Heartland AEA Digital Learning News

Google Docs has rolled out several new features over the last year. In this month's tip, we show you six tips that may expand your proficiencies and efficiencies with this familiar tool. Click the video below if you would like to know how and why you might use the following:

1. Drop Down Menus
2. Pageless View
3. Text styles, outline (they work together) and summary
4. Building blocks
5. Smart chips and the "@" shortcut
6. Emojis

Iowa educators are SO fortunate to have a FREE Pear Deck Premium account, yet many busy professionals don't know all this tool can do for the teaching and learning in their classrooms. So, our statewide AEA group has planned the webinar Harness the Power of Pear Deck. If you are a beginner or have used Pear Deck for a while, this hour-long virtual event will offer some fantastic learning you can use right away. ✅ Click here to register but HURRY--the event runs from 3:30-4:30 on November 3 event! Even if you cannot attend at that time, still register: all registered will be sent the recorded session!

If you would like to learn more about Pear Deck, our team is ready! Just contact us at haeatech@heartlandaea.org, and we will be happy to plan with you!

If you’re a K-12 educator, you can access Canva for Education for free! You’ll get all the benefits of Canva premium features such as millions of images, fonts, graphics, videos, animations, and templates, plus a dedicated classroom workspace to invite students and teachers to share, review, and manage your work.

AND as we just discussed, you also have Pear Deck Premium for FREE!!

Combine the two and you have a plethora of ways to engage your students. Explore these ready-to-use Canva templates designed for Pear Deck — along with many more or jump on into Canva and create your own!

• About Me — build connections with your students by sharing an “About Me” presentation

• Social Emotional Learning (SEL) — understand your students with a Mood or Feelings check-in

• Science — teach a ready-to-use Science presentation template

• Social Studies — engage students with an eye-catching Social Studies lesson

Each month, be on the lookout for a variety of tips, tricks and testimonials shared via our newsletter and the statewide Iowa AEA website!

Eric Curts and his blog Control Alt Achieve is always a great resource, and his latest edition, Creative Writing and Publishing Resources for You and Your Students, is no exception. One idea that caught our eye was to create a Maze/Cloze reading passage in Google Docs using the new dropdown feature (see the above tech tip video 😃). Below 👇🏼 you'll see a video demonstrating what it's like, and you can click here to make a copy an example. If you like this idea, you may want to read the entire blog or reach out to our team at haeatech@heartlandaea.org and we can assist!

Our team of five consultants serves the 8 regions of Heartland Area Education Agency and designs and delivers the Heart of Innovation Summer Summit and Webinar Series. We are ready to deliver professional learning focused on effective digital learning and technology integration. Please reach out if we can design learning just right for you!

Email: haeatech@heartlandaea.org
Website: https://www.heartlandaea.org/educators/cia/instructional-tech/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/heartlandaeainnovativeeducators