ECSD Technology Newsletter

Google hosted the "Learning With Google Event" on Wednesday. During this event they introduced lots of new features coming to their Google for Education Platform. I tuned into the event and also was able to ask a few questions to our K12 Advisors. There were so many changes and announcements (mostly good!) that I decided to break these down over the next few newsletters. This week I wanted to highlight some of the new features coming to Google Drive.

• GSuite for Education has a new name - it is now called Google Workspace for Education. Nothing has changed just a newer longer name

• Google Forms - Coming soon. . . . Drum Roll Please. . You can save your answers in forms! No more computer dies and lose your answers ,or students accidentally closes a tab where they working on a form. With this new announcement your answers will soon be saved!! After you read this if you stick your head out the window you can hear teachers from all over the world applaud!

• Revision History in Jamboard - This is also coming soon (no release date) Jamboard is the digital white board for Chromebooks and google meets. Coming soon, you can see all of the revision history like you can for Google Docs, Sheets, etc. . . . I've really enjoyed getting to know Jamboard more and have used it in PL this year. It is a great Smartboard, Promtheian board type of application that will work with chromebooks

• Target Audience - We will be setting this up over the next few weeks. We will be able to create a "target audience" for docs and drive. So you can say share with "1st grade team" etc. . . and it will automatically include those members. Stay tuned

• Document Approvals - This will launch later in 2021. With this feature within Google Docs you can create an approval workflow to get everyone to sign off on important changes to Google Documents.

Did anyone get to see the Endurance Landing on Mars on Thursday?! If not did you see the highlights? It was pretty mind blowing. I was able to watch the highlights with my kids last night and I mean it was like something out of Star Wars mind blowing. My kids had some questions so I went to Discovery Education to help find some answers. There are several resources within Discovery Education that discuss the Mars Landing

1) Here is a quick preview and simulation of the landing - Could make for some interesting discussion and a writing prompt

2) Here is a fact sheet about the purpose of the mission and the Endurance timeline if your class would like to follow along

3) Students can Design their own Rover - See the Lesson Plan and materials here for students to design their own Mars Rover.

Here is a great summarization stratagey. Ask your students can write a 6 word story about the image below. If it is REAL good it will be in next week's Newsletter!

The Elbert County Instructional Technology Site was designed with Virtual Online Learning in mind! Here you can find tutorials and links for many of the tools and strategies that are being promoted in our district. To access this site please bookmark the link below:

https://www.elbert.k12.ga.us/domain/1039. You can also go to the main district site www.elbert.k12.ga.us and hover over departments and click on instructional technology.

Joe Dawson - Elbert County Elementary School

Matt Johnson - Elbert County Middle School

Sherri Rampey -Elbert County Primary School

Hector Santiago - Elbert County Comprehensive High School

Bruce Stewart - Technology Director Elbert County School District

Clint Winter - Instructional Technology Coordinator Elbert County School District

Website: elbert.k12.ga.us
Phone: 706.213.4000
Twitter: @elbertcoschools