Learn to use the New Autocrat 3.0 to Make Certificates (or Anything Else)

Hi there, educators! I hope you enjoy this tutorial showing how to make certificates using Autocrat 3.0, which is quite different, and I think much easier, than the previous version. If you like it, please share it with others on social media, subscribe to you YouTube channel or leave a comment. Thanks in advance!

The Definitive Guide to Google Classroom "Parent View" aka Guardian Summaries

In this guide, Mike Wallace and Amy Mayer seek to provide you with all the knowledge you need as a PARENT, TEACHER or GAFE SYS ADMIN to get the most out of Google Classroom Guardian Summaries. We sure hope it helps! If it does, please share this post and encourage your colleagues to get on our email list here.

All materials referred to in this post can be found here.



PARENTS: If your child's school is using Google Classroom and has enabled Guardian Summaries, your job is easy. All you have to do is click "Accept" when you receive the email from ...@classroom.google.com. It will look something like the screenshot you see below:

After you click the blue ACCEPT button, you'll get an option to choose the frequency of the emails you receive (daily or weekly) and your time zone. Presumably, this will keep the summaries from coming to you at 3 a.m. and waking you up. 

If you don't get the invite, check your email's SPAM folder. The email should come from a "no reply" email address and that may push it into SPAM. If you still don't get the invite, ask your child's teacher to remove your address and re-add you. This will remove you from all classes where you have been invited, but that's ok because you didn't get the invite anyway. If that STILL doesn't work, create a new Gmail email address and ask the teacher or system administrator to invite that address. Remember, you can always forward messages to your existing account so that you don't have to permanently change your address. 

If you STILL don't get the email, the problem most likely is that your email provider is blocking emails from Google at the server level before they get to your inbox. ​This is a problem that neither we nor Google will likely be able to solve; however, there are two possible workarounds.

1. Sign up for a Gmail account here. If you don't want to check another email address, you can use these directions to forward email from that account to your current account.

2. Contact your email provider and ask them to release the emails from Google Classroom. they will be looking for messages from @classroom.google.com.

If you choose to enact solution 1 above, you would then need ask your child's teacher to add your new Gmail address to Google Classroom.

TEACHERS: Your job is a bit more difficult, and depending on the settings your Google Apps System Administrator has chosen, this next step could be a tad time consuming. However, it will also be WORTH IT. 

Scenario 1: Your Admin has allowed YOU to invite guardians. Below you will see a gif showing you how to invite a guardian manually if this feature has been enabled for you. Here are some written directions. 

Scenario 2: Your Admin has added guardians to Classroom. This is a dream come true! In this case, just go to the Students tab in your classroom and toggle the switch beside "Include this class." You'll also need to decide if you want to add ALL the classes you teach or just this one. Both options are pictured below. 

GAFE SYS ADMINS: 

You also have some work to do, and as you can see from the directions above, everyone is counting on you (as usual)! There are also two scenarios for you to consider. 

Scenario 1: Teachers are already contacting students' guardians. They already know who those guardians are and presumably there is a system in place so that they know when a guardian becomes not a guardian anymore or is added. Considering this, it is possible to allow teachers to add guardians themselves. They may even ask you for this privilege because they will be able to keep this information updated themselves. In this case, please watch the video below to learn how to allow teachers to manually add guardians. 

Scenario 2: Your district collects and maintains guardian data and you take the responsibility seriously. You want there to be ONE system that houses this information and you want to maintain control of it. In this case, you will want to populate guardian data yourself.

Before you set up the script or begin the process, email parents AND teachers to let them know what's going on. Here are some email templates you can use. Don't forget to replace the GREEN text with your school's information.

FOR THE REAL TECHNICAL PEOPLE: In order to automate this process, you will have to install GAM (Google Apps Manager). You can get it from Github here and you can learn how to use it here. Once you get GAM installed, please see this example Script and CSV file Mike Wallace has generously provided.  This script will work for districts with up to 3000 students; larger districts will need a more complicated setup to mitigate the time it takes to download a list of invites from Google. If you need help with this process, please feel free to contact friEdTechnology for a quote here.


We sure hope this helps! Please let us know in the comments or on YouTube if you have any further questions or anything to add!

Part 2: Get your Computer (and Files) Ready for Summer (Install Google Drive)

Part 2 of the series "Get your Computer Ready For Summer" explores the best way to upload ALL your files (or a whole bunch of files) over a longer period of time without having to drag and drop or babysit the process. We'll do this using the downloaded version of Google Drive which you'll install on your computer.

This video is for educators who need to back up their files so that their computers can be refreshed for the summer. Don't lose your valuable files, back up now to the cloud! This technique will also let you access your files from any computer or from your phone.

Links you'll need:

https://www.google.com/drive/download/

http://bit.ly/FileStorageGoogle

The Great Teacher Jeans Debate

This is not going to be popular.

Administrators are going to contact me in protest.

My own husband might not approve of this post.

But I'm going to say it anyway: stop the teacher dress code war. If a teacher wants to wear jeans to work, make it okay in your policies. Don't force her to "earn it" as a "prize" or wear a "spirit shirt."

If a teacher can't earn the respect of parents, students, and community, it's not because of her wardrobe.

Also, khakis can look just as sloppy as jeans, so stop saying it's about jeans.

Also, why is polyester the only acceptable administrative fabric?

Teachers, I dare you, give out "poly passes" to the admins in your life. If they do a good job, let them wear their polyester pants on Fridays . . . but only if they wear a spirit shirt.

The Killer App You've Been Waiting For IS HERE

Google Edu Infographic: How to Force a Copy of a Document

Can't see the image via email? Visit the blog here.

Try it out! Click this link to take a copy of the file. This technique also works on other Google filetypes (Sheets and Slides).

Original URL:

https://docs.google.com/a/friedtechnology.com/document/d/1CqUbWOHedWr9WiLO7M4aM9IIDPple1HhDGSx23tzerA/edit?usp=sharing

Edited URL (the Force Copy URL):

https://docs.google.com/a/friedtechnology.com/document/d/1CqUbWOHedWr9WiLO7M4aM9IIDPple1HhDGSx23tzerA/copy

Google Edu Infographic: Top Google Add-Ons for Education (Revised)

More Add-Ons for Edu can be found at http://goo.gl/0YJ8Og and http://goo.gl/Yj8WoM

Can't see the image via email? Visit the blog here.

Getting Started with Google Classroom

As you may have heard, Google Apps for Education recently released Google Classroom. While it is NOT a Learning Management System (LMS), it does simplify procedures for teachers sharing files with students. Most notably, it automatically creates a copy of a specified file from Google Drive for each student within an organizational structure then allows students to "turn in" those files virtually, which changes the permissions of the file from student-owned back to teacher-owned. Students retain view rights. If you're looking for a tool to simplify and save time when using Google Apps for Education with your students, it's arrived! Hope you enjoy this hastily made video. Please leave comments if you have questions, and I'll do my best to get back to you.

What Leads to Engagement? These Three Relatively Simple Things . . .

I've been doing a lot of reading lately in preparation for the first upcoming Engage Me Academy. Here's one thing I learned . . .

Engage Me Academy

Since my first year as a teacher in 1997 I've been deeply interested in how to get students interested in learning what I wanted and needed them to learn. Lately I learned what I was striving for had a name that has become quite the buzz word in education; I wanted students to become ENGAGED.

Eventually I developed a knack for understanding what choices left to my students would most likely lead to this state. Each educational book I read, and really each terrible staff development session I attended, helped me refine my understanding of exactly how to design engaging lessons and staff development events. 

I want to help you learn to do the same, and to that end, I'm developing a new 3 1/2 day academy to help teachers learn how to get human nature working with them instead of against them.

If you want to know more or sign up to get information, please visit http://www.EngageMeAcademy.org 

Feel free to download this image, print it out, and use it however you want. There will be more if you want them, so comment on this post and let me know if you'd like that!

The Teacher Evaluatron 5000: Coming to a Classroom Near You?

Last week I visited a school district and saw the most intriguing device. It looked something like

the thing on the right. Until I got back home and Googled it, I didn't know what it was called, and so in discussion, it quickly became dubbed the "Teacher Evaluatron 5000." (Nice one, Matthew.) The district had purchased one of these panoramic camera devices per campus so that teachers' classrooms could be recorded and they could then be evaluated from offices far away. My immediate, gut reaction to this was, "How horrible and depersonalizing." I asked a couple of district employees what teachers thought of the device. One of them replied something like, "Well, they should like it, but nobody likes to be evaluated, so they don't like it because it's an evaluation tool." The other employee said something like, "Teachers hate it. They're leaving the district because the way this system is used is dehumanizing."

I wonder what you think. Is it important for administrators to spend time in your classroom or would you prefer the "Teacher Evaluatron 5000" to record then archive 15 minutes of video to a server somewhere far away?

The device in question is actually called the Teachscape. (Good job with the name, guys. Much better than our suggestion.) Also, there are some neat projects going on with this camera that do not have the doom and gloom feel of the Evaluatron 5000. Here's one use that sounds like a potentially good idea. In this instance, the teacher whose work will be used to study effective teaching knows that "She is the only person in Memphis with access to her video, which cannot be used to evaluate her work."

The picture below might help you visualize one possible setup. Here's a CNET review of the Teachscape.  Be on the lookout for this device. It may be only a matter of time until this device becomes a part of the daily life of many teachers.

Photo Credit & Source: http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/may/10/teachers-star-in-researchers-video/, Photo by Karen Pulfer Focht

WOW! Check out Katie Grassel's Great Doctopus Tutorial

Doctopus lets teachers automatically create copies of shared documents and distribute them to students in Google Docs. If you are struggling with managing Google Docs in your classes, here you go!

I always thought Doctopus was sorta technical and nerdy, but guys, it's NOT, it's awesome! It's as easy as Flubaroo. Check out Katie Grassel's great tutorial below and see for yourself. Thanks so much Katie!

Also, check out these Doctopus Updates and learn about other helpful scripts (like Goobric--distributes copies of your rubric) from youpd.