Google Academy

This morning, I presented a session on using Google to keep conferring notes during my district's Google Academy. I saw lots of familiar faces and also met some teachers new to the district and some new, new teachers. It was a high energy day filled with teachers who really wanted to be there to learn. I love these kinds of days! As a staff developer there is not much worse than facing a room full of people who really don't want to be there. So, today was refreshing even if the wifi was spotty. It never fails that when you have a whole presentation, or even a whole day, focused on technology that the technology doesn't cooperate. Another great aspect of today's PD is that I only presented one of the four sessions which means I was able to attend three sessions of my choice. Who doesn't love choice?!

My takeaways from today:
- Mic Note is a Google chrome app that works like a notepad, but also allows audio recording. Seems like a great conferring tool to me!!!

- Sketchpad 3.5 is another Google chrome app that I found that just might work as a writing space for our youngest students (K-1). It allows drawing and text, had a simple interface that is kid friendly, and exports to students' Google drive accounts with one click. Love it!!!

- Creating adaptive assessments in Google forms is not as difficult as I would've imagined. It requires only two extra steps: 1) adding pages and 2) checking the "go to page based on answer" box. Adaptive assessments would actually allow students to learn from an assessment. I see lots of adaptive assessments being created in my future!

Here's a screenshot of my sketchpad creation.

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