Exporting Math from Gemini to Docs

I recently received an email asking for help with exporting math content from Google Gemini to Google Docs. So here's the problem…

Google Gemini does a great job creating math content including polynomial fractions, radicals, integrals, matrices, and more.

Note: You will want to use the "Pro" model of Gemini, rather than the "Fast" or "Thinking" models, since the Pro model is designed to handle complex math. Thankfully if you are using a school Google account, you get 100 free "Pro" uses a day, so you can make a lot of math for free.

For example here is some math I generated with Gemini:

The problem happens when we try to export that content to a Google Doc for use in a worksheet or quiz or test or such. Whether you copy and paste the content, or use the "Export to Docs" feature, instead of getting nice math symbols and expressions, you get odd looking code like this:

$$\sqrt[3]{27a^6 b^9 \sqrt{64a^4 b^2}}$$

Thankfully there is a simple and free solution to this problem. See below for my short 10-minute video where I show you how to easily export math content from Gemini to Google Docs, as well as links to the free resources you will need.

Google Sheets Pi Day Projects

Pi Day is March 14th each year (since the date is 3/14 and Pi starts out with 3.14). As a previous middle school math teacher, this is always a fun day to be a math nerd, do Pi-themed educational activities, and of course eat some real pie!

Over the years I have shared several technology activities for celebrating Pi Day in separate posts. This year I have pulled all those together in one place including:

📈 Discovering Pi with Google Sheets

✍️ Create "Pi Poems" with Google Sheets

🏙️ Graph a Pi-Line Skyline with Google Sheets

See below for this great collection of technology activities to help students explore, understand, and create with Pi!

New Equatio Math Whiteboard

As a previous math teacher, the Equatio extension for Chrome has long been my recommendation for the easiest way to add math symbols and content to Google Docs, Slides, Forms and more.

I have often shared about Equatio in training sessions and blog posts. For example, you can learn more about the basics of this tool in my earlier post "Equatio: Yes You Can Type Math and Science in Google Docs and Forms!"

Well recently Equatio got a new way to create, add, and edit math content… the Equatio Whiteboard tool.

This new tool makes it easier than ever to create and insert math content into Google tools, such as shapes, lines, freehand drawings, text, and even embedded YouTube videos.

To help share about this update I recorded a short demo video going through the basics. See below for the video and details about this new feature. And a big thanks to Texthelp for sponsoring this post!

Hearts and Charts Google Sheets Math Activities

In an earlier blog post I shared a fun math activity using Google Sheets and Skittles candy as a project students could do to tie in with Halloween, but it could certainly be done any time of the year.

With Valentine's Day coming up, I was asked if I had a similar version of the activity using Valentine Conversation Heart candies. That sounded like a terrific idea, so I made a new version of the project that uses the seasonal heart candies with little messages on them.

Very much like the earlier Skittles activity, this "Hearts and Charts" Google Sheets project allows students to practice skills including:

🤔 Estimating

🖐 Counting

⚖️ Comparing

➕ Adding

➗ Dividing

📊 And Graphing

And the Sheet is self-checking, so it provides feedback to the students as they work through each problem, letting them know if that got it correct or not.

See below to get your copy of the template, as well as written directions on how your students can do the activity.

Skittles and Google Sheets Math Activities

As a previous middle school math teacher, I always loved using practical, hands-on items to model and teach mathematical concepts. This included activities with bubble gum for percentages, ice cubes for equations, pancakes for mixed numbers, and helium balloons for integers.

Another classic favorite physical manipulative has always been candy, specifically Skittles. These red, orange, yellow, green, and purple candies have been used in many classrooms for students to explore math concepts.

Inspired by this, I have created an interactive, self-checking Google Sheets template called "Skittles and Sheets" which allows students to practice skills including:

🤔 Estimating

🖐 Counting

⚖️ Comparing

➕ Adding

➗ Dividing

📊 And Graphing

And the Sheet is self-checking, so it provides feedback to the students as they work through each problem, letting them know if that got it correct or not.

See below to get your copy of the template, as well as access a short recorded tutorial video on how it works, and also written directions.

Great Googley Activities for Pi Day

Pi Day is March 14th each year (since the date is 3/14 and Pi starts out with 3.14). As a previous middle school math teacher, this is always a fun day to be a math nerd, do Pi-themed educational activities, and of course eat some real pie!

Over the years I have shared several technology activities for celebrating Pi Day in separate posts. This year I have pulled all those together in one place including:

📈 Discovering Pi with Google Sheets

✍️ Create "Pi Poems" with Google Sheets

🏙️ Graph a Pi-Line Skyline with Google Sheets

See below for this great collection of technology activities to help students explore, understand, and create with Pi!

Google Sheets Emoji Math - Addition and Subtraction

Emojis can be a fun and creative tool for educational activities. In the past I have shared lots of ideas on how emojis can be used in your classroom for student creativity and learning. Some of these projects have included:

• Emoji Writing Prompt Generator with Google Sheets - Resource link
• Emoji Rebus Stories with Google Docs - Halloween-themed, Valentine-themed, Winter-themed
• Character Emoji Template - Resource link
• Pictographs - Resource link
• And more - Resource link

Another use for emojis is teaching math concepts. Emojis can be used to model quantities so students can learn about, explore, and practice addition and subtraction with concrete representations of the numbers.

Adding 2 smiley faces to 3 smiley faces, or subtracting 4 rocket ships from 7 rocket ships, can make the math more understandable for students.

To help with this, I have created a Google Sheet template that lets students choose the emoji they want to work with, and then practice addition and subtraction problems, while at the same time getting conditional formatting feedback to let them know if they have the correct answer or not.

See below for a short 7-minute video showing how to use this template, as well as written directions, and a link to get your own copy of the template to use with your students.

12 Days of Christmas - Guided Math Activity in Google Sheets

The "12 Days of Christmas" is a famous Christmas carol that most everyone sings, but not everyone finishes! In addition to being a classic wintertime song, it also contains a lot of opportunities for exploring math concepts.

Some of the math concepts that could be covered include addition, number patterns, number series, representing numbers in a chart, drawing conclusions from a chart, and more.

To help students explore these ideas, I have created a Google Sheets template that guides them through several tasks and questions about the "12 Days of Christmas". Since this is a Google Sheet, the activity also helps students learn about spreadsheet skills such as entering data, creating formulas, making and editing charts, and more.

See below to get your own copy of this Google Sheet template, along with a short tutorial video and some written directions to get you and your students started. And apologies in advance if the tune gets stuck in your head!

Free Webinar - Mathigon

Mathigon is an amazing, free collection of online math manipulatives, activities, and instructional content for teaching and learning math.

I had the privilege to host a free 1-hour webinar with David Poras, the Head of Content for Mathigon, where we explored all the awesome features of this free site.

The webinar was streamed live on YouTube, but was also recorded, so if you missed the live stream you can still watch the recorded session.

See below to watch the video, and to read more about the features of this awesome tool for math.

Free Webinar - Math Whiteboard

Math Whiteboard is a fantastic free interactive whiteboard tool designed specifically for teaching and learning math. 

I had the privilege to host a free one-hour webinar with Donald Carney, one of the creators of this tool. 

The webinar was streamed live on YouTube, but was also recorded, so if you missed the live stream you can still watch the recorded session.

See below to watch the video, and to read more about the features of this awesome tool for math.

Create Jamboard Math Activities with Equatio

Jamboard is an excellent tool for creating interactive learning activities for students. However, if you are wanting to create math activities, Jamboard does not have many built-in math features, other than a small collection of shapes.

Thankfully there is a powerful tool, that is also free for educators, that can be used to easily add all sorts of mathematical manipulatives, symbols, and expressions to Jamboard. That tool is the Equatio extension for Chrome. 

Equatio is a toolbar that makes it super easy to create mathematical expressions, as well as a wide variety of math manipulatives, and insert them into Google Docs, Slides, Forms, and more. We will be looking specifically how to do that in Jamboard.

See below for a 12-minute video covering all the details, as well as written directions.

Graph a Pi-Line Skyline with Google Sheets

Pi Day is March 14th each year (since the date is 3/14 and Pi starts out with 3.14). As a previous middle school math teacher, this is always a fun day to be a math nerd, do Pi-themed educational activities, and of course eat some real pie!

Over the years I have shared a couple technology activities for celebrating Pi Day. These include:

• Create "Pi Poems" with Google Sheets - A fun creative writing project where students make a poem where the length of each word corresponds to each digit in Pi.
• Discovering Pi with Google Sheets - An interactive hands-on activity where students measure real world circular objects, compile their data in a shared collaborative Sheet, then looks for patterns to discover Pi.

This year I wanted to add another tech activity and was inspired by a creative project where students make Pi-themed artwork. The idea is for students to create a vertical bar graph, where each bar's height corresponds to each digit of Pi. This gives the impression of a city skyline, which the students then color in to make their own art piece.

Although this is a fantastic paper and pencil activity, it could also translate over to a fun technology version. This project can be done with Google Sheets to add in an element of learning how to use a spreadsheet to make a bar graph, while still having fun and making a colorful creative work of art.

See below for details on how this can be done, as well as a template you can use (if you would like) to help your students with this project.

Learning Music, Art, Science, Math and more with Chrome Music Lab

When I used to teach middle school math, one unit I always loved to do each year was my "Music and Math" unit. We explored lots of connections between music and math, while learning about fractions, exponents, prime factorization, and more. We even concluded the unit with a day of student performances called "Curtstock" or "Curtsapalooza" (depending on the year).

One of the great things about music is how connected it is to other disciplines. As mentioned above, music can tie into math through fractions (duration of notes), exponents (decibels), multiples (beat), and prime factorization (harmonizing notes). Likewise music can connect with science when exploring sound waves, frequencies, and more, as has influence and occurrence in history, literature, and art.

To help explore musical concepts and how they relate to other topics, Google has created the Chrome Music Lab. This is a collection of 13 interactive "experiments" (so far) that let users create, play, and learn with a wide range of music concepts. These activities are also cross-platform, working on laptops, tablets, and phones.

See below for an explanation of each of these engaging tools...

Googley Wintertime Activities for Kids

[Updated as of December 2022]

As we get closer to the holiday break, it is expected and understandable that our students start getting a little distracted. They are looking forward to lots of days off, holiday celebrations, gifts, and more. Let's be honest … we may be a little distracted as well.

 
This is a time of year when we look for some fun activities to keep our students focused and active. But we don't just want busy work. If possible it is great to find projects that are fun, tie into wintertime themes, and still provide our students with a chance to be creative, write, or improve some content area skills.

To help out with that, I have put together eight wintertime-themed activities that use free Google tools, including Docs, Slides, Sheets, and Drawings:

⛄ Activity #1 - Build a Snowman with Google Slides

🎄 Activity #2 - Decorate a Holiday Tree with Google Slides

🧲 Activity #3 - Wintertime Magnetic Poetry with Google Drawings

📬 Activity #4 - Holiday Greeting Cards with Google Drawings

🎁 Activity #5 - "12 Days of Christmas" Guided Google Sheets Math Activity

🌟 Activity #6 - Pixel Art Ornaments with Google Sheets

❄️ Activity #7 - Wintertime Emoji Rebus Stories with Google Docs

💡 Activity #8 - Holiday Lights Writing with Google Docs

Some of these are projects I have shared in the past, while others are new twists on previous posts. Hopefully some of these will be a good match for your students to keep them busy AND learning as we head into the holidays.

Create "Pi Poems" with Google Sheets

A poem can take on many different forms: sonnet, limerick, haiku, free verse, acrostic, and more. One fun form of poetry that mixes writing and math is the "Pi Poem".

A "Pi Poem" is composed of words where the length of each word is equal to each digit of pi in order. So for example, the beginning of the poem would be made of a 3-letter word, 1-letter word, 4-letter word, 1-letter word, and 5-letter word, for the beginning of pi which starts as 3.1415. Punctuation doesn't count.

This fun student writing activity could plug into the school year in several places:

• During your poetry unit
• National Poetry Month in April
• When working on vocabulary skills, especially synonyms
• When teaching about pi in math class
• For "Pi Day" each year on March 14th
• Anytime you are looking for a fun cross-curriculum activity for math and ELA

To help with this activity, I have created a Google Sheets "Pi Poem" template. The template makes it easier to create your poem with helpful boxes for each letter of each word. See below to get your own copy of the template, directions for use, some other helpful tech hints for the project, and a sample finished product.

You're So Random (with Google Tools)

As educators we like to be well planned, prepared, and organized. However, sometimes it can be good to be a little random.

Randomization can be useful in a classroom in many ways. These may include:

• Choosing a student at random in a discussion to make sure no one dominates the conversation, and that a diversity of students can express their ideas.
• Randomly selecting questions or vocab terms for review in class.
• Randomly generating math problems with a variety of numbers.
• Randomly generating data to be analyzed, graphed, and explored.
• Creating random writing prompts for journal entries, stories, poems, and such.

Thankfully there are a wide range of technology tools that can be used to generate random numbers, data, and other information. In this blog post we will explore several Google tools you can use for this purpose.

Learn Math with your Face (and Google Docs)

We all know it is best to learn math by using our hands (interactive stuff) and using our heads (critical thinking). But how about if we also use our faces?

Back when I was teaching middle school math (in technically a different century ... that's sad) we used to do a very hands-on activity to teach unit rates. The students would use rulers to measure a partner's facial features, then put the measurements into unit rates to see how close they were to the Greek Golden Ratio. It was a really fun activity, but definitely one that would benefit from a technology update. (Hint: Middle schoolers plus wooden rulers plus classmates' faces are not always a good mix.)

So, I have updated the activity with the use of Google Docs, webcams, and a digital ruler web app. See below for all the details on how the "Golden Ratio Face" project works, as well as access to all the needed templates and resources.

Pattern Block Templates and Activities with Google Drawings

Pattern Blocks are popular math manipulatives that seem to have been around forever (at least they were around when I started teaching math 25 years ago.) The standard set includes:

• Yellow hexagons
• Red trapezoids
• Blue thick rhombi
• Tan thin rhombi
• Green triangles
• Orange squares

There are loads of fun learning activities that can be done with pattern blocks, including exploration of symmetry, fractions, tessellations, angles, and more. Pattern blocks can also be used outside of math for creativity, art, writing, and such.

As useful as pattern blocks are, the physical versions have a few drawbacks:

• They cost money to buy.
• You will always have a limited amount.
• They can get lost.

One alternative is to use digital pattern blocks. Although there is nothing quite like handling the plastic blocks in real life, students can still do loads of activities with the virtual version.

To help with this, I have created a free Google Drawings template with virtual pattern blocks. In addition to the blank template, I have also made several sample activities to show some ideas for how these could be used. See below to get more details and to get your own copies of all these resources.

Equatio: Yes You Can Type Math and Science in Google Docs and Forms!

As a previous math teacher, I have a soft spot for the pains teachers and students can feel when trying to use math symbols and expressions in technology. The same thing can be said in science when typing chemical formulas. Technology seems to play best with normal letters and numbers, rather than exponents, subscripts, fractions, and such.

Although there are many tools to help address these issues, one I have often recommended has been g(Math). This is an add-on for Google Docs, Sheets, and Forms, that provides a variety of ways to enter and insert mathematical expressions into these files.

Recently I found out that g(Math) is getting an upgrade with a new name, new features, and new format! The new version is called Equatio and it makes it easier than ever to write with math and science symbols in Google Docs and Forms. Rather than being an add-on, this version of the tool is actually a Chrome extension, meaning eventually it will be able to work in many apps beyond just Docs and Forms.

"One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish" Sorting with Google Slides

With the birthday of Dr. Seuss coming up this week (March 2nd) millions of children will be doing activities related to many of his wonderful books. I have always been a fan of Dr. Seuss' work, having read his books more times than I can remember to my kids.

At one of our school they are highlighting one book each day, with projects tied to the book of the day. In preparation for the week, they asked if I could help out with some technology ideas for some of the activities.

I was more than happy to connect my love of Dr. Seuss with technology! For the first day this week the book will be "One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish." As we thought about the book, we decided a fun related activity may be using a graphic organizer to sort fish based on their characteristics.

To do this we created a Google Slides template. Some of the slides have students dragging fish into Venn Diagram bubbles based on characteristics, and other slides have the fish already in the bubbles so that the students need to figure out what rules have been used.

See below to get your own copy of the "One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish Sorting Template", as well as detailed directions on how it can be used.