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Five Big Google Announcements From June 2023

by Miguel Guhlin July 7, 2023

written by Miguel Guhlin

Wish you could stop students from copying from ChatGPT and other AI tools? Google might have an answer for that if students are doing it on a Chromebook. Let’s explore this and a few other big announcements made by Google, including:

Google Classroom enhancements
Stop AI plagiarism
Improved accessibility
Google Meet’s paired tiles, Q&A, and polling
Google app licensing management

Let’s take a closer look at these updates. May you find the emergence of long-awaited features exciting!

#1 – Google Classroom Enhancements

Analytics. Wish you could leverage Google Analytics-style graphs and information for student work? Then you will love the announcement of Google Classroom’s new analytics features.

Gif showing several new analytics features in Google Classroom recently announced by Google.

These provide insight into student performance and engagement. What’s more, they address the following:

Assignment completion
Average grade
Active students
Missing assignments
Growth and loss for courses

That’s a pretty incredible analytics update. The analytics features will be launched in the coming months and are currently being evaluated.

Temporary Class Access. What’s more, Google made the announcement that Classroom now has the option to visit a class with temporary class access. That is, any of the following can now have temporary access without needing to be a co-teacher:

Principals
Department heads
School counselors
Curriculum leaders
Administrative assistants
Coaches and mentors
IT admins

In addition, trusted educators visiting a class can do the following:

Share links to class templates
Import content into classes
Plan, organize, and analyze assignments and grades
Choose grading scales to align with the district’s grading system
Disable submissions after the due date*
Make comments more engaging*

These features will be available to select Google Workspace for Education editions, including Teaching and Learning Upgrade and Education Plus, and must be enabled by administrators.

*All Google Workspace for Education editions will have access to asterisked features shown.

#2 – Stop Student Copying from AI

Ready to stop plagiarism and AI-assisted learning before it happens? Google announced that it’s adding ChromeOS data controls that allow Google Admins to:

Prevent copying and pasting from AI-based tools
Stop screen capture, sharing, and printing efforts
Disable cameras and microphones when not in use
Turn on an electronic privacy screen when viewing content

These features make it easy for school technology staff to enact restrictions. Some ways to identify when restrictions are enacted include:

Data source
Destination
User access

There are system requirements. ChromeOS devices must be on version 103 or later. What’s more, they must be in user or managed guest session mode. These ChromeOS updates have profound implications for device management in schools. Google provides some example scenarios and rules online at Google Support for you to explore.

#3 – Improved Accessibility

Google reiterated its commitment to accessibility with new releases and improvements. These releases improve viewing in the browser and read alouds for Adobe Portable Document Format (PDFs).

Image showing Google's announcement of an image to text feature available in the Chrome Browser.

Now, you can also take advantage of improvements on:

Google Reading Mode. This is now available for Chrome browsers on all devices. Reading mode makes text larger, changes the font, and eliminates distractions.
Image to Text Conversion in PDFs. This ensures screen readers can convert images in a PDF to text. Then, the screen reader can read the text aloud.

These changes will become available in the coming months.

#4 – Google Meet’s Paired Tiles, Q&A, and Polling

Have two people presenting in a virtual meeting? Will there be a translator or a sign-language interpreter? You can now “Ask to pair the tiles” so that the tiles appear together. If one of you speaks, both tiles are highlighted.

There was also a Google announcement of new question and answers (Q&A) and polling features that will be available for livestreams. Additionally, for schools with the Education Plus option, the limit is now set to 1,000 attendees.

#5 – Google App Licensing Management

In a move sure to please finance department superintendents, Google announced streamlined app purchasing. That is, Google Admins for schools can now buy apps from developers directly. Locate these available apps in the Google for Education App Hub.

The Google for Education App Hub makes it easy to access apps that work with Google for Education tools. App licensing “can be provisioned and managed within the Google Admin Console.”

Image of Adobe Express showing app licensing options.

Source: Adobe Express at the Google for Education App Hub

What’s available? Explore the Hub, but you won’t want to miss these offerings:

Any one of these alone would be amazing, but to have easy access is wonderful. Also, these are now available at no cost (FREE!):

Adobe Express for Education. It’s free for schools using Chromebooks across the U.S.
Figma. This is already free for all K-12 schools in the U.S. who use Chromebooks.

I hope these Google Announcements benefit you, your school, and your students. Once you give them a try, let us know what you think in the comments.

July 7, 2023 1 comment

Adobe Artificial Intelligence Communication Content Creation

Adobe Firefly’s Text-to-Image and Text Effects Models

by Dr. Bruce Ellis April 18, 2023

written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

If you are creative, you may already have access to Adobe Photoshop. Photoshop has tons of tools to help you communicate visually and effectively. If you find that Photoshop is a little too much, either due to the learning curve or price, then you might consider using Adobe Firefly.

What Is Adobe Firefly?

Adobe Firefly is currently in beta, and I’d highly recommend you join. Firefly is Adobe’s AI art-generative tool that creates text-to-image photos and text effects that will amaze you. You’ll be able to easily create photos that rival Starry.ai and Midjourney but without the cost or daily token updates. Unlike other creative AI generative models, Adobe Firefly can be considered “ethically trained” since it was trained on Adobe stock photos, openly licensed images, and public domain content where the copyright has expired. Adobe says users of various Adobe products (Photoshop, Express, etc.) will soon have the model to use within these tools. Adobe hasn’t announced if Firefly will move to a monetized strategy or not.

Adobe Firefly Text-to-Image Creation

Once you log in to Adobe Firefly, click on the blue Generate button in the Text to Image section. This will bring up a new page where you can enter your text into the input area near the lower portion of your window. If you aren’t sure of what to enter as the prompt, mouse over images in the gallery to see what was used to generate each specific image. As you mouse over the gallery photo, you can click on Try Prompt and use it as your own. For this first example, I entered “polar bear with sunglasses drinking lemonade” and clicked Generate. A short moment later, I had four images created for me by Firefly along with a few editing options and style choices. Play with the various settings to see which work best for the image you are wanting.

Adobe Firefly Text Effects

While the Text-to-Image feature is cool, I think you are really going to enjoy the Text Effects feature. Enter your text of choice and then enter your prompt to describe the image. The effect fills it in, generating the word using the default text style, though you can choose a different font as well as a few different styles. For this example, I used the word “calm” and “colorful butterflies.”

butterfly letters spelling the word calm

Implementation Ideas

Yes, this can be a fun tool to play with, but how can you use it in your teaching? Sure you can create images and decorate words for bulletin boards and communications, but how can you use it with students? Here are just a couple of ideas to consider. Can you think of more?

Ask students to suggest prompts for academic vocabulary.
At the beginning of the school year, customize your classroom using students’ names and prompts they write to describe themselves…or using the school mascot, which would definitely simplify the task.
Create memes or custom letters for information from lessons, important reminders, acronyms, or visual cues with your students.

Sample Smorgasbord

How will you make use of Adobe Firefly? Will you be creating items to enhance newsletters or will it be for instructional purposes such as flashcards, instructional posters, etc.? Drop a comment below to let us know. Feel free to tweet out a sample of your creation – be sure to share your Firefly prompt and use the hashtag #TCEA.

April 18, 2023 0 comment

Adobe Canva Web 2.0 Tool

Three Photo Editing Tools

by Dr. Bruce Ellis February 6, 2023

written by Dr. Bruce Ellis

Isn’t it great when you take lots of photos of your kids or family and then take time to sit back and scroll through them, reflecting on the fun (and possibly chaos) that ensued? Unfortunately, sometimes when we do get a chance to scroll through the photos we realize there are some things we wish we could change. If you have found yourself in this situation at least once, then you’ll want to check out these three photo editing tools. I’m only going to share a brief bit about each, but these tools offer even more features for you to explore.

Cleanup.Pictures

Cleanup.Pictures is an online artificial intelligence (AI) photo editing tool that allows you to remove items from a photo. This technique is called inpainting. Have a photo where someone photo bombed you? Or did the crazy uncle want to be in the picture (be sure to put him on the end to make it easier to remove)? Or is there something distracting in the background? Use this tool to remove it from the photo.

The AI will inspect the photo and try to recreate what is behind the item you removed. This is a freemium site, so if you want to download your photos in HD, you will need to go with the Pro plan ($3/month) or ClipDrop Pro plan ($5/month). You can find out more about those plans on the pricing page. I’ve found that the free plan, which scales your photos down to 720p is more than sufficient for my tasks.

Here are the steps to follow:

Go to Cleanup.Pictures.
Drag/drop your photo in the target area, or click the target area to upload the photo.
Adjust the size of your brush by moving the slider dot. Move your cursor over the image to see the current size. You want to use the smallest brush size possible for the item, so you don’t wipe out other items in the image.
Click and drag the brush over an item to remove the item. It’s ideal if you can erase the whole item before releasing your mouse.
If any artifact residue remains, you can touch it up. Sometimes it’s perfect, and other times it needs a little tweaking.
To see the before/after of your image, click on the eyeball just to the left of the green Download button (top right).
When satisfied, click the Download button. It will append the name of the file by adding “_cleanup” so your original file is untouched.

before and after edit of sample image from cleanup.pictures. chair, papers on wall, and lamp are removed

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe has included some cool features in Photoshop that make use of Sensei, its suite of AI and machine learning technologies. I’ll be referencing the neural filters in Photoshop – specifically the Landscape Mixer, but I encourage you to explore the other creative filters within the neural filter category. If you really want to apply more filters than it allows, you may need to repeat the steps below two or more times.

Here are the steps to follow:

Open your photo in Adobe Photoshop 2022
Click on FILTER –> Neural Filter
Scroll down the All Filters list and turn on Landscape Mixer. If you have not used this yet, it may need to download on your computer before you can use it.
Now select the preset slider scales on the right-hand side and adjust to the desired strength. The choices include: day, night, sunset spring, summer, fall, and winter. Below you can see the original image and then what it looks like when I set the Autumn to 50% or the Winter to 90%.
Adjust the slider to get the desired strength applied. Note that this is most like rendering it on your computer so I suggest you don’t have other software running unless you have a good bit of RAM.
If you do not want the AI to adjust your subject, then tick the Preserve Subject box. Whether you use this feature will depend on the colors that are in your subject.
When you are satisfied with the filter, apply it by choosing the desired output (new layer, current layer, new layer masked smart filter, or new document). I prefer the New Layer option.
Click OK to apply the filter and voila!

Canva

If you aren’t on the Canva bus yet, are you even online? Seriously though. Canva offers great features without the steep learning curve that comes with Photoshop. No, Canva isn’t an equal competitor to Photoshop, but they each are great design tools for their own target audiences and projects. The feature I’d like to share in Canva is the background remover. Yes, you can use a variety of websites that offer just that feature, but Canva is more than just a photo editing tool. It makes it easy to remove the background and then pull from a huge repository of photos to use as the new background. For the sample below I’m using a photo from a couple of years ago when I visited a friend in Houston. The setting was beautiful but the photo didn’t really capture it. Oh, and, no judging the main subject of the photo. ha! Here are the steps.

Open Canva and begin a new project.
Click on the Upload button (far left menu), and upload the photo that needs the background removed.
Drag the uploaded photo to the stage area.
Click on the photo if it not already selected (you’ll know it is selected if it has a purple border around it.). The resize handles on the corners of the photos and the crop handles are in the center of each edge of the photo.
Click on Edit Image, above and to the right of the stage area.
Click the BG Remover icon. It will analyze your selected image and remove the background.
You can tweak its work by using the Erase and Restore tools.
When done, click on the Apply button.
To put a new background behind you, click on the Photos icon (far right menu panel) and search for an image.
Place the new background image behind you by clicking CTRL+[ or set the photo as the background by clicking on the More icon and selecting Set Image as Background.
When done, click the Share button (top right) and select the share option of your choice. If you choose to download, you may select what file type in which you’d like to download the image (I usually choose PNG).
Click the Download button and save to your device.

So, which photo editing tool do you prefer? And, how will you (or your students) use these tools to enhance photos? Drop us a comment below, we’d love to hear from you. Feel free to share another photo editing tool to add to the list!

February 6, 2023 0 comment

Adobe Uncategorized Web 2.0 Tool

Ahoy, Mateys! Animate Your Voice

by Miguel Guhlin December 9, 2022

written by Miguel Guhlin

Ready to create an animation that will engage viewers? You may want to take advantage of a new tool from Adobe that makes voice-based animations easy. Let’s explore this new digital tool from Adobe.

First, though, let’s take a quick look at how animations can engage K-12 students. Engagement, while the final destination for learners, ensures you capture student attention.

Flipping Interest Levels

Students may not find the content interesting. Without an engaging story, anecdote, video, or movement-based activity, students ask, “Why?”

Learning something new is often exciting for the learner. Novel experiences cause a rush of dopamine. This not only makes learning seem exciting, but also makes you want to repeat the experience. (source)

To hook student learners into a dopamine stream, you want an engaging activity. Animation can be that activity. Some of the ways animation works best for K-12 students include:

Ensuring a clear understanding of abstract ideas
Use of short, attention-grabbing animations to cover specific, relevant content
Make learning interactive and participatory
Enable experiential learning

While there are more benefits, this short list demonstrates the value. Let’s take a look at how the free, Adobe Express tool can help.

Introducing Animate Your Voice

This tool makes it easy to:

Make an animated character from your own voice recording using Adobe Express.

There are only three simple steps:

Choose a character from those available.
Upload your audio file or record your dialogue.
Preview the audio and animation, making changes to the character or background as you see fit.
Save or share your animation with others.

Let’s take a look at each of these steps in turn. Ready? Let’s go.

Step 1: Choose a Character

As you can see from the image above, there are ample choices of characters. Choose from any of those available, and see them appear center screen.

For fun, I chose a character resembling me and decided to upload the audio I recorded. That’s an option available in addition to recording your audio via the website.

It was the beginning of a free story I found at Kids Love To Know. The story is that of “Captain Silverhook’s Symbol of Strength” (PDF). You can save it to your device or read it online for free.

Here’s a little information about it:

Captain Silverhook’s Symbol of Strength is a 600-word short story. It is suitable for children of all ages. Kids in second grade or higher may be able to read the story on their own. The story is about a pirate with a problem to solve. Captain Silverhook must replace his ship’s destroyed, nautical figurehead. That’s the shape carved on the front of his ship. He must come up with a new design before he loses the respect of the other pirates.

Using Audacity, a free open-source audio editor. I read the first paragraph of the story with a little flair:

Then, I uploaded the audio file for processing to Adobe Express’ Animate Your Voice site:

You can see the finished product below:

Step 2: Preview the Animation

You can make changes to the animation you’ve recorded, cropping the audio as needed. It’s not too difficult, and you can bring this process to a close if you’ve done your editing in Audacity or a similar tool, which I recommend.

Click the Download button, and if you aren’t logged in with your free account, you will need to create an account. The process is easy if you use Google Authentication (which I did). Adobe offers access to other authentication schemes, so creating an account isn’t hard.

To share your animation, you will save an MP4 video formatted version. You can watch my creation below:

Once you’re done saving video to your device, Adobe will prompt you to buy their $54.99 Creative Cloud All Apps plan which includes Character Animator.

Final Reflections

Animate Your Voice is an easy-to-use tool, and I can definitely see my third-grade students and older students using it. Give it a go!

December 9, 2022 0 comment

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