This was a tip that I learned at this year’s ITIP Ohio Google Summit – thanks to Lauren Richardson and Ashley Morrison from Indian Hills.

Have you ever wanted to collaborate with someone when drafting an email? Now you can.. with Google Docs!

This uses the recent Building blocks feature in Google Docs. Building blocks lets you add pre-formatted “snippets” to Google Docs.

To get started, create a new Google Doc, or work with one you’ve already got. Go to Insert > Building blocks and choose Email draft. read more

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In a Tech Tip from 2019, John wrote about the awesome snooze feature in Gmail. This feature allows you to defer email and have it return to your inbox at a later time.

Today’s tip is in a similar vein, but this time it deals with delayed sending of your email.

Scheduled send is the name of the feature and it is built right into Gmail. It’s super easy to use!

Compose a message as usual, but instead of hitting Send, hit the drop-down arrow next to the send button and choose Schedule send.

You will then be prompted to choose a time when the email will be sent. In this case my options are Tomorrow morning, This afternoon and Monday morning. read more

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In a previous Tech Tip, I wrote about Google AutoDraw, which is a Google A.I. experiment that can assist you with drawing things. You draw a little bit and it gives you suggestions of the item it thinks you are drawing. Once you find the item, you can click to change your drawing into the appropriate item.

This time I am going to write about another Google A.I. drawing tool, but it is more like Pictionary. It is called Google Quick Draw.

Go to Quick Draw

This website is so fun. With Google’s artificial intelligence, it tells you to draw an item, and you have 20 seconds to draw it. If Google’s A.I. guesses it, then you get credit for that item. If Google doesn’t guess it, then you get it wrong. You get to draw six items each round.  read more

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Are you looking for a fun way to bring creative writing to life? Story Dice is a free, web based story idea generator that you can access for your students or yourself. This simple idea generator functions as a random generator with more than 50 different dice images. They can be used in groups of 5 or 9 dice.

Go to Story Dice

“As well as being a fun diversion for parents and kids, this is also a handy tool for writers looking for inspiration to create their own story ideas. As a creative exercise, it’s a brilliant way of giving your imagination a workout. And because your imagination is where your ideas come from, that’s a great mental muscle to flex. The more practice you put into turning the prompts into stories, the better you will get at storytelling and articulating your own ideas.” read more

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Currently, Google Calendar has a feature called Appointment Slots. Using this feature, you can set up a block of appointments on your calendar that other people can reserve. For example, you can set aside 2 hours that you’re available to meet with parents in 15-minute slots. Parents can then book one of the 15-minute slots at a time that works best for them.

It’s a great feature, BUT… the one big issue with appointment slots is that a Google Account is needed to use it. This was a limiting factor to it being useful to schools. read more

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