Over the last few years, I’ve made countless digital activities for my own students (and yours – check out my TPT store here!). Over the years, a lot of people have asked me how I do it, so I figured I’d share a bit of what I’ve learned to save you some time! These are my favorite beginner tech tips and tools for when I’m creating educational activities!
Adjusting the slide size in Google Slides
I create a lot of activities in Google Slides. In my experience, Google Slides are way easier to design in than Google Docs, and I find that it works a lot better for a majority of student learning activities. A lot of my coworkers don’t realize that you are not limited to the preset slide size! You can resize Google Slides to be any size you want. I often resize my Google Slides to be the size of a sheet of paper and use it to create most of my handouts or student activities. To do this, go to “File”, then “Page Set Up”.
Then, a small pop-up will appear. When you select Custom, you can change the height and width of the slides! Once you press ‘apply’ all of the slides in the presentation will be changed to fit the new dimensions. This tip also works with Powerpoint – my preferred design program!
A Better Text Box
Speaking of Google Slides, if you get annoyed with the text boxes that already have text in them, there is an easy fix! My students often get confused if I use one of the ready-to-use text boxes that have words like “Add Subheading Here” since they have to delete the text before they can type. To fix this, I delete those text boxes and insert a new text box. The inserted text box will not have the text already added! It is a simple tip that saves a ton of headaches. If you are going to sell your digital resources, this makes them look a lot more professional and be more user-friendly.
Bonus tip: Shade your text boxes with a light color to avoid the inevitable “Where do I type?” comments that come with invisible text boxes!
Easily Remove Backgrounds
I love creating and using drag-and-drop resources in my classroom! To do this, I insert the draggable parts to the Google Slides as images. I opt for images instead of text boxes so that students can’t accidentally change the text while dragging and dropping them! To create the draggable pieces, I use the snipping tool on my computer to take a picture of the moveable part, whether it is an X, a math symbol, a letter, or a number. However, then the image has a background that makes dragging and dropping difficult since it covers up part of the activity, so it needs to be removed to make quality digital activities! Remove.bg is a great website that will remove the background of a picture while leaving the draggable piece unchanged! It’s easy to use, free, and perfect for this kind of project!
Clean It Up with Arrange & Distribute
If you are a perfectionist, this last tip is for you! I am guilty of spending what feels like too long trying to adjust shapes, pictures, or text boxes to be perfectly spaced and in line. There’s an easy-to-use feature that will do that work for you! It’s called the align tool, and it can be found under the “Arrange” tab. Select all of the items you want to line up, and then click on “Arrange”. You can use the align tool to get them in line, and the distribute tool under it to make sure they are evenly spaced!
These are the tech tools I use most to create my class activities and TPT products! Let me know your resource creation questions in the comments!
