Leaving a Google Slides Do Now for your Sub

Last week, I had the privilege of attending the annual #NJECC conference at Montclair State University. Among the presenters I had the opportunity to meet was Alice Keeler. Alice has completely embraced Google Drive and Classroom as her "go to" productivity/instructional tool. She does EVERYTHING with Google Drive, and blogs about it at AliceKeeler.com. Attending her sessions has inspired me to up my Google Drive game, though I admit I still do love Office, and I know I'll have a hard time completely letting go.

I had to get a sub in order to go to the conference. In addition to leaving written sub plans, I like to leave a set of Do Nows (Smart Starts) for the sub. This involves preparing a Powerpoint for the classes that are coming in that day, and saving it to the guest login desktop on my computer. Hopefully leaving the Do Now is helpful to the sub, and provides some consistency for the kids. The only downside is that the PPT needs to be done before I leave for the day, sometimes the tech does not cooperate, things take longer than I anticipate (i.e. website migration- argh), and it just cannot be completed the way I hoped.

What can you do? Let go, yes, but let's face it, if you're like me, you need things to be a certain way, and it's not okay to just let it go. So for last week, to my chagrin, I did have to let it go. Of course the rest of the night, I kept thinking, "I just want to change this one thing..."

Here's what I came up with, post-conference:

Create a Google Slides and give it a name (Substitute Do Now)
Change the Sharing settings so Anyone with the link can view
Copy the link
Create a shortcut on your desktop (whichever computer connects to the projector, and make sure you are logged in with the guest account- I DO NOT give my log in credentials out, EVER!)

• PC- Right click, New, Shortcut, Paste the link to the shared slides, Next, Name the Shortcut, Finish. A shortcut to your default browser will appear on the desktop
• Mac- Paste shared link (make sure this is the shared link, and not the editing link) into a new tab, highlight the entire url, and drag the entire url to the desktop- Shortcut voila!

Now you have a link to your Sub Do Now. Google Slides lets you update from wherever you are, and the link/content is always current. Ba-bam! (that's not really my thing, but I feel like I need a thing here to celebrate). Leaving written sub plans in the same way might be next.

What else does this do? It avoids having to keep your computer, or more importantly, your account, logged in overnight, or in some cases, all the time, just in case you need a sub. Be proactive in keeping your accounts (professional and personal) secure!