How to Measure Distances in Google Maps

A couple of weeks ago in the Practical Ed Tech newsletter I featured ten ways to use Google Earth in your classroom for more than just social studies lessons. Many of the ideas in that list can also be applied to the web browser version Google Maps. A good example of that is found in Tom Barrett's Maths Maps. Maths Maps is series of activities designed to help elementary school students develop an understanding of distance, scale, and units of measurement. To complete the activities students have to use the measuring tool in Google Maps. In the following video I demonstrate how to measure distances in the current browser version of Google Maps.

7 Helpful and Convenient Gmail Settings You Might Be Overlooking

Last week I published a post about using Gmail's confidential mode and a post about automatically forwarding G Suite email to a personal Gmail account. Those posts led to "I didn't know you could do that" comments from a few readers. So to continue with that theme, here are some other helpful Gmail (and G Suite for Edu mail) settings that you might be overlooking.

Canned Responses
Do you find yourself answering the same question over and over again? Or sending the same type of message many times a week or day? If so, you need to take advantage of the canned responses option in Gmail. My tutorial on how to use it is included below.



Smart Replies
Smart Replies are similar to canned responses in that they can help you reply to messages a bit quicker with a bit less typing. Smart Replies predict what you want to type in response to a message. If the prediction is correct, simply tap the tab button on your keyboard to insert the predicted text. My video on how to use Smart Replies is embedded below.



Block or Filter Senders
Do you want to make sure that you save all of the staff meeting notes that your principal sends out? Want a better way to sort all of those sales emails from Target? Would you like to create a special place for "helpful" emails from your mother-in-law? If you said "yes" to any of these questions, you should learn how to create filters and or block incoming messages. In the following video I demonstrate how to do that.



Undo Send
Have you ever hit "send" just a moment too soon? If so, you should enable the option to undo sent messages. How to do that is explained in the video below.



Offline Access
Can't live without 24/7, 365 access to your inbox? You can make your Gmail messages available offline. (By the way, it is possible to live without 24/7, 365 inbox access).



Contact Groups
Don't manually enter the email addresses of all of the people to whom you need to send the same message. Create a contact group and send the message to everyone in that group with just a couple of clicks.



Dictate Your Email Messages
Email Pro Dictation is a free Chrome extension that you can use to dictate messages. It's easy to install and use on your Windows, Mac, or Chrome OS laptop.