Scheduling E-Mails in GMail

In education today, technology is seen as being more essential than ever.  This is a good thing.  This means that your business office is more likely to fund essential technology projects than they were ten years ago.  But (yes, there is always a but!) money is still tight for most schools, and squeezing every technology dollar for all it is worth is still as important as ever!  That is one reason that I have spent time researching and comparing different solutions for schools that help them do just that.  And one of the things that I recommend to schools more often than not is to make the big move to Google Apps for Education -- it is free, after all, and offers many great features.  This post is not about the many wonders of Google Apps for Education, I can do that at some other time, but it is about one of the things that is missing out of their venerable G-Mail application that people often complain about:  the inability to schedule messages!  One thing I hear about over and over is how much they loved being able to write an e-mail while they are at work at schedule it to go out in the evening when they are using Outlook with Microsoft Exchange.  It is a nice feature.

So, this is a glaring omission -- but you can work around it and schedule your e-mails!  I want to be up front and let you know that I did not develop this method, and the links contained in these instructions go back to the originator of this because the spreadsheets he uses are perfect but my instructions differ slightly.

Creating A Scheduled E-Mail in Google Mail

1. Write the draft message(s) that you wish to schedule and save them in GMail.
2. Make a copy of the GMail Scheduler Spreadsheet (Courtesy of ctrlq.org) - this will also open the spreadsheet.
3. Change the default TimeZone in the spreadsheet to yours by clicking File --> Spreadsheet Settings
4. Inside the Sheet choose the authorized sender: under the GMail Scheduler Menu select Authorize and grant the necessary permissions.  Note that the script runs on your Google Drive and none of your data is every accessible to the outside!
5. Choose GMail Scheduler --> Fetch Messages to import those draft messages you created in step 1.
6. Select the date/time to send the message in Column D in the mm/dd/yyyyy hh:mm:ss format.
7. Go to GMail Scheduler --> Schedule Messages to run the scheduler and schedule your messages.  It will then send your messages at the time you specified.

Like videos better?  The creator of this method has one on YouTube -- here it is!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!

Google Chromebooks and SMARTboards Interactive White Boards

Schools that have been looking for a cost-effective technology platform to roll out to their students have been comparing the Apple iPad and the variety of Google Chromebooks that are on the market.  While there are many benefits for the students to move towards a Google Chromebook for their work, it has often been said that it is no platform for teachers because of the vast application restrictions that exist.  In short, if it doesn't exist in the Google Chrome Store -- it won't work on your Chromebook.

That issue has been getting smaller and smaller every day, including support for Adobe Photoshop - read more here.  And there will be follow up articles regarding some great apps for Chromebooks in education!

One of the things so many teachers love are their interactive white boards.  Until recently, if you had a Chromebook you were pretty much out of luck in relation to your interactive white board. But thanks to the folks at SMART, if you have a SMART branded interactive white board, you can actually open, edit and create your SMARTNotebook files on the Internet now with SmartNoteBook.Com!

SmartNoteBook.Com allows you to dear nearly everything you can do in your desktop application -- and runs smoothly on your Google Chromebook!  There still isn't anything out there that allows you to plug your interactive white board into your Chromebook and use it interactively like your Windows or Mac based computer, but hey... it could happen.

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and hisFacebook!

Google Classroom - First Look!

I posted a BLOG at the beginning of August about Google giving us a drop date for Classroom.  I've had some time now to play with it and get a solid impression of the product... here are my thoughts!

Google's new LMS (Learning Management System) would, on the surface, look to be an entree into the market in which products like Blackboard, FinalSite and Moodle have been the traditional heavyweights.  If you think that, you'd be wrong.  It plays much more in the space of something like Haiku or Edmodo when it comes to overall functionality... but let's talk about that a little.

For those educational institutions that are using Google Apps for Education (And if you aren't, you should ask yourself WHY... and have a reason).  But, if you are, you can request to have the App added to your suite and then it's easy to hop right into Classroom just like any other Google App.

Once you are inside Google Classroom and classes have been set up, the interface should be very familiar to you.  It is a similar clean, organized look and feel to other Google Apps.  It works via a class stream of information very similar to Google+, and everything that happens within the class will show up in the stream.  When something is assigned, turned in, graded, comments added etc -- it all shows up in the stream for the teachers.  The student view is slightly different and carries a little less information in it.

You can set up your class with information about it, upload a syllabus and post announcements just like you'd expect in any kind of system that hopes to help you organize your classes.  You can grade based on just about any scale you'd like, as long as it is a whole number.  No 89.5's here.  It is easy to take an assignment and grade it, and have it show up to the student as a newly graded assignment.  However, this is largely where the grading features stop.  A number of grading features are missing out of the box including timed-release of assignments, take-home exams, online assignments and several others that you'd expect to see in a full featured LMS such as Blackboard, Moodle or FinalSite.  But... keep in mind this is just the initial release!

The current layout of the stream and how it works contains all the information a student would need, but it is very much like Twitter or Facebook... if something is a few hours old you may have to hunt for it!  FinalSite has a similar issue with their FinalSite Social plug-in.  A student gets assigned something first period, doesn't check their stream until sixth period and ends up having to scroll through assignments, returned work and sporting event updates to find it.  It is imperfect -- and I'd expect will be refined over time in all products.  One thing to note is that there is a great deal of integration between Google Classroom and Google Drive.  This is a boon for teachers who need that little bit extra to help keeping the classes they have running on Google Drive working smoothly!

This pretty much sums up Google Classroom.  Quick, right?  I know.  It is a product still growing... it looks good and clean, but lacks a lot of features found even in Haiku.  If you are currently using something like FinalSite LMS, Moodle or even Whipple Hill you might not want to make the switch to Google Classroom.  But, for a school that is using Google Apps for Education and does not currently have a standardized LMS -- Google Classroom is something worth looking into!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has served as a classroom teacher in Computer Science, History and English classes.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Be sure to check out Bruce's Allentown Education Examiner Page, his Twitter and his Facebook!

Google Announces Date for Google Classroom!

Teachers and administrators alike have been awaiting the news that Google just dropped --- a launch date for Google Classroom!   That date is August 11th, 2014!

Beginning on August 11th, all Google Apps for Education customers (it's free kids - why don't you have it?) will have full access to the Google Classroom environment.  This means that any teacher in your Google Apps for Education domain will be able to create or join a class, invite students and post assignments!

The Google Classroom is designed as an integrated part of Google Apps for Education that will allow teachers to create, interact and collect assignments all online -- and in the familiar Google Apps environment.  It does this by interacting directly with Google Drive and creating Google Drive folders for each assignment and class automatically for you when you create assignments.

Administrators can enable or disable Google Classroom in their Google Apps Administrative Console for the entire school or even specific departments -- just like any other Google App.  Google says they are continuing to grow and develop the product, and that input from teachers and administrators is key to the growth of Google Classroom.

To get started, users would go to the Google Classroom URL (http://classroom.google.com) and tell Google if you are a student or a teacher.  The Classroom Help Center is a great resource that Google will continue to develop for students and teachers to go to get help and answers when needed.  In addition to that, Google has launched the Classroom Forum for peer-to-peer question and answers!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

New Google Apps and Google Docs Updates for Your Classroom!

Google has recently released a new set of fantastic features that extend your Google Drive and Google Apps experience.  I've taken a few minutes and listed them out here for you, so you can be ready for them before classes begin in September!

Google Docs Updates:

Edit Microsoft Office files in Google Drive

My favorite new feature is the ability to open Word, Excel and PowerPoint files -- natively!  Because sometimes people send you files and you need to be able to open them, make some edits, and send them back. If they don’t use Docs, Sheets and Slides it can be a challenge. With the latest update from Google Drive, this is no longer an issue because both the web and mobile apps for Docs, Sheets, and Slides let you edit Office files—without conversion—so you can now edit and send back files in their original format.  Sweet!


Suggested Edits

This new feature is great for collaborative work on Google Docs. Before, when you share a Google document with your collaborators and grant them the editing rights they can edit anything in it. But with "Suggested Edits" you, as the owner of the document, can control this editing process by allowing collaborators to make only suggestions which you can either accept or reject. This new feature is not available on Google Docs for mobile yet, but look for it in the near future.

Google Slides Updates:

Widescreen Format

Google now allows a widescreen view of presentations. Now when you try to make a new presentation you will have a widescreen where you can get a ton of new space to fill with words, charts, tables or even a simple, beautiful image. You can also change the size of your slides using the pull down menu in the theme chooser, or by visiting Page setup in the File menu. Widescreen presentation are a good fit for TV or monitor.

Editing the Master Slide

This functionality allows users to change customize the theme of their presentations as they like. can now easily tailor how content appears on every slide by selecting "Edit master" from the Slide menu. For example, you can set all of your header fonts to a specific font, make all of your first level bullets bold, and add a logo in the bottom right corner.  This one is one of those things that you'd pull your hair out about and just decide to use PowerPoint instead -- kudos to Google for finally adding this.

Edit, Crop and Add Borders to Images

With this new feature, users can now customize and edit images they use in their Slides. Before this update, users were limited as to what they can do with images they upload to their slides, now Google makes it easier for anyone to crop, edit, apply shape masks, and add borders to their images from within the presentation.  This is a huge time-saver for anyone who works heavily in Slides - and adds some real power to the application when comparing it to PowerPoint.

Slides is Now Available as a Mobile App
This one is pretty simple -- now you can use Slides on your Android and iOS devices!  Again, Google is making a good effort to make the weakest application in the suite more usable.

Google Apps Admin Tool
Admins can now restore a given user’s deleted Google Drive files for a specified date range. This helps ensure that, if a user accidentally deletes important files, those files are not permanently lost. The feature pertains to files that have been emptied from the Trash only. Files still in the Trash can be easily recovered by the user.  This is a great feature to enable true versioning in the Google Drive file system.

That's my quick and easy round up.  Hope this helps you prep for the kids coming back! (And yes, they are coming back!)

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 18 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Surviving and Thriving in a Multi-Platform Environment

Here is a wonderful info-graphic from our friends at Tech&Learning and CDWG about the nuts and bolts of being in a multi-platform environment (since most of us are!).  

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 17 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

ChalkUp for Google Drive - Great Classroom Collaboration Resource!

Does your school use Google Apps for Education?  If the answer is yes -- then have I got a tool for you!

It's called ChalkUp!  Chalkup helps transform the teaching and learning experience for you and your students by enabling live, real-time collaborative work on projects.  In Chalkup, you can create your class -- assign work to your students then monitor, engage and collaborate with them while they work.  They call it a "Student Engagement Platform".  I call it awesome.

One of the best parts about it is that it is fully integrated with Google Apps and, in particular, Google Drive.  It makes it easy to create and share documents with students in your classes with a click and a drag and a drop.

Additionally, students can turn in their assignments by dragging and dropping or uploading via the web browser interface just like they do with any other Google Drive operation.  It's easy to do -- it is something they are already doing!

Chalkup offers great deals for schools as a whole that allow administrators, teachers, students and even parents access to the class information. But if you want to use it in your class -- they have a free teacher account that allows you to get started using it at no cost!

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 17 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  He also has a new novel coming out in June 2014, The Kill Commission.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!

Google Does It Again -- Google Classroom!

ANNOUNCING GOOGLE CLASSROOM!

Google has released its newest set of Google Apps tools -- Google Classroom!  This is a free set of tools that integrates hand-in-hand with Google Apps.  This tool will allow teachers to monitor, assess, give feedback and keep track of what students are doing in class.  The tools are well done, and easy to use!

With Classroom, you'll be able to:
Create and collect assignments:

Classroom weaves together Google Docs, Drive and Gmail to help teachers create and collect assignments paperlessly. They can quickly see who has or hasn't completed the work, and provide direct, real-time feedback to individual students.

Improve class communications: 

Teachers can make announcements, ask questions and comment with students in real time—improving communication inside and outside of class.

Stay organized: 

Classroom automatically creates Drive folders for each assignment and for each student. Students can easily see what’s due on their Assignments page.

Starting today, teachers and professors can apply for a preview of Classroom. Based on the requests Google will be inviting a limited number of educators to try Classroom in about a month. By September, Classroom will be available to any school using Google Apps for Education.

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Bruce has worked in educational technology for over 17 years and has implemented several 1:1/BYOD programs.  He also has been a classroom teacher for various subjects.  Bruce is the author of five books: Sands of Time, Towering Pines Volume One:Room 509, The Star of Christmas, Philadelphia Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel and The Insider's Story: A Lance Carter Detective Novel.  He also has a new novel coming out in June 2014, The Kill Commission.  Follow Bruce's Novel releases by subscribing to his FREE newsletter!