWANK, go in through Launchpad to the Online Databases folder, where you will find the SWANK app.

For more academic/news based videos, we also have Academic Video Online (also found in the Online Databases folder in Launchpad). This service includes videos from sources like PBS, BBC, 60 Minutes, National Geographic, BroadwayHD, The History Channel, and more.

A third option is SIMA (Social Impact Media Awards) Academy, which was something we first acquired for the Global Academy. There are lots of award-winning social impact documentaries in this platform. To sign up, go to SIMAACADEMY.COM/CHECKOUT and enter this code: SIMA4AUDS     

If you have questions on showing a video in class or for a student group, please contact me or Donna!

One of the biggest features that Canva presentations have been missing is the ability to have content on a slide come in with a click (as it does in Google Slides). And as of this fall, this function is now available!

In order to "animate" a text box, do the following:

• Select the text box by clicking on it.

• Click on Animate in the tool bar that pops up.

• In the next pop-up, make sure the "Text" tab is selected (or "Element" if you are animating a graphic).

• Choose what type of animation you'd like from the list at the bottom.

• Toggle on "Appear on click". 

The one thing Google has that Canva still doesn't is the ability to have text within a single textbox come in paragraph by paragraph/bullet point by bullet point as you click. To get this effect in Canva, you will need to have each bullet point or paragraph as a separate text box. But, fortunately, there is an easy way to duplicate text in Canva quickly.

• Create a textbox and format it in the way you want your text to appear.

• Select the textbox (you may need to click out and then click back on it so you don't have the cursor anymore) and press ctrl+d.

• Take that new textbox and place it where you want it to be in relation to the first.

• Now press ctrl+d again on that textbox and your new textbox will appear at the same position/distance from the duplicated text. 

• Press ctrl+d as many times as you need and all textboxes will be aligned without any further work.

Welcome back to Tech Tip Tuesdays! For those of you who are new here, each Tuesday I will send out a tip, a new tool, or an update on education technology. This is year #3, and the first two years are still available on the site. But for now, here are direct links!  2023-24   2022-23

First off this year, we're taking a look at some Canvas updates.

One thing that some of you have already noticed is that if you share something with a colleague via the "Send to" function, it shows up in their Shared Content but it isn't importing into their course. This is a known issue that the Canvas engineers are investigating. I have been added to the list of people that have the issue so I will hear from them as they make progress on this problem. I will update you all as soon as I know something!

Many of this summer's changes are mainly cosmetic. For example, some buttons have moved or been updated. They've added a line between posts in a Discussion to make it easier to visually differentiate. The assign to section in Assignments and Quizzes is slightly different and the various date settings are more separated. One change that is both cosmetic and functional is that the Rich Content Editor will be available when you're typing comments in Speedgrader. In the past, you only had basic text. Now, you will be able to use the following things in your comments: Bold, Italic, Underline, Font color, Insert Hyperlink, and Bullets. This feature is currently being tested in the Beta environment and will hopefully be available to everyone soon.

The biggest change that started over the summer is a major update to rubrics in Canvas. There will finally be some features added that I have been waiting for a LONG time. It is in the production phase right now, but once it becomes available to users, we will have the following abilities:

• Sorting rubrics

• Duplicating rubrics

• Archiving rubrics

• Different visual alignment options when grading (the current "traditional" view, and horizontal and vertical views that are a side tray instead of full screen).

• Much more user friendly criterion input and building options than are currently available

Once this is available to us, I will do a full tech tip on that!