April 22

Go Guardian Refresh

As the school year gets into a groove, you may find a need for Go Guardian. For those of you already using it, enclosed are some troubleshooting tips.

For those of you new to Go Guardian, it is a web based Chromebook monitoring program so that you can monitor what students do on their Chromebooks. It can be a tool to guide your students to the right sites or direct them away from certain sites. With the basic monitoring, you are also able to take a snapshot of their screen, close their tabs and chat with them without leaving your desk (although walking around the room to gain proximity is always a great idea as well

If you haven't used it yet this year, setup is a breeze! Here are some terms you may need to know.

Classroom- this is the term for the groupings of students you put in either through Google Classroom, importing a spreadsheet or having students enroll using the class code (easiest way).
Session- when you start a session, you begin monitoring students in your class on the Chromebooks they are using. You can set up a schedule in advance to automatically run sessions at certain times or you can "start session" whenever you get out the Chromebooks.
Scene: Not only is this program good for monitoring what students do on their computers, it also has tools to help you lock students into the tabs/websites you choose and in doing so, blocking all other sites, called a scene. Scenes can be helpful during a testing period, research projects or as a general safety measure for every class. You can apply a scene to a classroom (for every time you run a session with that class) or just during a session (such as with testing or a research project). Scenes overview and block vs allow mode tutorial videos.

Troubleshooting Tips

If your schedule doesn't start and end when you want it to start or end.

Delete your schedule (by clicking the garbage can next to the day).
Recreate your schedule.
Wait 24 hours and check your reports to see if the schedule ran on time.

If you have an allowed website that students can't seem to access.

Have students go to that website (where they get a message saying their teacher doesn't want them on that site).
On your teacher dashboard, you will see a message to "allow site for the scene".

Google has some exciting new updates!

Practice sets in Classroom and the ability to schedule posts across classes!

Read below to find out more.

Introducing practice sets in Google Classroom

Check out an upcoming feature in Google Classroom to help educators make learning more personal, with interactive lessons and real time feedback. With practice sets, you'll be able to transform new or existing content into interactive assignments with autograding, insights, and built in hints and encouragement for students. If you're interested in participating in the beta, visit the blog post to get in touch with us!

Scheduled Posts across Multiple Classrooms are now available

Teachers can now schedule posts across multiple classes in Google Classroom, making it quicker and easier to assign classwork, saving time and simplifying class planning and management.

Google Drive in a Nutshell

For those of you stressing about all those documents and files saved on your desktop or server folder, don't fret! Save this email and go back to it when you have time to organize your digital life. In a few simple steps, you can have all your files stored in your Google Drive (which, by the way, has unlimited storage). Remember also, that you get to keep your laptop all year next year, so you have plenty of time to get yourself organized. Still need more? Sign up for a time with me to get help.

How to move files from my current computer and/or server folder to my Google Drive.

If you like to read directions:

If you would rather see a tutorial video:

Google Drive Uploading and Organizing (includes the following info)
How to upload to Google Drive from your desktop or server folder (0.00 min)
How to create, move and manage folders (2:13 min)
How to make folders stand out with colors or names (3:22 min)

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