How to Use Google Keep as a Teacher

hello there and welcome back to my channel if you are new here my name is michelle emerson and i'm a fourth grade teacher in maryland a couple of videos ago i shared the five habits that have allowed me to work only contract hours as a teacher and in that video i did share about google keep and i suddenly realized that a lot of people either didn't know what google keep was or they weren't sure how to use it and i felt like that was just unacceptable because google keep has been a game changer for me so in today's video i'm going to do a very basic tutorial for getting started with google keep and i'm going to show you how to add a little bit of customization to make it your own let's start by talking just a little bit about what google keep actually is google keep is a free website or app from google think of it as virtual sticky notes so if you have ever had a pile of sticky notes on your desk of things that you needed to remember checklist of things that you needed to do links that you wanted to be able to keep like you know websites like not obviously the actual link on the sticky note but the website that you wanted to go to google keep is a way of storing all of that digitally it is a fantastic tool and if you are not using it i highly recommend you go ahead and give it a try next let's talk about how to actually access google keep first of all there is an app just search google keep in the app store and it will come right up it is free to download or if you are accessing it on your computer you're going to go to the address bar type in keep.google.com and it will take you directly there there are a few different ways that you can also get to it through your gmail or through your google drive there is a little sidebar on the right-hand side that will allow you to access google keep but the main way that i get there is just through my desktop browser or the app and keep in mind you can always add a bookmark so that you can get to it even faster now i'm not using my pocketful primary gmail account because my google keep is already full of tons of notes and instead i decided to start with a clean google keep so i'm actually using billion eyes like joint gmail account since it is the first time i'm logging on it's telling me that dark theme is here i'm just going to click got it so let's start with actually creating a note up at the top you're going to see it says take a note now you have a few different options for starting your note but we're going to come back to those you can actually start a new list you can start a new note with drawing or you can start a new note with an image but again we're going to come back to this for now i'm just going to click where it says take a note now you will notice that i can give my note a title and i actually have a spot to take the note now if you saw my video about working only contract hours you probably saw these really fancy or what you thought was really fancy headers that i had added to my google keep those are just images that i added to the note and i'm actually giving them to you all for free so go ahead and download the set of 10 google keep headers on my website just go to pocketfoldprimary.com click on freebies at the top and you can have those sent right to your email inbox once you have downloaded them you're going to have a zip file go ahead and unzip that file i'm actually going to start by showing you how to insert those onto google keep so pause the video go download those and then come back and play it alright so in order to add that header i need to insert it as an image so i'm going to click on the image button which looks like a little square with mountains on it i'm going to go ahead and select those images which are in my downloads i'm going to open up that folder and let's start by creating one for my weekly to-do's i'm going to click open and it's going to automatically place that image at the top of your google keep note now i'm gonna go ahead and title my note even though i have that header image i still want to actually title the note since this is all about weekly to-do's i might put the week that i'm working on so for example week of january 17th to the 24th or maybe it's the 23rd i don't even know i don't have a calendar in front of me but it's not important then i can actually take the note now because this is meant to be a checklist it's a list of to-do's and i want to be able to check them off i actually want to show check boxes so i'm going to click on the three dots and i'm going to choose show check boxes that way as i add those weekly to-do's it's going to allow me to check them off so for example i might put record youtube videos when you hit enter it's going to bring you down to the next one that you can add so i'm going to put record podcast episodes so on and so forth now while we're talking about the different elements of the note let's go ahead and just go through all of the buttons first of all let's start with the pin in the upper right hand corner pinning a note is going to keep it at the top of your google keep as you start adding 5 10 20 notes things can get buried so if there are notes that you are using more frequently you're going to want to click that pin button so that it stays up at the top and it's easy to access now let's come down here i do have a remind me button this is going to allow me to connect a reminder to my google keep note keep in mind this is not going to place it on your google calendar it is however going to give you a notification within your internet browser to let you know that you have that reminder so for example i could have it remind me later today tomorrow next week when you click on it you can actually customize the date and the time so i'm going to click here i can pick the date pick the time and i can have it repeat so if this is a reminder you need every single week you can choose weekly i'm going to go ahead and click save now keep in mind if you are using these reminders you may have to go into your browser settings in order to allow the notification from google keep the second button down at the bottom is to add a collaborator so this allows you to share the note with someone else for example bridget and i who have a business together might have a shared note of things that we have to do for teaching on the devil you might also want to share one of the notes with your co-workers let's say you both teach math and you want to have a weekly planning checklist and you both want to be able to add to the list and edit it add their email and then you both will be able to do that the next button allows you to customize the color which i absolutely love personally i like to keep all of my notes different colors because it makes it very easy for me to find what i need but you could also use it to color code different areas of your life you could have work be one color you could have family things be another color you could have personal things be another color now those free google keep headers that i created for you all are black and white so that way it won't interfere with the color that you choose for the note we already went through the next button but it does allow you to add an image now just to show you you can add more than one image to a note i'm just going to show you for example if i add another header what happens i'm going to go ahead and click the add image button and let's choose afternoon and click open it's going to put them side by side up at the top so you can add multiple images but it is going to slightly change the layout of your headers if you want to remove an image just hover over it click the little trash can oh hold on i unpinned it you gotta find it's hiding back there there you go and you can actually delete that image the next button down at the bottom is to archive the note archiving the note will take it off of your main google keeps screen so for example if i click archive you will notice that it has disappeared but it is not deleted i can click archive on the left hand side and still be able to view my note this is helpful if you need certain notes for a certain time of the year and then they're no longer relevant i know personally when everything went virtual last spring i had all these checklists that worked for in-person teaching that i no longer needed so i just archived them in order to get them off my main google keep screen actually i need to unarchive that note because i'm still using it so i'm going to select that note and i'm going to click up here to un-archive it and it's going to appear back in my main notes i'm going to click on it to open it up full screen and let's go to the three dots at the bottom this is where you can actually delete the note you can also add a label so a label is almost a way to categorize your notes for example this is a checklist i might add a label that says checklists i'm going to click create checklists you will notice the label pops up down at the bottom and it also popped up over on the side we're going to come back to that in just a second for now i'm going to click back on the three dots i also can add a drawing this is actually going to open up google drawing and you can use the pen tool and actually hand write or hand draw anything that you want to have on here i personally feel like this is more helpful if you are using google keep on a tablet and you have a stylist or even on your phone and can use your finger i honestly don't use this feature a lot but if you do prefer to actually hand write things that is an option for you i'm going to click the back button to go back and i'm going to click the three dots again you also can make a copy so if you have a note and you want to keep the exact same formatting you can choose make a copy and i'm going to click close and just show you i now have a duplicate of that exact same note i'm going to go ahead and delete this one since i don't need it reopen this one and go back to the three dots you also can hide the check boxes so if you had them turned on and want to disable them you have that option but i'm going to reshow the text boxes you also have the ability to grab image text y'all this is a game changer grabbing image text will allow you to have let's say a picture of a piece of paper that you got at a meeting i know this happens to me all the time we get handouts and i don't want to hold on to the physical paper i will take a picture with my phone i will add that image to the google keep by clicking add image and it will add it in then i can click grab image text and it will actually take all of the words that were on that page and it will type them out for me so this is a really easy way to hold on to articles or information that you need take a picture add it in and then grab the image text the last option is actually to copy to google docs so you can take your note and basically push it into google docs again i don't use this feature very often but it is there for you so that's the basics in terms of actually creating the note i'm gonna go ahead and click close you will notice that the note gets a little bit smaller and if i want to view the whole note i can just click on it to open it up full screen now let's go back to what i mentioned at the beginning you actually can create a new list you can create a new note from an image or a new note from a drawing so those are those features that i already showed you if you want to have those check boxes you can go ahead and click new list and it will start the list with the check boxes you also can start a new note with a drawing so again if you want to actually hand write something or use that drawing tool you can and you have the option to create a new note with an image so again if you take a picture at a pd meeting you can easily create the note with just that image now let's go through the buttons on the left hand side so notes is the main section where all of your notes are housed if you have set a reminder on a note such as this reminder at 8am or no i think it was 8pm yeah every month on the same day if i click under reminders any notes that have reminders will appear there you also will have your labels so i labeled this note with the word checklist if i create a new note and it's also a checklist i can assign it that label and it will appear here so if i want to view all of my checklists at one time i have that option just to model that for you i'm going to go back to notes and i'm going to create a note from an image and this time let's do my power list header so a power list is a list of just three things that i want to get done for the day so i would put the date here so let's just say sunday january 17th i can go ahead and show the check boxes and let's say on my power list today was to answer emails upload footage footage from videos and let's say attend meeting so i have my power list i always like to make it red because it really gets my attention and it is a note that i pinned so i'm going to go ahead and click the pin button click close you will notice now i have that pin section i actually ended up unpinning the other one so it is down underneath and then my pin one is at the top but if i pin this bottom note it will appear up there as well i also can click and drag to reorder them so i like to keep my power list first if i add a new note and it moves out of the way i can just easily move it back i'm going to go ahead and add the label of checklists and now when i go under checklists i will see them both there you also can click edit labels so you can create all of your labels at one time or you can create them as you begin creating those notes in google keep i already showed you the archive section where any archived notes will go along with the trash so your notes will only remain in the trash for seven days so if you accidentally delete something you can go to the trash and take it back out you also have the ability to hide or show this main menu by clicking the little hamburger icon it's the main menu icon up in the top left you also can search your notes and what i love is it will actually search any text that you have in the images so for example that header that says power list is an image it's not actual text but if i type in power it will pull that up so if you add images into google keep from a pd from a meeting and you're like oh i don't remember what that document is called but i know it had something to do with growth mindset you can type in growth mindset and it will pull it up for you you also have a refresh button up at the top so let's say i add a note from my phone and i want to view it on my computer i can click refresh and it will pop up i can view my notes in a list view where they will be one on top of the other it makes them a little bit bigger or in a grid view personally i like the grid view but it's totally personal preference you also have your settings so you can enable that dark theme you can go into your settings and choose whether you want new notes to go to the bottom or to the top you can choose your reminder defaults you can customize it in order to fit your preferences now that is the basic tutorial for how to actually use google keep if you download that free set of headers you will already get a bunch of ideas of how you can actually use google keep such as having that power list that weekly to-do list you can create checklists for the things you have to do in the morning the things you have to do in the afternoon you also can keep a list of email templates if for some reason you can't store them in your email service provider you also can create a list of links like if you have important websites or maybe just a website that you need for this one meeting and you don't want to bookmark it you can save it right in google keep i actually have a video from about a year ago it's called my top productivity secret spoiler alert that top productivity secret is google keep where i show myself actually making some of these checklists so i will link that video for you down in the description box if you want to go and check it out for some more ideas but again make sure you get those free google keep headers because that will be a fantastic start for you head over to pocketfulprimary.com freebies or just click freebies at the top and you can have them sent directly to your email inbox i really hope this video was helpful for you if it was please give it a thumbs up share it out with your teacher friends you know spread the organizational digital love go ahead and subscribe to my channel and hit the notification bell so you do not miss any future videos as always thank you for watching i love you all so much don't forget to put your positive pants on and i will catch you in the next one

Channel: Pocketful of Primary

Views: 56,729

Rating: 4.9695635 out of 5

Keywords: teacher, classroom, vlog, 4th grade, pocketful of primary, tips for new teachers, tips for teachers, new teacher tips, teacher tips, classroom vlog, vlogger, teacher vlog, teacher vlogger, a day in the life of a teacher, a week in the life of a teacher, online teaching, virtual teaching, distance teaching, online learning, virtual learning, distance learning, michelle ferre, google keep, tutorial, how to use

Id: tjQtG0qsVyg

Length: 16min 35sec (995 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 31 2021