Last week Google Docs and Spreadsheets received an update called Add-ons. This new Add-ons tab connects documents with third party tools that add new features or functionality to the document. The Add-ons Store looks and feels very similar to the Chrome Web Store. One of the new Add-ons that I feel could have great benefit in the classroom is the Text Help Study Skills highlighter. This is a premium feature in the Text Help Read and Write for Google extension so the fact that it is being released for free in the Add-ons store is notable. The new Add-ons tab is easy to use. You'll find it located on the Google Docs or Spreadsheet toolbar. Click on Get Add-ons to browse the Add-ons store.
The Study Skills highlighter could be very helpful for teachers who like to mark-up student work by denoting specified colors for certain errors. The Study Skills highlighter makes this much more convenient than in the past using the built-in highlighting. The clear highlights option makes removing these mark-ups much simpler as well. But one of the more exciting features of the Study Skills highlighter is the ability to extract highlights into a new document. This feature could be used to structure close and critical reading activities where students identify vocabulary, main ideas, and supporting evidence from a text, and then using the extract highlights tool as notes and/or as a form of assessment. I demonstrate this scenario in the video below.
In the video I also feature the http://newsela.com (a website for leveled expository text and news) and the Clearly extension. I'm looking forward to exploring the potential of the new Add-ons for Google Docs and Spreadsheets. Have you found a good Add-on? Please consider sharing by replying in the comments section.
Newsela looks like an interesting new resource for teaching current events and reading strategies that dynamically adjusts reading levels for differentiated instruction. The site integrates with Google Accounts for easy sign-up and sign-in and allows you to create class groups for assigning and monitoring students. In addition, some of the articles include reading comprehension quizzes.
Collaborative presentations can be a great way to start using Google Drive in the classroom because “slides” act as a personal workspace for each student or group of students but with the added ability to view and even co-edit the slides of others. It’s also a great way to demonstrate the power of collaborative cloud based document creation. But remember! - Collaborative means that some decisions can affect the whole group. For instance, changing a theme impacts everyones’ slides. This is a great opportunity to discuss digital citizenship norms and respecting the work of others. Some of the suggestions below will help you to manage a collaborative document and consider the best approach for your classroom.
Step 1 - Create a presentation
Click on the create icon from the Google Drive homepage and select Presentations. You’ll be prompted to pick a theme.
Step 2 - Create a title slide that includes directions for the activity and specifies the slide criteria
Step 3 - Make a model
I find that it’s helpful to have a slide that the teacher creates ahead of time modeling the format and content examples. You can even make a template slide and use the duplicate slide feature to provide each student with a scaffolded workspace.
Step 4 - Pre-number or Pre-name the slides (optional)
You may want to pre-create the slides and label these ahead of time to designate whose space is whose. This is handy especially for first time users.
Step 5 - Sharing
Share by email - if you have a list of every student’s email (Google Forms are great for collecting these) then you can add individual students to the presentation. Click on the blue share tab in the upper right hand corner of the presentation or right click on the file from the Google Drive homepage.
The advantage to this method is that students will have access to the document via the “shared with me” tab of their Google Drive homepage and that all changes to the presentation are tracked to the user who made them. Students who tamper with the presentation can be identified using the revision history and unwanted modifications can be reversed.
Share by weblink - if you can’t add students individual via their email address you can create a public or semi-public link that allows students to access the document anonymously.
The advantage to this method is that it does not require your students to even have a Google Account. The link can be easily shared if the teacher has a webpage or uses a service like Edmodo or Moodle. A URL shortener like bit.ly or tinyurl.com are helpful for making the links shorter in the case of teachers who do not have a classroom website. The disadvantage is that anonymous can sabotage a project if expectations are unclear and monitoring is minimal. The good news is that the revision history may allow you to restore work that was mistakenly or purposely modified.
Vocaroo.com is the simplest free audio recording tool I know of. It's not perfect (no editing and no permanent storage) but it works well and it works fast. It also has simple tools for downloading, linking, and creating QR codes for the audio you've recorded. This makes Vocaroo great for quickly adding audio supports to any instructional resource.
Unlike verbal reading accommodations, I've noticed that students are more engaged by audio recordings and tend to pause and review the recordings more than they would ask me to repeat myself. The recordings also provide students greater autonomy over the pace of the reading.
In my old school we even started providing screencast and audio recordings as an option for all students. It became a universal support, destigmatized the accomodation, and became an embedded practice for supporting all instruction, not just assessments.
Screencasting is a great way to make test reading accommodations more visual and engaging. Screencasting can also be an effective way of scaffolding a reading assignment by previewing the text, demonstrating a reading strategy, and modeling how good readers attack a challenging text.
My favorite free tool for screencasting is http://screencast-o-matic.com/. With just a few clicks you'll be recording your voice, your cursor movements, and all the action on your computer screen.
Unlike verbal reading accommodations, I've noticed that students are more engaged by the screencast recordings and tend to pause and review the recordings more than they would ask me to repeat myself. The recordings also provide students greater autonomy over the pace of the reading.
In my old school we even started providing screencast and audio recordings as an option for all students. It became a universal support, destigmatized the accomodation, and became an embedded practice for supporting all instruction, not just assessments.
cc licensed ( BY SA ) flickr photo by Dean (leu) .: http://flickr.com/photos/leunix/518329490/
Today I'd like to share a resource to support digital student projects in your classroom. The premise behind this menu is to provide "voice and choice" (an essential component of Universal Design for Learning) vs. a one size fits all product of learning. Not every tool listed in this menu will be appropriate to the task you've assigned your students but many offer flexible formats for organizing and representing learning. The key here is to have a clear set of learning targets, aligned to standards that avoid strict formatting criteria like "12 point Times New Roman font" or "10 slides with 3 facts" and instead focus on content specific criteria like "demonstrates a thorough understanding of the main character's motivations based on evidence from the text" or "draws relevant connections between the historical event and a current event impacting society today".
As teachers, we can't expect to learn every digital tool out there but our students are often capable and motivated to learn and teach each other (and us) given the chance. Some of the guides, video tutorials, and student examples that I've located are better than others. Some of the resources may be better suited to older or younger students. For that reason you may also want to look at other menu type resources out on the web that are directed toward a specific grade level as well.
This menu can be presented to students in full or can be modified by cutting and pasting a smaller selection together if limiting certain choices is needed. If you would like to contribute to this Student Project Technology Tools Menu or have a tool that you'd like to see added to the list please feel free to contact me with your request. Enjoy!
This week I offered two face-to-face PD workshops focussed on using QR Codes in the Classroom. One of my main goals was to ensure that everyone left the session with a QR code that could be used immediately with students to help meet a learning outcome in their classroom.
Here are the learning targets I set for this workshop.
Know and understand what a QR code is, how to scan a QR code, and how QR codes are being used in education.
Evaluate examples of how QR codes are being used in education to determine a classroom use specific to your classroom and record this as a goal.
Create a QR Code that targets a specific classroom outcome and implement with students.
In this video demonstration I show how students can use either the Chrome Speak app or theiSpeech Select and Speak extensions to have questions read aloud in either a Moodle or Edmodo quiz. Both the text-to-speech tools are available for the Chrome browser and Chromebook. Video Link
Pic Collage is one of my favorite iPad apps. In the short video demonstration below I show how to use the frame tool to set up a basic vocabulary template and look at some ways to use Pic Collage with students as a graphic organizer. Tip: The frame tool may not work for every graphic organizer layout you would like students to use. Take a picture of a Venn Diagram, Character map, etc. that you've used in the past and set the image as a background using the background tool instead of the frame tool. Video link
I've been asked to develop a list of Chrome Apps and Extensions that enable reading and writing supports such as text-to-speech, speech-to text, and dictionary tools for students in my district. Here's my first round picks that I feel address some of these needs. Do you have a Chrome App or Extension that you would recommend? Please feel free to add your suggestions or ideas in the comments section.
For text-to-speech I recommend the Chrome extension - Chrome Speak or Select and Speak. The student highlights the text, right clicks
and selects speak.
The Google Dictionary extension will open a definition and
audio for any word on any web page by double clicking the word.
The Read & Write extension for Google Drive puts a toolbar on
the top of the Google Docs editor that adds text-to-speech, a dictionary tool,
visual dictionary tool, and special highlighting tools with extraction
features.
The Announcify extension takes online articles on sites like CNN or NYT and strips out all adds and distracting visuals, so that only text is
visible, enables text-to-speech, and has easy option for enlarging text.
Voice Recognition is a Chrome app that is equivalent to Dragon
Dictation for doing voice-to-text.
In this video I continue to discuss how to apply the accessibility features on the iPad through the framework of Universal Design for Learning. The video focusses on strategies for supporting all learners in the classroom using the iPad's built in text-to-speech settings.
Over the next few weeks I'll be making a series of videos covering different Universal Design for Learning strategies for the iPad. This first video looks at different features on the iPad that make text more accessible for all students not only by enlarging the font size but also by providing greater focus or by allowing students to add greater detail to handwritten annotations on various note taking apps.
Pixabay.com is a great place for teachers and students to find beautiful, high impact images that are available under the Public Domain license. This means they are free to use in just about every way. Of course giving credit with proper citation is still highly recommended.
Speaking of pictures. I'd also like to suggest taking a moment to view this TED-x video entitled Teaching Without Words. It hits on many important Universal Design for Learning principles and the importance of using visual feedback to support learners.
If you aren't participating in the #miched chats every Wednesday at 8pm then you should be. This Wednesday was no exception with teachers sharing some of their favorite web tools and how they are using them in the classroom. I'm most excited about infuselearning.com which I learned about in the chat last week.
Here are a few more of my Twitter favorites from the week.
MASSP iPad Summit March 26 (MSU Henry Center) - Only 35 seats left for the Michigan Association of Secondary Schools Prinicipals iPad Summit conference. If your district is implementing or planning to implement iPads at the Secondary level then you won't want to miss this opportunity to learn how schools in Michigan are transforming student learning using iPads. I'm honored to have been asked to keynote this exciting event and look forward to setting the stage for the day with what I think will be a very fun theme: "iPad Magic - How to Wrangle the Unicorns"
It's Official! Save the date. April 20, 2013 Jackson ISD will be hosting an innovative conference that plans to be half edcamp half brain trust (bringing in the REMC Connected Educators from around the state). It's sure to be a can't miss. Details to follow.
How about attending Michigan's unconference jugernaut, EdCamp Detroit, on March 4, 2013. An unconference empowers educators to facilitate and/or participate in spontaneous participant driven professional development. It's the kind of event that leads to quotes like "This was the best PD EVER!"
New Apps to check out
This one's not exactly new and it's not directly educational but the Public Radio Player app recently received a major overhaul that updated the user interface and added the ability to download episodes of featured Public Radio programs like This American Life and Car Talk. Unlimited access to most music genres, news from around the country, and great programming shouldn't be overlooked as a resource for the classroom.
This week I'm also recommending that teachers take a look at the updated version of the Puppet Pals App. Like the Public Radio Player this is a major refresh of the original app. So much so in fact that it has actually been released as a new app entirely - Puppet Pals 2. With better animations and new characters and backgrounds this is a must have app for any classroom.
Roll your own professional development
I use Weebly websites for both my edtechkit.com and ilearnipad.weebly.com sites. In my mind it is the fastest, most intuitive way to get a website up an running. While there are more advanced tools out there that teachers can and perhaps should use to represent their classrooms online I feel that Weebly is an important first step for many teachers needing to make the leap to making digital content available to their students.
My Weebly training resources are available here for individuals looking to learn a bit more about Weebly. It's also part of my flipped-training model that helps me maximize my face-to-face training time.
Thought for the week
On Tuesday I participated in a professional development day with one of our local school districts. The morning session was intended to expose the teachers in this district to the Future of Learning design process introduced to our county by Dr. Bryan Setzer of 2Revolutions. One big idea that I keep coming back to is a quote from their introductory video that states, "Design is a form of activism". This idea, that the design process is proactive, empowering, and Revolutionary is important at a time when education is not only under fire but also undergoing sweeping changes. And I'm equally drawn to a quote from the IDEO design website that describes design as "solving problems with elegance and beauty". Put these together and we have the opportunity to radically redefine education on our terms but in a manner that is unmistakably attractive. Attractive in the sense that it appeals of our aesthetic sensabilities as well as our common sense and thus lays to rest the notion that we are failing our children.
Scott Newcomb 
Brad Wilson 
Ira Socol 
Theresa Shafer 
Mike 
Eric Sheninger 
Clif Mims 
