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Matt Miller is a teacher, blogger and presenter from West Central Indiana. He has infused technology and innovative teaching methods in his classes for more than 10 years. He is the author of the book Ditch That Textbook: Free Your Teaching and Revolutionize Your Classroom and writes at the Ditch That Textbook blog about using technology and creative ideas in teaching. He is a Google Certified Innovator, Bammy! Top to Watch in 2016, and winner of the WTHI-TV Golden Apple Award. Onalytica named him one of the top 10 influencers in educational technology and elearning worldwide.
Bring Matt to your school, district or event! Check out DitchThatTextbook.com/WorkWithMatt for more details or contact him at matt@DitchThatTextbook.com for information and availability.
Google Translate app: Use your camera to translate written text on signs. Click the camera icon and aim your camera at some text. Google Translate will translate it on the screen for you.
nGram Viewer: Google has scanned and indexed the words in thousands and thousands of books. Display a graph showing how often certain words show up over time.
Reverse Image Search: Using the standard Google Images search, upload a photo to see where it’s been used on the Internet. At Google Images, click the camera in the search bar. Upload your photo and see where it’s been.
Voice typing: Docs will let you type with your voice. In a Google Doc, go to Tools > Voice typing … and click the microphone. It will dictate what you say. (This also works for typing speaker notes in Google Slides.)
Quick create new Google files: Instead of going to Google Drive and using the “New” button, try these links to create new files:
Quick Create extension: Instead of using the links above, install the Google Docs Quick Create extension. Click its icon in the top right of your Google Chrome browser and start a new file like that.
Extensity extension: Have too many extension icons in the top right of Chrome? Only run and display the ones you want with Extensity.
DriveSlides extension: Create a Google Slides presentation with images with a click of a button. Gather images in a folder in Google Drive. Open that folder in Drive and run the DriveSlides extension. DriveSlides creates a new presentation and drops each image on its own slide. Like magic. 🙂
SlideShot extension: Reflection is a good thing. Give students some visual evidence to help them reflect with SlideShot. SlideShot will take a screenshot of your screen every minute. When done, it will place each image on its own slide in a new Slides presentation. Students can flip back through and see what they did — and whether they spent their time wisely!
Quick, Draw!: Quick, Draw! tells you what to draw. Then, Google’s artificial intelligence tries to guess what you’re drawing. It’s a neat way to introduce students to artificial intelligence OR to look at how we convert words/ideas into images.
A.I. Duet: It’s a piano. You play some notes. A.I. Duet responds with its own notes. You make music together … with artificial intelligence.
YouTube Editor: You don’t have to shoot your own video to create a video on YouTube! Use clips from existing videos with YouTube Editor. Drag video clips in order. Decide how much of them you want to play. Add music or audio. When you’re done, your creation is uploaded to YouTube.
Google Keep: Google Keep is like virtual sticky notes that go wherever you do. Use the mobile app to take notes while on the go or type them into Keep in your web browser. Add images, create labels to organize and even color code. This will become your favorite organizational Google tool!
Incognito windows: Incognito isn’t a creepy tool to let you search for naughty things. When you use an Incognito window, it’s like all of the settings on your Google Chrome have been wiped. No account logged in. No location data. No cookies or anything. It’s useful to see things as if you’re not logged in (among others).
Set a timer: Want to give students a certain amount of time to complete a task? Do a Google search for “set a timer for two minutes” or any length of time. Google will create a timer for you and even start it automatically.
Searching instead of foldering: I used to be addicted to organizing my Drive by folders. Not anymore. I found that searching through folders is 2.5 times slower than doing a search to find a file.
Google Trends: Find out what’s hot in Google searches up to the moment. Filters let you see what’s popular in different countries over different time periods. You can even search preset categories.
Time Lapse in Google Earth Engine: Watch how the satellite images of the world have changed over the last 20+ years. Choose a location on the map and Time Lapse will show you how those images have changed in motion.