Teach with Tech

As the school year speeds toward the finish line, keeping track of your ideas, to-dos, and important reminders can be a challenge. Enter Google Keep, a simple, powerful tool to help you stay organized across your devices.

Why Google Keep?
Google Keep is like a digital sticky note board that lives inside your Google account. You can create color-coded notes, to-do lists, and even voice memos. Everything syncs automatically with your Google Drive, and you can access your notes from your phone, Chromebook, or desktop.

Ways to Use It in Education:

• ✅ Daily To-Do Lists: Use checkboxes to create tasks for the day or week.

• 📎 Attach to Google Docs: Open the Keep sidebar in Google Docs to drag notes into lesson plans or writing prompts.

• 📷 Capture Ideas on the Go: Snap a photo and add notes while at a PD session or during classroom walkthroughs.

• 🧠 Collaborative Brainstorming: Share a Keep note with a colleague to gather ideas or plan together.

Try This:
Open a new tab and go to keep.google.com. Start with one note—a quote that inspires you, a checklist for an upcoming project, or a quick reminder—and pin it to the top.

Extend:

Want fancy headers? You can snag Shake Up Learning's for free HERE or my Tie-Dye editable headers from Canva HERE.

Need a way to support students who struggle with typing or benefit from talking through their ideas? Google Docs’ Voice Typing tool is a simple but transformative feature that can unlock student thinking—especially for multilingual learners, students with disabilities, or reluctant writers.

How It Works:
Inside Google Docs, go to Tools > Voice Typing. Click the microphone icon and start speaking. Google Docs will transcribe your speech into text in real time.

Classroom Ideas:

• 🗣 Brainstorming: Let students dictate ideas before they begin writing.

• ✍️ Drafting Paragraphs: Students who struggle with typing can focus on ideas rather than mechanics.

• 🔁 Revision Strategy: Have students read their drafts out loud using voice typing to catch awkward phrasing or missing words.

• 🌍 Language Support: Voice Typing supports multiple languages—great for dual-language or immersion programs.

Try This:
Model it during a mini lesson. Dictate part of a paragraph and have students watch the real-time transcription. Discuss how tone, punctuation, and clarity affect the written output.

Resources:

• Video Overview of Features and commands
• Google Tool Description including list of commands

Generative AI can be a powerful tool for amplifying student voice—especially for students who are shy, multilingual learners, or those who need structured support to express themselves. Whether you're guiding third graders through reading reflections, helping middle schoolers explore historical perspectives, or supporting high school students in articulating complex scientific concepts, AI can offer scaffolds that unlock student thinking and encourage meaningful communication.

Ideas to Explore:

• 🎙️ Reflection Prompts with AI Help: Tools like MagicSchool.ai and Brisk Teaching can generate writing or speaking prompts based on a subject or theme.

• ✍️ Story Starters and Sentence Stems: AI can provide multiple writing options for students to choose from, giving them a boost to get started.

• 📹 Narration Support: Students can use AI to brainstorm scripts or outlines for short video reflections, book reviews, or how-to tutorials.

Examples:

📚 Third Grade: Reading Reflections with Prompts
After reading Charlotte’s Web, the teacher uses an AI tool to generate sentence starters like “One thing I learned from this story is…” or “If I could ask Charlotte a question, it would be…” Students choose a prompt, write a short reflection in their journals, and then record themselves reading their responses. The activity supports oral language development and allows all students—including multilingual learners—to confidently share their ideas.

🏛️ Middle School Social Studies: Exploring Perspectives
During a unit on westward expansion, the teacher uses AI to generate writing prompts from multiple viewpoints, such as settlers, Indigenous communities, or railroad workers. Prompts might include “Write a journal entry as a railroad worker—what is your job like?” or “Imagine you are a Lakota child watching settlers move onto your land. What do you feel?” Students choose a prompt, write a short narrative from that perspective, and record an audio diary or present it to the class, strengthening empathy and critical thinking.

🔬 High School Science: Explaining Climate Concepts
At the end of a unit on climate change, the teacher uses AI to create student-friendly reflection questions like “How do greenhouse gases contribute to climate change?” or “What evidence shows climate change is affected by humans?” Students respond with a short written script, then create a 60-second video explainer using Screencastify or Canva Video. The format supports content review and gives students ownership over how they communicate scientific ideas.

Try This:
Ask an AI tool to generate five reflection questions about a recent lesson. Let students choose one to respond to—via writing, video, or audio recording. You'll be amazed at how scaffolding the prompt opens doors for student thinking.

Looking for a Jamboard replacement—or just a more visually dynamic way to collaborate? Canva Whiteboards offer an infinite canvas where you and your students can plan, ideate, and organize thoughts with ease.

Why Whiteboards Work:
They support free-form thinking, visual planning, and group collaboration. Unlike Canva presentations, whiteboards are designed for flexibility—think sticky notes, drag-and-drop shapes, images, and even real-time collaboration.

Classroom Ideas:

• 💭 K-W-L Charts: Create shared spaces to capture prior knowledge, questions, and new learning.

• 🔄 Mind Mapping: Use shapes and arrows to visually connect concepts in science or social studies.

• 🎯 Goal Setting & Planning: Let students design learning goals or project plans with sticky notes and emojis.

• 🧠 Team Brainstorms: Use it during collaborative writing or project-based learning to capture group ideas.

Example in Action:
A middle school teacher used Canva Whiteboards to create group Venn diagrams comparing characters in a novel. Each group had a different color sticky note, and the final board became part of a gallery walk.

Try This:
Go to canva.com/whiteboards and try a template. Share it with students.

This is a monthly newsletter from the Instructional Services Department of the IMESD. It includes current issues and concerns of tech (within the realms of education), tips and tricks, resources, and suggestions.

If you would like more information EdTech tools, resources, or training, please contact:

Ayla Olson

Instructional Coach

Email: ayla.olson@imesd.k12.or.us

Phone: 541-966-4657

Website: sites.google.com/imesdapps.org/instructional-coaching