How to Use Doctopus and Goobric to Grade Google Classroom Assignments

On Sunday afternoon I had one of the "rabbit holes of the Internet" adventures that has me jumping from one link to another. It started by reading about these Google Classroom Hacks that Peter Vogel shared and ended with watching two videos about using Doctopus and Goobric to grade Google Classroom assignments. Doctopus and Goobric are Google Sheets Add-ons. In the videos embedded below Justin Brink demonstrates how to use Doctopus and Goobric with Google Classroom.

Sleep or Cram? - The Benefits of a Good Night's Sleep

I've always been a fan of going to bed and getting up early rather than staying up late to cram for a test or put some finishing touches on a project. Students don't always believe that getting up early is a better option than staying up late. A new TED-Ed lesson titled The Benefits of a Good Night's Sleep might convince them to go to bed. In the lesson, embedded below, we learn how sleep "resets" the brain. The video also explains how memories are formed and retained by our brains.

Find and Cite Creative Commons Images in Edmodo

Photos for Class is a free Creative Commons image search engine that was launched in late November. The service is designed to help students find and accurately cite images. Images downloaded through Photos for Class have proper attributions automatically added to them. This service is now available in Edmodo too.

Photos for Class can be found in the Edmodo app store. The app is free. You can install Photos for Class Edmodo app with just a couple of clicks. Once installed all of your students can start searching for and downloading Creative Commons licensed images.

Applications for Education
I always advocate for students to use their own pictures or public domain pictures in their projects. For those times when appropriate public domain images cannot be found and taking their own pictures isn't practical, a search for Creative Commons-licensed images through a tool like Photos for Class is a good tool for students to use.

Disclosure: Photos for Class is owned by Storyboard That. Storyboard That is an advertiser on FreeTech4Teachers.com

How to Use Strike-Through Formatting in Google Documents

Yesterday, someone asked me if it was possible to use strike-through formatting in Google Documents. The answer is yes. I'm sure that the person who asked me yesterday isn't the only one who has wondered how to use strike-through formatting in Google Documents. The option for strike-through formatting is found in the "Format" drop-down menu in Google Documents. Strike-through can be applied to any of the fonts in the Google Documents font menu. In the video embedded below I provide a short demonstration of how to access and use strike-through formatting in Google Documents.


This video has been added to my playlist of more than 30 Google apps tutorials.

ReadWorks Now Offers Poems and Question Sets for K-12 Classrooms

ReadWorks is a free service that I have been recommending for about a year now. It provides teachers with hundreds of lesson plans and more than two thousand reading non-fiction and fiction passages aligned to Common Core standards. Recently, ReadWorks expanded again. The latest expansion includes poems and question sets. The collection is organized by grade level. In the collection you will find poems by Frost, Dickinson, Stevenson, and other notable poets.

Applications for Education
One of the aspects of ReadWorks that I like is that lexile scores are listed for each article along with grade levels and Common Core standards. So if Common Core standards are not relevant to your situation, ReadWorks still makes it easy to find fiction and non-fiction articles that are appropriate for your students.

With a free ReadWorks account you can search for lessons and reading passages by grade level, lexile score, reading skill, subject area, and text type (fiction or non-fiction). In your ReadWorks account you can create digital binders of the lesson plans and reading passages that you want to use.