Monday Medley: Rebranding of GSuite for Education and Updates

Good Morning, Hopefully everyone was able to spend at least part of February vacation relaxing. You may have heard that last week there was a Learning With Google 2021 global virtual summit that took place where many updates were announced. One thing that Google announced is that GSuite for Education has been renamed Google Workspace for Education. Over the next several months Google is adding more than 50 new features to the education products we frequently use. You can expect to see some of those rollouts and changes in the next few weeks. One feature you will see soon in Google Meet is the ability for teachers to "mute all" and end the call for all to ensure that students don't remain after the teacher has left the call. in addition, teachers will be able to have co-teachers as co-moderators within Meet. A student engagement tracking feature will be coming to Google Classroom so you will have the ability to see at a glance which of your students may be falling behind in their classwork. Some enhanced security features will also be available for Google Admins and will happen behind the scenes. Do you want to keep up with what's happening in the Google world? Sign up to receive updates from the Google for Education official blog, Follow Google for Education on Twitter @GoogleForEdu and subscribe to the Google for Education YouTube Channel I hope you have a magnificent Monday! (Photo by Mitchell Luo on Unsplash)

New Books: February 2021

See something you'd like to borrow? Fill out the Media Ctr Bookform to request a title: bit.ly/NRHSBookForm* Not sure what you'd like to read? Fill out the form and get book recommendations customized for you, based on your personal interests! Please encourage students to take advantage of the book form to request titles as well. *Note that the BookForm only works for NRHS students and teachers.

 

Monday Medley: Virtual Explorations

 

Good Morning,

Are you looking to enhance your instruction by adding some virtual explorations to your lesson plans? 

Here are a few options: 

• Google Earth Voyager "Google Earth's Voyager is a showcase of interactive guided tours, quizzes, and layers that aim to help educate everyone about the world, locations near and far."

• "Teachers use HistoryView VR as an online tool to bring historical sites and museums to the classroom. VR headsets are not required to experience this program. It is available on Chromebooks and tablets." (Scroll down on the page past the map to see the different types of virtual environments available)

• Arizona State University Virtual Fieldtrips: "VFT's are topic based interactive and educationally rich experiences captured during real expeditions with scientists doing current research. Some are built with adaptive feedback and adaptive pathways. (Look for the designated icons). This adaptivity allows for non-linear experiences with varying pathways, as well as individual feedback, that is tailored to the users input and responses. These VFTs are being used in high school and college classrooms to supplement a wide variety of topics and are actively in development with new VFTs continually coming online."

• Google Arts & Culture 360 degree videos Explore art, space, natural history and more

• 20 Virtual Field Trips for your Classroom: Ditch That Textbook "Virtual field trips allow us to take our students where the bus can’t. Students can make connections with locations, concepts or people through the power of virtual field trips. What are the best virtual field trips out there? And how can we take the learning even further? Here are 20 field trips and 10 activities to do while you're on one!"                                        *Note that not all of the resources suggested here are free. However, there are some good suggestions for companion activities for any virtual exploration. 

(Photo by Tobias on Unsplash)