Recently, a number of people have asked me about the difference between My Drive and Shared with Me. While you can see files and folders that are in both sections, there are a few key differences that you should be aware of.
If you have the Google Drive application installed on your computer, items in My Drive will be automatically synced to your local machine. You will be able to see changes immediately (as long as you are online), and you can track activity for these items. My Drive includes items you own, such as Google Docs, Presentations, Drawings, etc., and folders that you have created, as well as files and folders that you have synced or uploaded. It also contains any shared files or folders that you have added from Shared with Me. Read More
By now, most of us know what QR (Quick Response) codes are. Those geometric blocky things that take you online when you scan them with a smartphone or tablet are pretty much everywhere. QR codes can be used in the classroom in a multitude of ways (to get an idea, see this post by the amazing Kathy Schrock). Read More
The school year is almost over, and I am planning my summer reading list. I love reading, and I don’t do enough of it during the school year. Here is what I have so far.
The rest of Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us by Daniel Pink
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell
Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper
Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All by David Kelley and Tom Kelley
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green (My daughter told me I had to read this since I love YA stories) and some other “just for fun” books
Today, I didn’t teach anything. I let my students teach themselves, and it was wonderful.
Although the Hour of Code was in December, we didn’t work on it then, because there were many other projects that had to get done. Now that the school year is winding to a close, I thought it would be a nice way for the kids to spend their last visit to the computer lab.
One of the classes that came in was a class of third graders. I played them the 60 second teaser video for the Hour of Code, explained a bit about what coding was, and then introduced the importance of going patiently step by step and iterating your code by showing part of a BrainPop movie, Computer Programming: One Step at a Time. (We had a limited amount of time, so I only showed them the part that covered the basic concepts.) I demonstrated the site we would be using, Tynker.com, and told them that I would not answer questions once they started working. If they ran into trouble, they had to figure it out on their own or ask another student. Read More
Today, I attended the excellent 80s themed HB Tech Fest, put on by the Huntington Beach Union High School District. The keynote by Amy Burvall was thought-provoking; I also attended an excellent session by Moss Pike on design thinking (I thought I knew what it was, but I was wrong; I am definitely going to be learning more about it in the near future) and an equally excellent session on PopcornMaker, where Dan Bennett introduced me to a web web tool that allows the user to annotate videos by adding text, other videos, links, interactive maps and other content. I had never heard of it, but now that I know it exists, I plan to make extensive use of it.
However, the session that made the most immediate impact on me was the one led by David Theriault. All of the morning sessions addressed different chapters of Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon; David’s was on Chapter 3, Share Something Small Every Day. As I read the chapter, I took down some notes. I realized that I have had this blog for over a year, but haven’t really posted as much as I should have. Read More
If you have already made the switch to Google Apps, you have probably been experimenting with the Big 3: Docs, Spreadsheets, and Presentations. These are all great tools that support creativity, critical thinking, communication, and collaboration, but have you ever taken a look at Google Drawing? It’s one of the best tools you probably never knew you had. Hidden away from view, it is easily accessed with one click of the Create button in your Google Drive.
Working with Google Drawing is easy. You can add shapes (hold down the shift key for perfect circles or squares), arrows, lines, text boxes, and tables. Images can be uploaded from your computer, added via snapshot, or linked from the web. If you need to search for an image, Google Drawing has you covered. Just click Insert > Image, choose Search and you can select from copyright-friendly image results from Google Search, the LIFE Photo Archive, or stock images (these have some restrictions when used outside of Google Drive, so proceed with caution).
Once you have created your drawing, there are many ways you can use it in your classroom. For example, you can make seating charts or create content to use with students, such as KWL charts, math drawings, or virtual manipulatives. Even better, have your students use it to make any number of products, such as word webs, timelines, comic strips, or graphic organizers. In fact, there are so many ways to use Google Drawing, we have added a new page to the LVUSD Teaching with Google Apps website. Want to learn more? Visit the Google Drawing page.
CUE is a wonderful organization and resource for educators. Every March, they hold a three day conference in Palm Springs, California. At this conference, there are literally thousands of educators (this year, 5,300) who come together to share their knowledge and learn from each other.
Last year (2013) was the first year I had the opportunity to attend the conference, and although I found it a bit overwhelming, I thoroughly enjoyed myself. I attended sessions, visited vendor exhibits, was inspired by the keynote speakers (Sir Ken Robinson and Catlin Tucker, what’s not to like?), and shared great meals and terrific conversations with my then-fellow LVUSD employee/roommate, Jennifer Peyrot, who helped me plan my schedule and gave me some tips about making the conference a success. (The best one: Go to one session just because you think it will be fun, even if it doesn’t have anything to do with what you are doing at work. I chose the Google Search Slam, and it was awesome. I even won a prize.) I came back excited, energized, and full of new ideas. I thought I was getting the most out of my conference experience. I was wrong.
It turns out that I was missing a key element of my conference experience. The best part of a CUE conference, or any conference for that matter, I have come to learn, is the connection you can make with the other attendees.
That is not to say that the other parts of a conference are not valuable. The sessions, the vendors, the keynote speakers, they were all just as wonderful this year as last year. What was different for me was that this time I had relationships with many of the other participants.
You see, over the past year, I have become a connected educator. I have developed a PLN (personal learning network) of teachers and others I can turn to when I need help, inspiration, or just someone off of whom to bounce my latest idea, someone who will tell me honestly if I’m crazy… and whether or not that should stop me from pursuing said idea.
These connections made my conference experience so much better this year than last, when I knew nobody outside of the few people from my district and only met a handful of others. This year, I began the first day of the conference by having breakfast and sharing ideas with David Theriault, Chris Long, Megan Ellis (whom I met for the first time; such an inspiring person), Linda Yollis, Andrew Schwab, and Mike Vollmert. After breakfast with such amazing people, CUE 2014 was off to an excellent start for me, especially thanks to David’s suggestion that we meet at Espresso Cielo instead of your typical Starbucks. I’m not as much of a coffee snob as the name of this blog might suggest, but I do enjoy a good cup of espresso, and the chocolate croissants at Espresso Cielo were some of the best I have had this side of the pond.
At the conference, I met many people face to face for the first time, although I already knew them from Twitter. They included (in no particular order) Jon Samuelson, Craig Yen, Sam Patterson and Wokka, Victoria Olson, Rushton Hurley, Ed Campos, Karl Lindgren-Streicher, Ryan Archer (who created a set of shared folders for collaborative conference note taking — thank you), and Jon Corippo, among others. I also reconnected with so many people I don’t have room to mention them all here. The hallway conversations were as jam-packed with learning as the conference sessions, and sometimes even more so.
How did I meet these people and become connected? I attribute it to three factors. First, Twitter. I started tweeting at CUE 2013 and engaged with people. I asked questions and shared what I could. I took part in Twitter chats (#caedchat in particular) and went to CoffeeCUEs, Rockstar camps, and edcamp. It wasn’t difficult, but it didn’t happen without a small effort on my part. It was a bit like beginning to ride a bike. At first, you are slow, wobbly, and feel generally awkward, but as your skills improve, you can really fly with just a little bit of pedaling to stay upright.
The second factor is Alice Keeler. Not only has she been a great friend and extremely supportive, she also convinced me to sign up for the Innovative Educator program run by CUE in conjunction with Fresno Pacific University. Through this program, I learned a great deal about innovative teaching and using technology in education (pedagogy first, please), but I also made lasting personal and professional connections with a fabulous group of educators with whom I have enjoyed wonderful, productive, collaborative relationships.
The final factor can be summed up in two words: Why not? This is a major part of my personal philosophy. If I can’t think of a really good reason not to do something, I do it. I would rather regret something I did than something I failed to do. As an educator, I feel that I have to try new things. It isn’t always easy, but worthwhile things rarely are.
If we want our students to learn new skills, we need to experience what it is like and model it for them when we can. In practical terms for me, this has meant that this year I presented at some local conferences and at CUE 2014. I also put on an unconference of my own, PLAYDATE L. A. It wouldn’t have been possible to set up and run this event without the help of my incomparable team of co-organizers, and being at these and other events has led to more and deeper connections with a wide group of dedicated educators.
I am excited to see how things change between now and CUE 2015. In the next few months, I am looking forward to edcampVC, to being on the faculty of CUE Rockstar Manhattan Beach and to running PLAYDATE L. A. 2014 (registration will be open sometime in late April or early May). Who knows what new connections they will bring? I can’t wait to find out.
Although it isn’t a new service, I have just discovered a tag cloud generator called Tagul, and I have to say that I love it! You may be familiar with Wordle, Tagxedo, or WordItOut, which are all very good sites (although I have been having some technical issues with Wordle lately), but if you haven’t yet come across Tagul in your internet meanderings, I encourage you to head over as soon as you finish reading this post.
Two of the things that set Tagul apart are the ease with which you can incorporate custom colors and shapes as well as the ability to link the tags in your cloud to different pages. I used the coffee cup image from the front of my website, added the text of the About Me section, and set it up so the PLAYDATE tag linked to the PLAYDATE L. A. website. It only took me a few minutes and I am very pleased by the results. Hover over the graphic to see how it works.
Tagul has several other noteworthy features. You can put words inside other words, customize your fonts (even for individual words within the cloud), export your image as a scalable vector graphic, and specify final image size, among others. Like most of my other favorite sites, it’s free, although it requires users to register with an email address.
There are many ways to use tag clouds in the classroom. Use them to highlight key words and concepts in passages from literature or famous speeches. Create two clouds using primary source document accounts of the same historic event written from different perspectives and compare them. Create custom images for report covers or website headers. (Check out this one here; it’s my first effort, but I’m pretty proud of it!) If you have another great idea, please share in the comments.
Last month, I was lucky enough to attend a seminar put on by the Bureau of Education and Research on using iPads in the classroom. The speaker, Zachary Walker, shared many valuable ideas and resources to help the attendees make the most of their classroom iPads. He also shared some easy to implement classroom management techniques to make sure that the mobile devices in your room have a positive impact on learning.
One of the reasons we like to use iPads and tablets with our students is because these devices are so engaging, but the engagement factor is a double-edged sword. When we want the kids to stay on task, it’s usually our friend, but when we are ready to have students pay attention to something else, the siren call of a colorful iPad screen can be a problem. Here are some suggestions from Zachary Walker that you can use to manage your classroom and help your students stay on task while they are using mobile devices:
Dock Your Device: Have students put their device face down on the far right corner of the desk. This ensures that they are not distracted by whatever is on the screen or playing with them under the desk while you would like them focused elsewhere.
Screens Up (or Apples Up): When you say “Screens up,” students should immediately hold up their iPads/tablets with the screen facing you. This allows you to do a quick scan of all the devices to make sure students are on an appropriate app or website.
Hands Up: Students should leave their devices face up on the desk and put both hands in the air when you say, “Hands up.” You can continue talking while you walk around the room and scan the devices to make sure everybody is on task.
Time the activity: Let the students know before they begin how much time they will have to work on the devices. Use a timer so they can keep track of how long they have. Any timer you can project for them will do. Try typing “2 minute timer” into Google or, for a more entertaining interface, install the free application Howler Timer on your computer.
Noise meter: Finally, if you have your own iPad, install the Too Noisy app. Put the iPad where students can see it or project using your Elmo or Apple TV. Let the students know that if the noise level gets too high, the mobile devices will have to be put away, and let peer pressure help keep the volume at the level you have set as acceptable.
Zachary Walker’s website, lastbackpack.com, is an excellent resource for mobile learning ideas and lesson plans. I highly recommend checking it out. If you are on Twitter, you can follow him @lastbackpack.
Just before winter break, I was in need of a quick project that first graders could do independently while their teacher and I pulled individual students to work with us. We decided to use Storykit and have them create books about the holidays.
Storykit is an iPhone app created by the International Children’s Digital Library. It works well on the iPad, but if you are looking for it in the iTunes Store, you need to look in the iPhone Apps category. It allows users to create an electronic story book that they can enhance by adding pictures, drawings, text, and audio. Books can be accessed through the StoryKit app or shared via email.
We showed the students how to create a page, take and insert a picture, and add text (about 5 minutes total), then paired them up. The children were asked to take a picture of their partner, ask the partner what he/she liked about the holidays, and then type the response using the format “He/She likes…” After the first child had taken a turn, the second partner took the iPad and created a page about the first child.
The whole project went much better than we ever expected. When there was a problem the children collaborated and solved it themselves. They helped each other spell unfamiliar words, use the camera, and troubleshoot problems. Using four iPads, the first graders were able to create pages for 26 children in just under half an hour. No adult help was required, the kids were engaged and empowered, and the resulting books were adorable.
They could have been published just as they were, but later that week, to complete the project, the teacher had the students draw cover pages, which they photographed and added to their books. She also worked with small groups on the spelling. Had she wanted to, she could also have asked each child to record a sentence. The books were saved on the iPads for the students to read and were also shared with the families via email. Here is an example (children’s faces blurred for privacy).
I could see this project being used in many ways at different times of year. It could be a “get to know you” book for the beginning of a school year. Kindergarteners could create an “I see” sight word book, perhaps with pictures the teacher has already added to the camera roll.
