The option for students to vote a question up or down is useful in determining which questions seem the most important to your students.
Sunday, March 19, 2023
How to Add Q&A to Your Google Slides Presentations
The option for students to vote a question up or down is useful in determining which questions seem the most important to your students.
Tuesday, March 7, 2023
Changes are Coming to Your Favorite Google Workspace Tools
The updates coming to Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Drive are not going to change any of the functionality of those Google Workspace tools. The changes are mostly cosmetic and designed to streamline some of the most frequently used menus and processes in those Google Workspace tools. For example, the new clock icon that I already mentioned was added to make it easier to find and view the version history of a document or slideshow.
Applications for EducationNone of these updates are going to change the way that you or your students create, share, and edit Google Docs, Slides, or Sheets. That said, you should take note of them for when a student says something like "hey, Google Docs looks different."
Friday, March 3, 2023
How to Create Custom Google Slides Guidelines
Wednesday, February 15, 2023
Free Shapegrams from Tony Vincent!
Shapegrams are digital drawings creating by using the drawing tools, shapes, and fill tools available in Google Slides and Google Drawings. On his free Shapegrams page Tony offers directions and templates for making a house, a face, an ice cream cone, and a lion. But I noticed that once I started looking into the templates I got more ideas for making neat things with the Shapegrams model.
Watch this video for an overview of how to use the Shapegrams model to create a house. And if you like Dad Jokes, you're going to love Tony's introduction to the lesson.
Applications for Education
Students can use the Shapegrams model to create a set of slides to tell a story or to simply serve as the backdrop for a story. If you use the transitions and animations tools in Google Slides, you could make your Shapegrams move as a part of a simple animated story.
Saturday, February 4, 2023
10 Tools for Gathering Real-time Feedback From Students
Yo Teach! lets you create online backchannel spaces to facilitate discussions. To get started on Yo Teach! simply go to the site and name your room. You can get started by just doing those two steps, but I would recommend taking a another minute to scroll down the Yo Teach! site to activate the admin function, the password function, and to select "avoid search." The "avoid search" option will hide your room from search results so that people cannot find it without being given its direct URL. The password function lets you set a password that must be entered before students can participate in the chat. The admin features of Yo Teach! let you mute or remove students from a discussion, delete your room, and view statistic about the usage of your room. The admin function that reveals statistics will show the names of participants and how active they have been in your Yo Teach! room. Here's a video overview of Yo Teach!
ClassPoint. It's a great little tool that you can use to build interactive quizzes and polls into your PowerPoint presentations. You can also use it to annotate slides, create whiteboards on the fly, and share your annotations with students. In this short video I provide a demonstration of how ClassPoint works. The video shows a teacher's perspective and a student's perspective of how ClassPoint can be used in your classroom.
Ziplet is a service for gathering feedback from your students in a variety of ways. The simplest way is to create an exit ticket by using one of the dozens of pre-written questions provided by Ziplet. Ziplet does not require students to have accounts to respond to exit ticket questions. Students can simply enter an exit ticket code that you give to them before they answer the question. What Ziplet offers that is somewhat unique is the option to respond directly to individual students even when they are responding to a group survey. The purpose of that feature is to make it easy to ask follow-up questions or to give encouragement to students based on their responses to a question posed to the whole group. Here's a short video about how to use Ziplet.
Mentimeter is an audience response tool lets you create polls and quizzes for your audience to respond to during your presentations. Responses to open-ended poll questions can be displayed as a word cloud, but there isn't a true chat function in Mentimeter. You can create and display polls and quizzes from the Mentimeter website or you can use their PowerPoint Add-in to display your polls and quizzes from your slideshow. Your audience members can respond from their phones, tablets, or laptops.
Thursday, January 26, 2023
How to Find the Source for Images in Google Slides
Monday, January 23, 2023
Using Google Slides to Organize Research
Thursday, January 19, 2023
Design a Mobile App With Google Slides
Saturday, January 14, 2023
Dozens of Google Slides Tutorials
In my playlist of Google Slides tutorials you'll find everything from the basics of using Google Slides to using the image editing tools in Google Slides to adding audio to Google Slides and a whole lot of things in between. Some of the highlights of my Google Slides tutorials playlist are featured below.
How to Share Google Slides Through a QR CodeHow to Loop Videos in Google Slides
How to Create a Google Slides Template
How to Print Google Slides
How to Create Interactive Charts and Diagrams in Google Slides
Friday, January 13, 2023
How to Use Voice Typing in Google Slides
Video - How to Use Voice Typing in Google Slides
It's important to note that you still have to give verbal commands to start new lines and add punctuation when voice typing in Google Slides and Google Documents. A list of those commands is available here.
Thursday, January 12, 2023
An Important Tip for Using Image Search in Google Slides
In this new video I demonstrate how to find the image source and image attribution information when using the Explore function in Google Slides.
Video - An Important Tip for Using Image Search in Google Slides
The Explore function in Google Docs works in the same manner as it does in Google Slides. That's one of the five overlooked features of Google Docs that I demonstrated in this video.
Video - 5 Google Docs Features You Might Have Overlooked or Forgotten About
Thursday, December 15, 2022
Bookmarking With the Updated Google Keep Chrome Extension
In this new video I demonstrate how to use the updated version of the Google Keep Chrome extension to bookmark interesting websites. The updated version of the extension now makes you click "Create Note" after clicking on the extension. The previous version didn't require that extra step. Just like the previous version of the Keep Chrome extension, you can still add comments and labels to your bookmarks.
Video - Bookmarking With the Updated Google Keep Chrome Extension
Applications for Education
One of the things that I've always like about bookmarking websites with Google Keep is that you can easily access your bookmarks while working on a Google Document or Google Slides presentation. That makes it easy to find and insert citations for the references used in those documents and presentations.
Sunday, December 11, 2022
A New Google Slides Feature That Could Help Reduce Collaborator Confusion
The Follow feature in Google Slides enables collaborators to follow each other as they work on slides. To use the follow feature you simply have to click on the avatar (name) of your collaborator(s) as they're working. You'll then be able to see what they're doing in real-time. Of course, if your collaborator isn't doing anything, you won't see anything happen on the slides.
Applications for EducationThe new follow feature in Google Slides could help to avoid situations in which one student overwrites another's changes to a Google Slides presentation. The better solution to that problem is still to have students work together either in the same physical location or via Google Meet to discuss changes to slideshows they're developing.
Thursday, December 8, 2022
How to Create an Image Revealing Effect in Google Slides
After giving it more thought, I realized that you can create image revealing effects by using the transition and animation settings in Google Slides. Basically, you layer one image over another and then arrange the transitions and animations so that the top image disappears when you click on your slides. I recorded a short video about how to do that. The video is embedded below.
Video - How to Create an Image Revealing Effect in Google Slides
Applications for Education
As I mentioned in the video, using the image revealing effect could be a good way to create a series of quiz game slides. On each slide you can have a question for which the answer is hidden until you click on the slide to reveal the answer. That could be a fun way to host to an in-classroom review game that is kind of like Jeopardy.
Sunday, November 13, 2022
Creating and Conducting Polls in Google Slides and PowerPoint
Poll Everywhere is a polling tool that I've used off and on throughout the past decade. It's a great tool for gathering questions from an audience, polling an audience, and seeing word clouds of sentiment from an audience. People can respond to your poll questions from their laptops, tablets, and phones.
You can use Poll Everywhere as a stand-alone tool or you can integrate it into Google Slides. When you use it in Google Slides you can seamlessly transition from your regular presentation into a polling slide. In the following video I demonstrate how to use Poll Everywhere in Google Slides.
Poll Everywhere also offers a free PowerPoint add-in that you can use to create and conduct polls directly in your presentation. You can create polls that are multiple choice and open response. Results of the poll can be displayed in a variety of formats. Students can respond to your polls from their computers of phones anonymously or as logged-in users.
In the following video I demonstrate how to create and conduct a poll in PowerPoint. The video also shows you how students respond to a poll created using the Poll Everywhere PowerPoint add-in. The features shown in the video work with both free and paid Poll Everywhere accounts.
Friday, October 28, 2022
How to Adjust Playback Volume in Google Slides
In this brief video I demonstrate how to adjust the volume of the audio playback in a Google Slides presentation. In the video I also demonstrate how to hide the playback icon.
Wednesday, October 12, 2022
Grid Views and Timelines in Google Slides
It was during that same webinar last week that someone noticed I was using the grid view for my Google Slides and asked how I did that. There are two ways to access grid view in Google Slides. I demonstrate both methods in the short video that is embedded below.
Friday, August 12, 2022
How to Loop Videos in Google Slides

To make a video loop in Google Slides all you have to do is present your slides then right-click on the video. When you right-click on it you'll be able to choose an option to loop the video. Watch my short video to see how it's done.
Thursday, August 11, 2022
How to Play Google Slides on an Automatic Loop
In the short video that is embedded below I demonstrate how to play a set of Google Slides on an automatically advancing and repeating loop.
Wednesday, August 10, 2022
Google Docs, Slides, and Forms Accessibility
Google Documents
Google Documents has some built-in accessibility options that you should know how to enable. There are also some third-party Google Docs add-ons that can help you improve the accessibility of your documents.
In Google Documents there is a built-in voice typing capability. To find the voice typing tool simply open the “Tools” drop-down menu then select “Voice typing.” A microphone icon will appear in the left margin of your document. Click it to activate your microphone then start speaking and your words will appear on the page. You will have to speak directions like “question mark” to add punctuation and “new line” to start writing on a new line.
In the same “Tools” drop-down menu that contains the voice typing tool you will find the general accessibility settings menu. It is there that you can enable support for screen readers and screen magnifiers.
On the topic of screen readers, when you insert an image into a Google Document you can right-click on it to bring up the option to add alt text. Alt text is text that you add to an image to describe what is in the image. Screen readers will read the alt text.
Grackle is a Google Docs and Slides add-on that will check your documents and slides for accessibility compliance. When you run Grackle's accessibility checker it will identify places where your slide doesn't meet accessibility standards. It makes suggestions for improvement on the areas in which your document, slide, or sheet doesn't meet accessibility standards. Some of the suggestions can be implemented with just a click from the Grackle Add-on menu while others are changes that you will have to make yourself.
You can watch a demonstration of all of the Google Docs accessibility options mentioned above right here.
Google Slides
In Google Slides subtitles appear at the bottom of your screen when you are in full-screen presentation mode. You can enable subtitles by entering presentation mode then hovering your cursor over the lower-left corner of your slides to make the subtitles option appear. This short video provides a demonstration of how to enable subtitles in Google Slides.
Alt text, short for alternative text, is text that you can add to images and videos to describe what they are and or what they contain. Adding alt text can make your slideshows accessible to people who use screen readers. The alt text describes what is in a picture, chart, or video that is included in a slide. PowerPoint, Keynote, and Google Slides all provide options for adding alt text to your presentations.
To add alt text to images or videos in Google Slides simply right-click on the image or slide to which you need to add alt text. The menu that appears when you right-click on the image or video will include an alt text option where you can then write a title and description for the image or video. This video provides a demonstration of how to add alt text to Google Slides.
Mote is a Chrome extension that makes it easy for teachers and students to add voice recordings to Google Slides, Google Classroom, and Google Forms. It lets you add voice recordings not only to the questions in your Google Forms but also to the answer choices and feedback section in Google Forms. Mote lets you add voice recordings into the question line, into the answer choices (for multiple choice questions), and into the feedback section of the answer key that you create for quizzes in Google Forms. All of those things are demonstrated in this short video.