As a school leader, it is essential that we highlight all of the positive things happening on our campuses. There is no easier way to do this than through social media.

Well, actually, let me walk that back – it’s not that easy. It takes a ton of work, creativity, and time. But the payoff is a massive reach that truly engages students, families, and our community. After all, if you don’t write the story of your school, who is going to do it for you?

One of the greatest barriers to consistent social media is simply finding the time to gather content. As an administrator, one of my goals is to be in classrooms every week, visible at lunch every day, present before and after school, and at as many campus events as possible. However, reality gets in the way. Between site or district meetings, putting out fires, and the simple fact that I can’t be in two places at once, we needed a solution to increase the volume of photos and videos we were getting.

The burden couldn’t just fall on a few people. If we could get everyone on staff to easily pass along the awesome moments and classroom wins from their day, it would allow our entire team to help write the narrative of our school.

Enter… Google Photos!

Since we are a Google for Education district, the easiest way to get our staff to share pictures was to create a shared Google Photos album. The setup is incredibly simple:

1. Create a Google Photos album.

2. Add a couple of starter photos.

3. Go to “Options.”

4. Turn on “Collaborate” and “Link Sharing.”

5. Share the link with your staff!

From Collection to Creation

Receiving the content is only half the battle. The next step is finding a way to streamline how we actually build the posts for social media and our newsletters. On our campus, we primarily use Instagram and Facebook. Almost every photo dropped into that album gets its own individual spotlight post on our social feeds. Then, to wrap up the week, we pull a handful of those same photos to feature in our weekly parent newsletter.

When it comes to social media, consistency is everything – the more regular your posts, the higher your reach and engagement. While we have a healthy stream of content on our pages, I’ll be the first to admit I could be better about spacing it out. Right now, I tend to do a mad dash and upload everything on Fridays or over the weekend. Spacing things out naturally is definitely one of my big goals for next year!

That being said, creating the actual posts doesn’t take nearly as much time as it used to.

Enter… Google Gemini! (Or your AI of choice)

To speed up our social media workflow, I started an ongoing chat with Gemini. I kicked off the conversation with a very specific system prompt to set the ground rules:

Let this chat serve as a way to help me create social media post texts for [Insert School Name]. Use our hashtags and no other ones: [Insert Hashtags] Don’t use emojis. Make it upbeat, but keep it sounding like a human and keep it student-centered.

You might be wondering about the “no emojis” rule. I don’t have anything against them personally, but to me, a wall of random emojis is a dead giveaway that a post was generated by AI. It’s a personal pet peeve of mine, but feel free to tweak that rule for your own style!

Once that chat history is established, I just feed it a quick bulleted list of details about the photos our staff shared. Gemini does the heavy lifting of drafting the text, and it has cut our creation time exactly in half.

If you want to see this workflow in action, I’ve put together a short video below showing exactly how to set this up, along with a few extra tips and tricks:

3 Big Ways This System Has Transformed Our Campus

In a nutshell, looking back at how this combination of Google Photos and Gemini has shifted our workflow, these are the three biggest wins for our site:

• It crowdsources our culture: Instead of a single administrator trying to capture every moment, our entire staff acts as the eyes and ears of the campus. We get a massive, diverse window into different classrooms that we never would have captured alone.

• It eliminates the “blank page” fatigue: We all know the feeling of staring at a great photo and drawing a blank on what to write. By feeding the raw context to Gemini, we get a solid, student-centered draft in seconds, saving immense mental energy.

• It keeps our story consistent and authentic: Because the collection process is frictionless and the writing process is optimized, we can show up consistently for our community. It allows us to focus less on the mechanics of posting and more on celebrating our students.

If you are looking for a way to save time while still keeping your school’s community connected, I highly recommend giving this workflow a shot.

How does your school handle social media content collection? Do you have any favorite prompt tweaks you use to keep AI sounding human? Let me know in the comments below!

Can I tell you a secret? I have a love-hate relationship with the summer on a school campus.

As a school administrator, my days extend quite far into the summer. That’s okay – I knew what I was signing up for. Yet, it’s such a weird experience on a campus. On the one hand, it’s lighter and quiet. There is time to think, plan, and recuperate. On the other hand, it’s eerily quiet and lonely. It’s so strange to go from 100 mph to residential speeds in a few days. Mostly, I greatly miss our staff and students. That being said, I have greatly come to appreciate the time to slow down, think, and plan for the future.

As a part of the planning process for next year, our team is making some big pushes toward increasing the amount and quality of professional development on our campus. We will be making a huge push with amplifying our PLC’s and pushing writing across the curriculum. In addition to this, we will have a variety of staff meetings, optional PD’s, and district PD’s in which our staff can participate. To help organize all of this information, I developed a simple “Professional Development Calendar” with all of the trainings, dates, locations, and links to upcoming PD to keep our staff informed.

Here’s a quick example of what it looks like:

(View) (Sample) (Copy)

As you can see, the calendar is broken into four sections:

• Staff Meetings – Monthly staff meeting with a specific sitewide focus. This year, it will be on “Amplifying our PLC’s”
• Academics – PD specifically aimed towards improving our academics. This year, we will be offering writing PD’s, continuing our learning walks, and a Rookie Rap for new teachers.
• Student Well-Being – Any PD for our SEL & PBIS goals to support teachers as they navigate the ever-changing behaviors of our students.
• District PD – Any PD being offered by the district office.

If for some reason one of my amazing teachers is reading this PD, I know that none of this is new information but please note these dates are all simply examples and may not be accurate. Your “legit” version is coming soon!

As with anything, I always want to make sure the “why” is understood when developing, creating, or implementing something new. While this PD calendar has a low impact on staff, the “why” is quite simple but still important. Clear, accurate, and timely communication is always appreciated by school staff. We have a lot of amazing opportunities happening on our campus. It’s important that our staff can easily access these trainings and plan for their year.

Finally, as a leader, the goals for the year must be communicated to your staff. As simple as this calendar might be, it is another way to remind our staff of our sitewide goals for the year. After all, how effective are your professional development and goals if it is unknown by your staff? Simply sharing this calendar is another way to increase the awareness of our goals for the year through visually seeing the professional development that is offered to support it.

How does your school share their important events and/or dates with staff? I would love to hear about it, so share in the comments below!

Hello friends! I know – it has been a while…but that’s life.

I am so excited to share a great tool with you today that will make your teaching easier and more enjoyable while increasing the rigor in your classroom. It’s called Brisk for Teaching, and it’s an AI-powered platform that helps you create and deliver amazing and effective learning experiences for your students.

Brisk for Teaching is a Google Chrome add-on web-based tool that helps you create lessons and quizzes, deliver personalized feedback, and detect authenticity using AI. With Brisk, you can:

• Generate and customize content that matches your curriculum, standards, and objectives
• Create multiple choice, short response, and long response quizzes and assessments
• Provide instant and personalized feedback and guidance to your students based on their performance and progress
• Analyze and visualize your students’ data and insights to track their learning outcomes and identify their strengths and weaknesses
• Create questions based on the different levels of DOK

Brisk for Teaching is super easy to use and works with any device and browser. You can also integrate it with your existing tools and platforms, such as Google Docs, Google Forms, and more.

To show you how you can use Brisk for Teaching in your classroom, I have made a video that walks you through the main features and functions of the tool. You can watch the video below or click on this link to view it on YouTube:

Thank you for reading and watching. Happy teaching!

Happy November! It is hard to believe that we are almost through the first semester of school! I hope you are doing well and surviving these crazy times – because it really is SO crazy right now.

In fun news, I am starting a new series of blog posts that will come out at the beginning of each month – the Rundown! This is a simple post with a TON of links to Google Workspace Updates, helpful videos, blog posts, and a variety of instructional and educational resources that I have discovered over the last month. It is a short post this month but I plan on growing it over the next few months to contain more categories, blog posts, videos, and resources.

I hope that you enjoy these easy, quick blog posts and find something useful to use in your classroom and/or school!

Google Workspace Updates:

• Replacing a Background in Google Meet
• Slideshow Button in Google Slides
• Making Google Classroom Video Meetings Easier and More Secure
• Google Classroom Unenrollment Features
• Create Meeting Notes in Google Calendar
• Easily Add to Google Docs with the @ Menu
• Page Break Before Paragraphs in Google Docs
• New Google Meet Host Features for Audio and Video

Instructional & Educational Technology:

• PearDeck: Reflect & Review
• 11 Things Coaches Should Look For in Classroom Observations
• Slides Mania Cardtegories!
• Top 5 Game-Based Learning Platforms

Inspirational:

• Don’t Let the Tough Things Keep You from the GREAT Things! (Video)

Going forward, I hope to add many more links and sections to this blog posts. Particularly, I would like to share some leadership blog posts and videos to help support education leaders and, selfishly, help me to grow, too!

Stay tuned for the next rundown!

With the start of a new school year, there are a TON of new updates coming to Google Workspace. If you have a chance, I encourage you to check out of the Google Workspace Updates blog for all sorts of updates that could benefit you in the classroom this year.

One update that I am personally excited about is image placeholders in Google Slides. In this update, users can create placeholders that allow pictures to be easily added to the presentation while maintaining the size of the placeholder. As an A-type personality, I love this ability to add some organization to shared slides with students!

Below, I will share a YouTube video and GIF of how to use this new feature:

Using Image Placeholders Step-by-Step

Step #1: Setting it Up

• Create a Presentation.
• Go to “Slide”.
• Select “Slide Theme”.
  • Note: This section used to be titled “Edit Master” but has recently been updated to “Slide Theme”.

Step #2: Selecting the Placeholder

• Select a Slide Layout.
• Go to “Insert”.
• Select “Placeholder” then “Image Placeholder”.

Step #3: Edit, as Needed

• Add more placeholders and/or edit the current one.

Step #4: Add Slide & Image

• Go to the Main Presentation.
• Select the Slide Layout.
• Add Images.

If you would like to hear me walk you through this process, step-by-step, please watch the YouTube video below:

As always, feel free to drop any questions, comments, or thoughts in the comment section below!

Recently, Google has begun launching Smart Chips which allows users to quickly hyperlink and preview Google Docs, Slides, Drawings, Calendar Events, and email addresses within Google Docs. I know what you are thinking – I can already hyperlink in a Google Doc! Well, Smart Chips are a bit different than the classic hyperlink. To be honest, I just couldn’t think of a better word than hyperlink to describe how Smart Chips operate.

To create a Smart Chip in Google Docs, it is super simple:

• Type the “@” symbol into the Google Doc.
• Start typing the name of the Doc, Slide, Drawing, calendar event, or email address.
• Select the appropriate item and you’re done!

Below, you will find a GIF and short video on how to create a Smart Chip in Google Docs. As you will see, it is super simple to create and can be a great way to organize materials in a Google Doc. The OCD person in me absolutely loves the organizational possibilities for the future!

Now that I have shared what I love about Smart Chips, I feel that I must share a disclaimer about this new feature that I will also reference in the video. Currently, I am struggling to get Smart Chips to work with all the documents that I would like to attach. I’m not sure if this is just a bug that needs to be worked out or a user error on my part, however, I cannot find some of the documents (whether Docs, Slides, Drawings, etc) that I want to link within my document. I have tried it every which way but it only gives me the top four options and sometimes these are not the options that I need to attach. Hopefully, Google will update this to increase the number of options you can select from or better refine their search algorithm for users.

GIF Tutorial:

Video Tutorial:

Have you used Smart Chips? What do you think and did you run into the same issues as I did? Share in the comments below!

Whether you work in elementary, middle, or high school…it’s that time of year! The time of year that we start planning for the transition for many of our students to new grade levels or even different schools. As a middle school Vice Principal, I’ve been reflecting on what a huge transition our 8th graders will be going through on top of an already strange school year. Despite the difficulties of this year, I feel our school site has done an amazing job getting to know our students and trying to find ways to support them from a distance. If we have two years of knowledge of our students, I truly feel it is our duty to help pass along this information to our feeder schools to continue to offer the SEL support that will help them succeed in high school.

Below, you will see a sample of a spreadsheet that I created for our administrators, counselors, and teachers to collaborate on about some of our most struggling students on campus. These struggles can range from academics, attendance, and behavior. The goal of this collaborative spreadsheet is to share information about these student’s struggles and what has been working for them in the previous school years. It is not a spreadsheet to “warn” the high schools of students with bad behavior or grades. It is a spreadsheet that is designed to share concerns and ways to continue support for the students as they move into high school.

If you decide to use this collaborative spreadsheet, I highly encourage you to frame the conversations around the things that the students do well, as much as where they struggle. I also encourage you to remember that the end result is to share information with the following grade levels that will support the student, rather than harm them. I hope you enjoy this spreadsheet and find it useful in supporting your students as they move on to new adventures!

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What have you tried in your classroom or at your school to support students as they transition into new grade levels and/or schools? Share in the comments below!

Hello EDU Friends! I hope you are surviving this crazy world that we are living in right now. Whether you are in distance learning, hybrid, or fully back in the classroom, I hope you and yours are safe, healthy, and happy.

Today, I will be sharing a simple, easy, and interactive presentation that can be given during professional development. The district in which I work is huge with the 4 C’s which, eventually, morphed into a personal passion through my Google Innovator project. I truly believe the 4 C’s in an excellent way to evaluate the depth of teacher lessons and improve these lessons for the future.

Recently, I delivered some PD to our new teachers breaking down the 4 C’s into a simple, short presentation. The 4 C’s can be a really deep and complex concept, so I tried to break it down to its simplest form, while also providing more depth for the future. In this presentation, you will find that it is broken into three parts:

1. What are the 4 C’s?
   • In this section, teachers are introduced to the lowest level and highest level of the 4 C’s, as well as provided rubrics for breaking down each C.
2. How Can I Assess the 4 C’s in my Lessons?
   • In this section, teachers are challenged to evaluate the current depth of 4 C’s in their own lessons and find next steps for improving their lessons.
3. Resources for Lesson Design
   • In the last section, teachers are provided links to lesson design ideas, websites, and resources.

Below, you will find a preview of the presentation, the view access, and a link to make your own copy:

(View) (Make Your Own Copy!)

I hope you find this presentation beneficial and feel free to drop any comments, ideas, or suggestions below!

Greetings friends! I know I have been terrible over the last month about creating new content. I can break down my struggle into two main reasons: 1.) I have struggled to find my creativity during the pandemic and 2.) I am just recently getting over my first trimester morning sickness and finding my energy again. That being said, I am determined to start delivering new content and find ways to support educators!

In this post, I am super excited to share a couple of new tools that I have found for providing students with audio feedback via voice notes. I’ve shared this at several staff meetings and professional development train ings and it has been a big hit with teachers! If you spend a lot of time providing individual feedback to students, I can almost guarantee that you will 1.) love these tools and 2.) it will save you a TON of time!

Below, I will show a quick description and GIF of each tool, a video tutorial comparing the two, and then a breakdown of the similarities and differences. Alright – let’s get started!

Tool #1: Mote

Mote is a “Chrome Extension that makes it easy for anyone to add voice notes and feedback to documents and assignments.” It integrates easily with Google Apps and is embedded within the comments sections of Docs, Slides, Classroom and more. Once you make the audio note and finish the comment, it will turn into a play button for students to playback. Below, you can see how easy and quick it is to make an audio comment with Mote:

Tool #2: Talk & Comment

Talk and Comment “lets you create voice notes inside any service on the web, including Google Classroom, Google Docs, Twitter, Facebook comments, Gmail, YouTube, Reddit, Slack, and more!” Instead of being embedded within the comments section, it is located off to the side of your browser for you to click on it whenever you need it. You do have to manually copy the link and paste it into the comments or application but it still works seamlessly. Just like Mote, once you make the audio note and finish the comment, it will turn into a play button for students to playback. Here is a quick example in Google Docs:

Video Tutorial

The GIF’s not doing it for you? Check out this YouTube video where I show how you can use each tool in Google Docs and Classroom:

Let’s Compare Them!

As you can see from the tutorials above, Mote and Talk & Comment are very similar. Personally, I tend to favor the ease of Mote but like the cost of Talk and Comment – which is free! Click HERE if you wish to visit the pricing plans for Mote.

Here is a quick breakdown comparing the most popular and/or on-demand features:

As you can see, Mote clearly offers more features but it comes at a price. If those features don’t matter to you, then Talk & Comment may be more than sufficient. Either way, I encourage you to test them both out and see which one is your favorite – then share in the comments below!

One of my favorite ways to get students talking in my classes was an AVID strategy called Philosophical Chairs. Philosophical Chairs is a student-centered format for classroom discussion that promotes analytical reading, respectful dialogue, and personal reflection. You could equate it to a debate, however, there is a much richer focus on text and mutual understanding. It’s an amazing strategy to get students talking to one another – whether you are teaching in person or online!

In the post below, I will share the steps for setting up and running a Philosophical Chair in your classroom, as well as a useful Google Slide Template! Let’s get started!

The first step of any successful Philosophical Chair is a relevant prompt for students to discuss. If it isn’t relevant to the students, then they won’t be interested in participating. In the past, I’ve had students discuss whether college athletes should be paid, if video games made people violent, and if social media should be limited to people over the age of 14. All of these topics immediately had my student’s interest because it was relevant to them.

Here is a list of possible Philosophical Chair topics I found online: Philosophical Chair Topics. The reason I said possible is that you should always reflect on the appropriateness of the topic based upon the age of your students.

Step #2: Find a Text to Read

Once you create your prompt, it is important to find a relevant text (or two!) for students to read to reflect on the prompt. Sometimes I would pick one article for them to read that was less biased, then allow students time to conduct their own research to find their additional texts. With my students, I always stressed the importance that their opinions were based on facts. They had to be able to prove why they chose the side they eventually sided on.

Step #3: Read & Annotate

After you select your text, I encourage you to teach your students to read, annotate, and reflect on the text that they have read. If you are unfamiliar with annotating the text, I encourage you to check out this student-centered template to use with your text:

Annotating the Text Student Template (View) (Copy)

As you can see in the template, this will guide your students through the pre-reading, reading, and post-reading of the text. By using these strategies, students were more likely to engage in deep levels of thinking with the text they were reading.

Step #4: Choose a Side!

After students spent time reflecting on the text they had read, the fun part begins – choosing a side! In the classroom, I would split the room in half to represent an “agree” and “disagree” side. I would ask students to stand on the side that reflected their opinion. If they were still unsure, they could stay in the middle. I’ve seen Philosophical Chairs done with more structure during this part, such as setting up chairs on each side and having students sit down. Personally, I would have my students push the furniture to opposite ends of the class so that they could move around during the discussion if their opinions started to change.

If you want a digital option with less movement, check out this template:

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Share this template with students and enable access to everyone. Each student takes a “tag” and replaces “Student” with their name. During the discussion, students can virtually move their name to the “agree” or “disagree” side – or even somewhere in the middle!

Step #5: Discuss

Once students have selected a side, the discussion beings! Here are a few rules I had during the discussion:

• Equal speaking time for each side.
• No interrupting each other – only talk when you are holding the “speaking object”.
• Refer to evidence in your text at least once while you are speaking.
• Reference what other students have said by saying, “I agree with John because…” or “I disagree with John because…”

Usually, we would spend the majority of the class discussing the topic because it’s just so fun!

Step #6: Repeat 4-5!

Throughout the discussion,  I would give students time to repeat the last two steps. They would have the opportunity to move sides after a few students talked and then the discussion would continue and repeat!

As you can see, this is a really fun (and super easy) instructional strategy that you can use in your classroom. I hope you give it a try out and, if you do, feel free to share how it went and/or how you modified it for your students!

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