CCHS Technology June Newsletter

1. The Great Return: Return all graded work. This transfers "ownership" back to the students and cleans up your Google Drive "Recent" feed.

2. The Hall of Fame: Save your favorite student projects into a "Classroom Inspiration" folder. Future students love seeing what is possible!

3. The Deep Freeze: Archive your classes. They will be out of sight, but your materials will stay searchable and accessible for next year. Archiving a class does not delete your files! It simply freezes the data and hides the "tile" from your homepage. You can still access everything in your "Archived Classes" folder if you need to snag a resource in the fall.

If you have not explored Workspace Studio yet, think of it as your "digital personal assistant." It is a no-code tool that uses Gemini to handle those repetitive administrative tasks that clutter your brain during your prep periods.

Two ways to reclaim your sanity before you head home:

• The "Weekly Chronicle" Auto-Filer: Set a flow so that every time the Weekly Chronicle is shared, Workspace Studio automatically saves a copy into your specific "Chronicle 2026-27" folder. It stays organized without you lifting a finger.

• The "2:45 PM Inbox Triage": The students are gone, and you finally have a moment to breathe, only to find 20 new emails. Set Studio to scan your inbox for keywords like "Missing Work," "Grade," "IEP," or "Eligibility." Or, flag emails that include questions. At 2:45 PM, it can pull those specific emails to the top of your inbox or send you a summary of "Urgent Requests" so you can tackle the high-priority stuff before you walk out the door.

How to get started: Open your Google sidebar and click the Workspace Studio icon. Click "Describe it to Gemini" and type exactly what you want: "At 2:45 PM every day, show me all unread emails from students/families asking about grades.", or "At 2:45 PM every day, show me all unread emails that include questions."

As the year comes to a close, I encourage you to look at the impact your grading categories has on your student's overall grade. To see the category totals with the final grade: log into Aspen > click Gradebook > click Scores (left menu) > change the Grade Column to be Averages.

Reflect on how your grades are calculated and ask yourself if they accurately represent what you feel each student earned in you class?

Resources:

• TouchView Training Schedule for Q5

• Explore TouchView Interactive Panels

• 10 Ways to Better Engage Students with Interactive Panels

• TouchView How to Guides

If your physical desk is currently buried under post-it notes with to-do lists and "don't forget" reminders for August, It is time to move them to Google Keep. It is the simplest way to ensure your brain actually gets a vacation.

The "Grab Image Text" feature in Google Keep, which utilizes Optical Character Recognition (OCR), allows teachers to quickly convert photos of text into editable digital text. This saves time on retyping and helps digitize physical resources. Here are 4 examples of how you can use the Grab Image Text feature in Google Keep and a video tutorial.

Where to find Google Keep? Click the yellow lightbulb icon in your Gmail or Google Drive sidebar, or head to keep.google.com.

CCHS Tech Website

Email: AJ Melanson

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***This newsletter was enhanced using Gemini***