Three Common Google Forms Mistakes - And How to Avoid Them

I've been helping teachers create quizzes with Google Forms for well over a decade. And over that time there's a pattern to the Google Forms problems that teachers bring to me. My completely unscientific data on this tells me that about 90% of all problems with Google Forms quizzes come down to one of three issues. 

The most common mistakes I see teachers make when creating quizzes with Google Forms are:

• Releasing answers right away. 
• That's a problem if you don't want students to know the answers before the whole class has had a chance to complete the quiz. 
  
  
• Forgetting to assign point values. 
• This is an annoying issue because then you have to manually update scores. 
  
  
• Forgetting to collect student information. 
• This can be avoided by using Google Classroom. 

Watch this short video to learn how to avoid these common Google Forms mistakes. 

Bonus! Watch to the end of the video to learn how to avoid a common "bonus question" mistake in Google Forms.

A New Academic Feature in YouTube Studio

Yesterday morning I uploaded a new video to my YouTube account and noticed a new set of options that appeared when I selected the education category. Now when you upload a video to your YouTube account and select the education category you can also add additional subcategory labels to your video. Those options include academic system (by country), grade level, and content standards. If you haven't seen these new options, watch this short video that I made about them. 


Applications for Education
It's too early to tell, but I hope that these new categorization options for academic videos on YouTube will make it easier for students and teachers to locate helpful academic videos.

Ten Overlooked Google Docs Features for Students and Teachers

As Google Docs has improved and added more features over the years some of those features get forgotten or just plain overlooked. Just because those features don't jump out, doesn't mean they're not helpful to students and teachers. In this new video I highlight ten of my favorite "overlooked" Google Docs features for students and teachers. 

Tables.

• These are great for organizing group notes.

Special Characters.

• These provide an easy way to add accent marks, math symbols, arrows, and emojis to documents.

Checklists.

• This relatively new feature is great for group project management.

Task lists.

• These are different from checklists and are accessible regardless of which Google Doc you're currently viewing in your account.

Changing Default Text.

• Tired of the standard 11 point Arial font? Change the default font to anything you like.

Table of Contents.

• This is a great way to link and jump to sections of long documents. The table of contents works even if you export the document to PDF.

Substitutions.

• Change the default substitution settings so your name is never misspelled again. Or change the settings to disable some of the automatic features in Google Docs.

Dictionary

• Teach kids where this is so they can find definitions and synonyms without leaving Google Docs.

Camera

• Students can use the built-in camera option to add pictures of handwritten work to their Google Docs.

Watermarks

• Mark a document as confidential or draft.

Are you a tech coach or media specialist looking for some new ideas to share with your colleagues? If so, 50 Tech Tuesday Tips is an eBook you need. You can get it right here.

Blurred Backgrounds and More Microsoft Teams Updates

I'm not a daily user of Microsoft Teams so I rely on Mike Tholfsen's excellent YouTube channel to stay abreast of the latest features added to Microsoft Teams. It was through his recent video Top 5 New Features in Microsoft Teams that I learned about blurring backgrounds in Teams. I had assumed that the web version of Microsoft Teams already had that feature and I was bit surprised to find that it's just now been added to the web version of Teams. 

The other new features highlighted in the video include hiding your own video when speaking, hitting the spacebar to temporarily mute or unmute, changing the hand raise order, and using OneNote chiclets in Teams. Watch the video to learn how all of these features work and why they might be helpful to yo when teaching online. 

New Lesson Plans from DocsTeach

DocsTeach is one of my favorite resources for U.S. History teachers and students. The platform makes it easy to find curated collections of primary source documents and offers great templates for creating online lessons based on those documents. And if you don't have time to make a new activity, DocsTeach offers hundreds of premade primary source lesson activities for elementary school, middle school, and high school classrooms. Recently, DocsTeach added some new ready-to-use teaching activities based on primary source documents. 

New DocsTeach Activities

There are six new DocsTeach activities that were recently featured in the DocsTeach newsletter sent out to registered users. I've listed and linked to them below. And at the end of this post I've included my tutorial video about how to use DocsTeach to create your own online activities based on the primary sources hosted on DocsTeach.  

• Comparing Perspectives in the Dawes Act and a Hopi Petition. This activity uses the compare/contrast model and is intended for high school classes.
  
  
• Fannie Lou Hamer and Voting Rights. This is an activity intended for middle school students to complete by answering some questions about specific portions of the document.
  
  
• Analyzing a Document about Teaching at Indian Boarding Schools. This is another activity designed for middle school classrooms. Students compare the salaries and responsibilities of educators at Indian Boarding Schools with those of educators at public schools.
  
  
• Writing to the President is an activity that introduces elementary school students to the process of analyzing a primary source. In this activity students read a letter written by third graders to President Gerald Ford asking for a "Kids Day."
  
  
• Japanese American Incarceration During World War II is an in-depth primary source analysis activity for high school students. The activity requires students to analyze more than two dozen primary sources. I recommend reading NARA's statement on potentially harmful content before using this activity in your classroom.
  
  
• Ten Crucial Days: From Washington Crossing the Delaware to the Battles of Trenton and Princeton is an activity for middle school students in which they'll match descriptions of events to their corresponding locations on maps.

Here's my video overview of how to create and distribute your own primary source activities via DocsTeach.



On a related note, next Tuesday (February 15th) I'm hosting a webinar all about search strategies for history students and teachers. Join Me!