Editor’s Note: This week, we’re joining thousands of educators and students at ISTE in Philadelphia. Visit us at booth 2200, where you can demo the latest Chromebook devices and classroom technology from Google and our partners. Follow along on Twitter and Facebook for the latest news and updates.

It’s crucial for us, and at the heart of our mission, to provide teachers with effective classroom technology that lets them create supportive learning environments. This includes giving educators tools to communicate with parents and guardians, and work with them as partners—because we know learning isn’t limited to the classroom. This year at ISTE, we’re showcasing our digital citizenship and online safety platforms. These products can help parents and guardians aid students’ digital wellbeing, enable parents and guardians to have visibility and participation in the classroom and strengthen the connection between the home and the classroom.

Using tech to communicate with parents and guardians 

• The Chromebook App Hub, a new place for educators to find apps and ideas for how to use them in the classroom, has many apps for family engagement. Head to the App Hub to learn about Seesaw, ClassDojo, Remind and more.  

• Google Classroom offers guardian summary emails. This option allows guardians to receive daily or weekly email digests of their child’s activities in Google Classroom, including upcoming or missing work and different assignments posted in each class.  Educators also told us they use Google Slides or Google Sites to have students create monthly recaps or ongoing portfolios. This is a great way to help students take ownership over their learning. 

• Hangouts Meet can help teachers regularly check in with parents, especially when in-person parent-teacher conferences are not possible. Virtual meetings and home visits can be easily scheduled using Google Calendar Appointment Slots. Guardians can connect with educators from anywhere via video call to see examples of their child’s progress. 

• Google Forms can be used to collect trip permission slips, coordinate volunteers or submit questions or concerns to teachers during off hours. Educators can use Forms and Sheets to set up an easy way to contact parents. Extensions like Form Publisher can help with mail merges and formatting.

The school to home connection

Each school, classroom and teacher makes different decisions about classroom technology. Regardless of the type of technology, it’s important for teachers to foster the conversation of why their school or classroom has chosen it, what you’re doing with it in the classroom, how families can continue using it at home. Here’s how to get students talking about technology, from school to home. 

• Share the Guardian’s Guide to Chromebooks with students’ families to help them understand how Chromebooks are being used in the classroom and send a letter home on how parents and guardians can foster a conversation with their children about the technology they’re using in class. 

• Send parents and guardians to the Google for Education website to help them understand how students and educators are protected with Google’s best-in-class privacy and security. They can also learn about classroom technology like G Suite for Education, Chromebooks, Google Expeditions and more. 

• Share the G Suite Learning Centerwith parents and guardians who want to become more familiar with G Suite tools being used in their child’s school. 

• Use Tour Creator so students and their teachers can create their own virtual reality tours of their school or classroom—or even a topic they are learning in school—to share with family members and guardians. 

Digital citizenship and online safety resources

Technology, when used responsibly, can be a powerful resource that can unlock entire worlds. It’s important to teach kids how to navigate the internet responsibly. It’s also crucial to set expectations around how much screen time is appropriate each day, when screens are okay and what activities are appropriate to engage in on their devices. Here are some resources and tools to help parents set digital rules.

• FOSI online safety lessons: Help students learn how to safely navigate the web and develop skills for school, work, and life. We partnered with the Family Online Safety Institute to build five new lessons to help families stay safe online when it comes to digital wellbeing and screen time.

• ConnectSafely: Read the Parent Guides from our partners who are dedicated to educating users of connected technology about safety, privacy and security. Share guides with parents and guardians on social media, cyberbullying, EdTech, Media Literacy & Fake News, Cybersecurity and more. 

• Teacher Center Resources: Check out the Teacher Center

  https://teachercenter.withgoogle.com/

  , which hosts a bountiful database of helpful tools and trainings for educators. The digital citizenship and safety resource page features materials that easily guide student(s) through. 

• Family Link and Be Internet Awesome: With Family Link, manage the quantity of children's screen time(daily time limits, device bedtime, locking the device remotely) and the quality as well (app approvals, website whitelisting/blacklisting. You can also see how much time kids are spending in apps, and hide apps on their device. And use Be Internet Awesome’s  family resources to teach students how to be safe, confident explorers of the online world. 

As teachers and parents guide the next generation of digital citizens, we’re continuing to offer new ways to foster a safe and supportive learning environment for students, teachers and families. From exploratory tools in classrooms that can be used at home, to accessible platforms that encourage confident and safe online exploration, we’ll continue to make it our goal to provide tools that go beyond the classroom. 

How can we reduce plastic in our oceans? In today’s classrooms, teachers use project-based learning (or PBL) so that students can come up with potential solutions to real-world problems like this. With PBL, students identify the problem, research a solution and support it with evidence—all while learning valuable skills they’ll use long after graduation. Brainstorming these dynamic solutions can be an exciting and creative challenge for young minds. Technology can help motivate and spark imagination in ways that static textbooks can’t.

Last week at SXSW EDU, we helped educators experience the power of technology-enhanced PBL first-hand, with a demo on how to create differentiated and personalized learning using technology in the classroom. The interactive demo let people get hands-on with educational tools from G Suite for Education, Chromebooks, Jamboard, Google Expeditions AR and VR and engaging third-party applications.

Even if you didn’t attend SXSW EDU, you can recreate the lesson on removing plastic from our oceans with your students. Follow this guide to bring the magic of Google tools to your students and facilitate a collaborative, intelligent, connected and creative learning space.

Assignment 1: Setting the stage

First, you’ll need to introduce the challenge of reducing plastic in our oceans and identify key facts about pollution in our oceans.

Step 1: Use Google Classroom to introduce the task.

You can use Google Classroom to create individual copies of materials for each student, in just one click. As an example, click here to make a copy of this lesson plan. If you’re using a different Learning Management System (LMS), Course Kit lets you integrate that LMS with G Suite.

Step 2: Use “Explore” to find and cite a key quote.

Open the Google Doc provided in Step 1 and click the “Explore” button in the bottom-right of the document. The “Explore” functionality makes it easy to add citations to materials you referenced across the web.

Step 3: In the Google Sheet, use “Explore” to analyze waste data for Austin, Texas.

Here, the “Explore” feature leverages the same machine learning technology used by Google Search and Google Assistant.

Step 4:Takethis quiz in Google Forms to test your knowledge on the topic.

Google Forms automatically grades your students’ work—saving you from having to do it manually—and give them feedback on how they did.

Bonus:Test out the new “locked mode", only available on managed Chromebooks.

This new feature (which is currently in beta) prevents students from navigating away from the Quiz until they submit their answers.

Assignment 2: Dissect the problem and dig deeper

Next, students will use research skills to understand the root of the plastic problem and collaborate with experts and peers.  

Step 1:Use Google Earth to explore real data on plastic moving across the oceans.

You can also use have your students use Google MyMaps to compare the size of the Pacific garbage patch to several US states.

Step 2: Use Hangouts Meet to meet experts in the field.

Hangouts Meet is a great tool to connect students with experts and each other though secure video and messaging.

Step 3:Go on a virtual reality tour of the ocean with Google Expeditions.

This tour is just one of more than 150 AR and 900 VR tours you and your students can experience. You can now view and guide tours you’ve created yourself using Tour Creator on both Android and iOS.

Step 4:Use a Jamboard to work together to discuss what you’ve learned so far.

Now that your students have dug into the problem, they can collaborate on the Jamboard or Jamboard app to answer key questions about the plastic problem and discuss what they have learned while researching.

Bonus:If you have a Vernier©️ sensor, use the Science Journal Android app to run an experiment testing how oxygen levels are affected by plastic in the ocean. Science Journal transforms devices, like you phone, into a pocket-sized tool for conduct fun science experiments—no fancy equipment required.

Assignment 3: Generate creative solutions

Finally, uplevel the lesson even more by generating creative solutions to the plastic problem based on everything we learned during instruction and research. Here’s a guide that suggests specific tools to use.

Step 1:Create a VR tour with Tour Creator.

Your students can help increase awareness of the plastic problem by creating their own immersive, 360° tours right from their computers. With this creative challenge, students can sharpen critical thinking and creativity skills, while building something they can add to a digital portfolio.

Step 2:Create a website using Google Sites to outline possible solutions.

Sites gives you an easy-to-use tool to build websites, host course curriculum and encourage students to build their development skills.

Step 3:Use Teachable Machine to create your own trash sorter.

Your students can make it easier to recycle by training their computers to recognize and sort different types of trash using Teachable Machine, an AI experiment that requires no coding.

Step 4: Make an automatic stop-motion animation with Google Photos.

With Google Photos, you can store and edit an unlimited amount of photos to use in your lessons.

Step 5: If you have a Jamboard, you can use it to collaboratively review and workshop creative solutions to removing plastic from the ocean. No physical Jamboard? No problem, check out the free web-based version.

Whether your students prefer to learn through video, reading, collaboration, hands-on experimentation or testing, Google tools allow you provide an engaging educational experience for every type of learner.