New Meet Security Settings

Google Meetings has added new security settings. You can now turn on/off the ability for students to share their screen and the ability to use chat. 

New My Meetings Button in Gmail

 

A new feature has been added to Gmail! Now you can check and manage your Meetings from your Gmail account. I have right-side chat enabled, so mine appears on the right-top corner of my screen. If you don't have right-side chat enabled, it will be on the left-hand side of your screen beneath your labels. This makes managing your Meetings even easier. Nice!

Director of Professional Development

I'm pretty excited to start school year 2020-21, even in the face of Covid-19 and the realities it brings. I'm excited because I have started a new position at Cheongna Dalton School as the Director of Professional Development. The school asked me to move from EdTech to PD to support the entire school community with their continual growth as educators and professionals. As much as I love EdTech, this was an opportunity that was too great to pass up. I have created a Google Site specifically for professional development at CDS. Part of my role is to facilitate the WASC accreditation process as well, which is happening this school year. My first task is to get accreditation work rolling and then to help with teachers create their Professional Growth Goals for the year.

Google Forms: Import Questions

Forms now has an import questions function so you can import questions from a previous Form. This will be a huge time savings if you are re-using questions from an older Form, which happens quite often in my experience. You can find the option on the regular toolbar on the left side of your Form, second icon on the list. Once you hit the button, you will open the box to select the Form you want to import questions from to your new Form. Enjoy!

New Stuff in Google Sites

I opened up Google Sites and found some new features that are very good improvements. The first one is templates! Yes, now you can pick a template to get your Site started and they have ones that are for education. Great improvement, Google. Thank you! The other really cool new feature is the ability to make an announcement banner. Look for this feature in the Settings menu. Great new features that move Google Sites to becoming much more user friendly.