G Suite Creation Station: Creating, Not Consuming, with Google Tools

Find this page: DitchThatTextbook.com/creation

Hashtags for this session: #FETCcreate #FETC

What do you have students create with G Suite?
Share: TodaysMeet.com/creation

1. Caption This! / Annotation

Take the power of images and add some learning to it! Pull an image relating to your content (historical art/photo, current events, math problem, diagram, etc.) into Google Drawings/Slides. Add speech bubbles and thought bubbles (Insert > Shape > Callout) to tell what that person is thinking/saying. Add text boxes on the image to give him/her advice. Add Bitmoji images to add reaction! This is a great way to kick critical thinking up a notch and have fun!

More info: Caption This! A fun, deep-thinking Google Drawings activity

Twitter template: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1JTehDL3Xi_iYUugApjr2H1z6z1Kv4xDU53MRB5i2Ti0/copy

Google Drawings templates by Ryan O'Donnell: http://creativeedtech.weebly.com/templates.html

2. Comic strips

Comic strips captivated us as children. Tap into that energy in the classroom with Google Drawings/Slides comic strips! Drawings and Slides are a great medium for giving students this creative outlet. It lets them create a framework with shapes, add speech/thought bubbles, and insert images in one place.

More info: Crash! Bang! Boom! How to add Google Drawings comic strips to your class

3. Infographics with The Noun Project icons

Infographics are visually stimulating and force us to summarize well. There’s a reason you see infographics all over social media and beyond. They’re eye-catching. They summarize information succinctly. They’re very visual, whether you’re viewing on a page or a printed version hung on a wall. They’re easy to share. What if we did more infographics in schools and less research papers?

More info: Creating eye-popping infographics with Google Drawings

The finished product.

The screenshot before I got started. I drew boxes around the words I wanted to use before I began drawing lines.

4. Blackout poetry

Austin Kleon has made blackout poetry popular. (Click here to see lots of examples of his work!) Blackout poetry can be done with Google Drawings instead of a black Sharpie!

Find some text online and take a screenshot of it. OR, take a picture of some text with your webcam (Insert > Image > Camera).
Insert that image into a Google Drawing. (Slides can definitely work, too.)
Look at the text and find a few words that create an intriguing message. (I like to look at the page and let the words speak to me.)
Use the line tool to "black out" all of the page but the words in your message. Draw lines and use the line weight tool (see image below) to change the width of your lines. (I alternated between 8pt, 12pt and 16pt.)
Style the page any way you'd like to make it look the way you want.
When done, download the image (File > Download as ... > PNG).

5. Google Slides stop-motion animation

This is a great hack (i.e. non-traditional use) of Google Slides that could take some time to complete but yield amazing results. Create a scene on the first slide of a slide presentation using images, lines, shapes, text, etc. Duplicate the slide. Then move something slightly. Duplicate again. Move something slightly again. Repeat over and over until your animation is complete! (For an example to replicate, check out the Battle of Little Big Horn below.)

6. Interactive posters

Google Drawings are great for bringing images, text and shapes together. Those elements combine for a great digital poster. But these digital posters are way better than a regular one made of poster board. Various elements in the poster can be clicked, delivering webpages and other online content to viewers.

More info: Google Drawings interactive posters: No glue sticks necessary!

MORE IDEAS!

Do you listen to the Google Teacher Tribe podcast? If not, you should!

The show, co-hosted by Shake Up Learning's Kasey Bell and Ditch That Textbook's Matt Miller, has new episodes on Mondays. In GTT episodes, you'll get ...