Google Hacks for Teachers!

 

Quick remote learning tips and hacks for busy teachers…

Presentations – Live Delivery in Google Meet

Opinion: Life is easier if you present in a Chrome tab.

Easiest: Make your slideshows in Google Slides. Open with Google Slides in a Chrome tab.

Also good: Make your slideshows in PowerPoint. Save your PowerPoint into Google Drive and then open with Google Slides in a Chrome tab. You may have some slight format issues, but this has not caused me too much trouble thus far.

Fussy PPT hack: Export your PowerPoint as a PDF. Open the PDF in a Chrome tab. This will ‘freeze’ your slides, so no animation etc., but if you want to preserve the ‘look’ of a PPT to show this can be a useful trick.

 

How to:

1.       Open the presentation (a Google Slides one or a PPT uploaded to Drive) in Google Slides in a Chrome tab, go to the ‘Present’ button and click the triangle. Choose ‘presenter view’. Close the ‘presenter view’ window that pops up. Your presentation is now ready in that Chrome tab.

2.       In Google Meet, join your meeting. Click ‘present now’ and choose ‘a tab’. Select the Chrome tab with your presentation in. Pin your presentation to the screen in Meet so you can see what students can see.

3.       Use the arrow keys to move through your presentation in your Chrome tab window, taking the opportunity to check back in the Meet window any time you want to double-check what you’re showing, read the chat, type in the chat, see/mute participants etc.   

4.       Feel free and in control!

 

Can’t use this trick, want to use PPT: Choose to browse in a window. This is a bit fiddly, but still provides more benefits and control than viewing a PPT in full screen.

 

How to:

1.       In PowerPoint, go to ‘slide show’, ‘set up slide show’ and choose ‘browse by an individual window’ and ‘OK’. When you’re ready to present, choose ‘from beginning’ and the show will play in a window. Reduce the window size and move it out the way.

2.       In Meet, go to ‘present now’ and choose ‘a window’. Click on the window with your PowerPoint in and pin the presentation to screen in Meet to check it.  

3.       Use the mouse/arrow keys to move through your presentation in the window, taking the opportunity to check back in the Meet window any time you want to double-check what you’re showing, read the chat, type in the chat, see/mute participants etc. You have to keep moving the window around your screen a bit, so it’s not as good as the Chrome tab option, but it does enable more control than full screen where you cannot see the chat and participant list at all.   

 

Desperate: Make your presentation in Keynote, open iCloud in a Chrome tab, open the Keynote presentation, hide the slide navigator so you can just see the slides, then share the Chrome tab in Meet as above. This is horrible, but if you have a single slide (maybe a graphic organiser or something) that you’ve created in Keynote, it does work. You might as well just export it from Keynote as a PDF or PPT though and proceed as above to be honest.

 

You are using Teams: Consider using the Teams browser version in a Chrome tab, and presenting in Chrome tabs as above.

 

Control & Efficiency

 

Opinion: Life is easier if you open everything you want to show in Chrome tabs.

 

Easiest: Store things you want to show in Google Drive and open in Chrome tabs.

Also good: Export things from other software packages, such as Word, as PDFs. Open the PDFs in Chrome tabs.

 

How to:

1.       Open whatever you need to show (document, web page, PDF, Google Classroom assignment, image, Google Form, Google Jam) in a Chrome tab – one tab per item. This is easily done with files saved in Google Drive. You may find that some PDFs open better in Chrome when saved on your desktop (Chrome HTML document) and opened directly in Chrome from your file explorer.

2.       In Meet, go to ‘present now’ and choose ‘a tab’. Click on the first tab you want to show. Pin ‘your presentation’ (as it calls it) to your screen in Meet to check it looks right.  

3.       Notice the blue outlined rectangle icon indicating which of your many tabs you are currently presenting. You are helpfully reminded of this in the tab also.

4.       Scroll up and down/navigate/use your item in the Chrome tab window, taking the opportunity to check back in the Meet window any time you want to double-check what you’re showing, read the chat, type in the chat, see/mute participants etc.   

5.       Feel free and in control!

6.       When you want to switch over to displaying another item in a different Chrome tab, go into that Chrome tab and choose the button ‘share this tab instead’. Instantly, this has switched your presentation in the Meet to this tab now. Magic! You can check in the Meet window to make sure!

7.       Flick and flutter about between tabs as necessary to show, teach and describe what you need to, checking back into the Meet (chat etc.) as you need to.

8.       Happy days!

 

Pens and Pointers – Writing, Drawing, Sticky Notes

 

Opinion: Sometimes you just want to point to stuff or write stuff or draw stuff or write/draw on stuff.

 

Easiest: Use a tablet and a stylus with a laptop. Create and open a Google Jam whiteboard page in a Chrome tab, share to Meet (see above). Open the same Jam in the tablet, write away!

Also good: Use a graphics table and stylus with a laptop (some folks with these are currently trialling – watch this space!).  

 

Also good: Use Google Jam with a mouse/trackpad on a laptop – you won’t have such precise control for handwriting, but this is still really handy for showing things, pointing to things, highlighting, sticky note work, scrappy writing/drawing to give the gist. Create and open a Google Jam whiteboard page in a Chrome tab, share to Meet (see above) and off you go!

 

How to:

1.       Open Google Jamboard in a Chrome tab.

2.       Create a new Jam with the orange plus button. Name it.

3.       In Meet, go to ‘present now’ and choose ‘a tab’. Click on the named Jam tab you want to show. Pin ‘your presentation’ (as it calls it) to your screen in Meet to check it looks right.  

4.       Go back to your Jam window and use a whiteboard!

5.       Play with the various options down the right side for sticky notes, adding images, using the pointer etc.

 

6.       If you want to quickly show students how to complete something (like a table, or a gap fill), or point to parts of thing, or annotate a thing, then you need only to screenshot the thing (PrtSrc on laptop, other buttons for tablet) and paste into the Jam (CTRL V).

7.       Drag the pasted image around a bit and expand the corners (you can’t crop, which is annoying) to hide bits you don’t want to show out the way (do this before the lesson ideally, or certainly without sharing the window at that exact time to students – I usually share another window briefly whilst I do this if ad hoc). Annotate/point/note on the thing to show what you want!

 

8.       If you want precision with writing and drawing (challenging with mouse/trackpad – but not impossible and still very useful if you don’t have other options) then use a tablet a stylus.

9.       Having opened the Jam in the tab and Meet as above, open the same Jam in the tablet app. Write on the tablet Jam and it will appear on the tab Jam and thus in the Meet.

10.   This create a very natural setup where you can handwrite and students can see this live, whilst still retaining all the other benefits, control and flexibility mentioned in the sections above.

11.   Note: You need to be careful to remember to change frames on the laptop, in you start on a new frame on the tablet!! Monitor the screen in the Meet tab ideally to check this, and also view the chat etc. as required.

 

See my other blog here on student use of Google Jamboard to increase participation in class.

 

I really hope you have found these tips and hacks useful – if you have any that you could share, please get in touch with me - @JonesLearnUK – and I’ll add them in here!