New Polling Feature Added to Google Classroom

Google Classroom has offered options for asking questions for quite a while. Today, Google released a new way to ask questions. You can now post multiple choice poll questions in your Google Classroom classrooms.

To post a poll in Google Classroom simply select the "add question" option in the lower-right corner of your Classroom screen, then select "multiple choice," and write your poll question. You can choose to let students see a summary of responses or you can hide the summary of responses.

Applications for Education
In their blog post announcing the new polling feature the Google for Education team suggested four ideas for using the polling feature in your classroom. Those four ideas are exit tickets, task completion monitoring, guiding discussions, and gather lesson feedback. Consult the Google for Education blog for more details on each use of polling.

Learn more about Google Classroom and Google Apps for Education at the Practical Ed Tech Chromebook Camp this summer in Portland, Maine.

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Riddle Me This - 7 TED-Ed Lessons Based on Riddles

Earlier this week I shared a playlist of TED-Ed lessons about how the human body works. In responses to that playlist Lisa Winer sent me the suggestion to check out a TED-Ed lesson that she contributed to creating. That lesson is the Locker Riddle. In that lesson students have to use mathematics and logical reasoning to open a locker containing an inheritance.

The Locker Riddle is one of seven TED-Ed lessons that are based on riddles. All of the lessons challenge students to logical reasoning and mathematics to solve the riddle. The playlist of riddle-based lessons is embedded below.

How to Make a Copy of a Public Google Drive File

Seesaw, a free digital portfolio platform, offers a handy instruction sheet to distribute to students to guide them in the process of joining your Seesaw classroom. That instruction sheet is available as a Google Document. If you want to edit it to better meet your needs and or share with your students to save in their Google Drive accounts, you will need to first save a copy of it in your Google Drive account. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to make a copy of a public Google Drive file.

Create QR Codes for Any Item in a Seesaw Digital Portfolio

Seesaw is a fantastic tool for creating digital portfolios and blogs with your students. With the Seesaw mobile apps and web app students can upload digital artifacts as well as save pictures of physical work they've done. Once uploaded to their digital portfolios students can annotate items with text, drawings, and voice comments.

Portfolios that students create in Seesaw can be shared with teachers, peers, and parents. Recently, Seesaw added a new option for sharing portfolio artifacts. Students can now share individual portfolio items by printing items or by generating QR codes for individual items. To generate a QR code tap the "..." button in the bottom-right corner of the screen and then select "print" or "get item QR code."

Applications for Education
As the end of the school year approaches you may be preparing your students to share examples of their best work during a spring open house event. (Those were always my favorite nights in elementary school). If your students have been using SeeSaw to create portfolios, the new individual item printing and QR code option could provide a convenient way for students to share their examples of their best work.