A Google Apps Guidebook Published by Students

My friend Kern Kelley and his students at Nokomis High School in Newport, Maine have spent most of this year putting together The Google Apps Guidebook. Kern and his students, collectively referred to as the Tech Sherpas, created the book for teachers who are new to using Google Apps for Education. The guidebook takes teachers through the core features of Google Apps for Education including Google Drive, Docs, Slides, Sites, Forms, Sheets, and Classroom. They also share tips for learning and leading Google search lessons.

Kern has long been my go-to person for questions regarding advanced aspects of Google Sheets and Forms. I jumped to that section when I received a copy of the book. I quickly found a great tip about using case-sensitive data validation to password-protect Google Forms. I also found a handy tip on conditional formatting in Google Sheets that will help me automate some functions in future Google Sheets.

For visual learners, The Google Apps Guidebook offers plenty of visuals that illustrate key steps in formatting of Documents, Slides, Classroom, Sheets, and Slides.

Like any physical how-to book about technology, The Google Apps Guidebook does suffer a little bit from recent changes to Google Apps. For example, this week Google rolled-out new features in Forms and Classroom. Those new features won't be found in the book. Fortunately, the book has more than enough evergreen content, the search lesson for example, that the book is worth your investment.

Overall, The Google Apps Guidebook is a good publication for new Google Apps for Education users. It can be purchased in bulk for professional development purposes. Tell Kern that I sent you.

Mac Users Can Now Quickly Move From Evernote to OneNote

If you're one of the many people considering leaving Evernote after the latest round of "updates" made its free plan almost worthless, Microsoft has something for you. OneNote is a free tool that works on every platform. Microsoft has offered an Evernote to OneNote transition tool for Windows users for a while. Late last week Microsoft introduced a similar tool for Mac users. Evernote to OneNote transition tool for Mac lets you quickly move all of your Evernote content to OneNote.

OneNote offers a free web clipper tool that works in Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox. OneNote also lets you take notes online and offline, digitize printed material like business cards, and share your notes with other users.

If you're considering a switch to OneNote, take a look at some of Jeff Bradbury's tutorials on how to use it in your classroom.

Applications for Education
OneNote can be a great tool for students to use to organize research projects. The web clipper lets them save articles and other resources while conducting web searches. The notes features lets them create outlines for their projects and share those outlines with you for review.

Google Expeditions Will Soon Be Available to iPad Users

Last week Google released another round of updates to their Expeditions program. Expeditions is the virtual reality program that lets students experience immersive views of more than 200 places including the International Space Station, coral reefs, the Taj Mahal, and the White House.

Currently, to experience Expeditions you must have a Google Cardboard viewer and a supported Android device. According to last week's Google for Education blog post, soon you will be able to experience Expeditions on iPads. On your iPad you will be able to use full screen mode to view the Expeditions virtual field trips.

At the Google I/O conference the Expeditions product manager shared some of the early lessons learned by using Expeditions in classrooms. The video of that presentation is embedded below.

How to Impose Time Limits on Google Forms

Google Forms is a great tool for creating and delivering online quizzes and surveys. Like with any quiz or survey, you may find yourself needing to impose a time limit for responses. In the video embedded below I demonstrate how to impose a time limit on a Google Form.


You can find fifteen more Google Forms tutorials in the playlist embedded below.

Remember to Sleep - A Lesson for Students

As the new school year gets going there will be plenty of students and teachers who are adjusting to a new sleeping schedule. It can be tempting to stay up late to get "just one more thing" done. We're actually better off going to bed and getting up early than we are if stay up late trying to get something done. The Benefits of a Good Night's Sleep is a TED-Ed lesson that teaches us about the importance of sleeping on a steady schedule.

In The Benefits of a Good Night's Sleep, embedded below, we learn how sleep "resets" the brain. The video also explains how memories are formed and retained by our brains.