Blog 04: Sponsor Me Google!

Life in 2020 was crazy enough in March, now it feels even crazier. I know for me personally, I don’t think I’ve ever been so mentally drained. Like there is teacher tired, but this just feels different from teacher tired. There hasn’t been one day that I’ve actually gone home from work when my contract time was done for the day. Instead of leaving at 4:35 I’m leaving at 5? 5:30? Sitting in traffic for 45 minutes, getting home and then still working. Creating lesson slides, grading, and grading, and grading. I don’t think that the grading ever stops in virtual school. You get one thing graded and then 10 more show up. Or worse, those ten NEVER show up. Check in on your teacher friends, we are tired. Much more tired than we normally are.

No matter how exhausting this year has been though, I still love seeing all the different technologies being integrated into the classroom! Even if students aren’t super on board yet. But I learned today, that some of my students are having a hard time with their phones, so I say “get an iPad and check it out”, and the response is……. “that’s so far away”. You can’t see my face, but imagine an Angela Martin eye roll from The Office. Because that was my reaction. And still is, and will always be.

But even with responses like that, hopefully practice (and maybe moving the iPads) will make life a little bit easier in the classroom with all the new technology. If you can find a central location for the iPads, perfect! I struggle with that in my room being out in the portables with a very limited number of plugs and spaces, but hopefully I can find the space.

But like I said, I’m so happy seeing how teachers are adapting and overcoming to all the wrenches thrown at us this year!

So last week we talked about Google Forms! Which I hope maybe helped, or maybe you even created one! Hopefully (crosses fingers) it was helpful for you!

This week I thought I would stick with our Google theme! Sponsor me Google!! But today I thought I would talk about Google Slides! The world’s most handy dandy tool ever. Seriously, if you’re still using PowerPoint, switch. You can even text me and I’ll tell you how to transfer everything you already have in PowerPoint into Google Drive.

The really amazing thing that I love about Google Slides, is that fact that you can make things permanent, like students CANNOT move them. I honestly learned about it this past summer lockdown. But seriously. GAME. CHANGER.

It’s actually really simple to do, because you make everything in what they call the “Master Mode”. So if you are on Google Slides, if you click on the “View” button up on your menu there is an option for “Master”. Click Master! This will take you to this magical master mode, and everything that you create in that master mode students CANNOT change anything! You can delete everything you see on the slides when you first open the master mode, because it’s stuff that Google thinks you need. But we’re teachers, we know what we actually need. So here is how to find Master Mode through the View option!

How to get to Master Mode

Welcome to Master Mode!

This is really awesome though, because a lot of what we do in my class is interactive notes, and maps! And everything I do, I build in Master Mode so that the students can’t ruin it when I share it out for them to work on. And what’s great too is that when you are in Master Mode, if you want students to answer something, like a short answer, they have a Master Mode subtitle holder, so that when you exit the Master Mode, the students can then type in that box to answer the question! And if you want the students to move something, like I had them move the colonies to the right location below! So I made all those colony names out of Master Mode so the students CAN move those!

Then we did the same thing, but with describing the colonies! So they worked on Circle Maps to describe each of the 3 colonial regions. If the sentence or phrase described the colony, they clicked and dragged the description into the circle. So again, those text boxes were made outside of Master Mode so they can move the text boxes, but if you don’t want them to move anything, create everything in the Master view! (Also, here is my plug for Circle Maps/Thinking Maps in general, because they are awesome and I think they’re super helpful to help students organize thoughts. Will send updates on how students do with them this year!!)

But Master Mode is seriously a GAME CHANGER. Especially if you are using Google Slides in the classroom a lot more now with everything happening. And you can always change the page layout to be an 8.5x11 in. layout, so if you do want to print something, you still can. I know this past week I made an interactive review for my students test this Friday, but I made it on at 8.5x11 in so that my other team members could print if they wanted to! Just a food for thought!!

That’s Master Mode though! See? Told ya it was simple! You just simply create what you normally would, but just in the master view mode!

I hope you enjoyed my post for today, and I hope that you had an AMAZING day today. And I hope that you have an amazing day tomorrow! I know for myself I’m having to really learn how to draw the line in the sand of “okay I’m not at work anymore”, and it’s just really difficult. I’m learning though so that I don’t work until 10 pm again. But hearing that today really helped me, to just draw a line and say “I’m not working anymore tonight”, so maybe it will help someone else.

Stay tuned for another post soon!!

- Bay :-)