Education technology and game-based learning resources, tool tips, innovative pedagogical musings, and general "thinkalouds" of a Digital Learning Consultant. Follow my educational journey on Instagram, X , Threads and Bluesky @watsonedtech, my Facebook Page (facebook.com/edtechelixirs), and the blog hashtag #edtechelixirs. Note that opinions are mine alone, and reviews/mentions of edtech products do not qualify as an endorsement. Subscribe to the blog at bit.ly/signupedtechelixirs.
In today's challenging blended learning environment (which may consist of students learning from home, students learning in person, or a concurrent hybrid of the two), you want to maintain the basic building blocks of an effective classroom. Such a learning space should have opportunities for varied feedback, structured discussions, and scaffolded classroom management. Mote and ClassroomQ can help with one or more of these aspects!
How do they work?
Mote is primarily a feedback tool that allows users to make a voice recording up to 30 seconds long inside of a Google Docs Comment. (Mote also works inside the Comments of Slides, Sheets, and even Google Classroom.) It requires installation of a Chrome Extension to make a Mote, and accounts can be created via a Google sign-in, although neither the extension nor an account is required to listen to a Mote. In the free version, you can both create and listen to an unlimited amount of Motes. For more on Mote, please see the following Google Slide presentation I have created, along with an example Mote on Slide 3.
ClassroomQ is essentially a "hand raising" digital web-based tool; students who request help are queued up in the order they hit the button. Teachers create a free account via Google or email. When a teacher logs in, a session is begun, and a "class code" is given. (Tip: this class code is unique to the teacher account and stays the same code for every session you begin, in case you want to permanently post it.)
Students who want to join a session do not need to create an account. By choosing "student" when they visit the site, they will be prompted to type their name and enter the session's class code. Once they have joined the session, they can hit their button when necessary along with the option of adding a comment in a text box; a student will be told their place in line, and can also cancel their request. (From their session perspective, students cannot see which other students have requested help or what comments they may have made.)
Teachers will see up to 5 student names queued up in the order they hit their buttons, along with any comments. (Note the teacher interface allows you to toggle off student comments so they are not visible, if you only want names to appear.) When a teacher has resolved a student's question, the student can be removed from the queue.
One of the advantages of ClassroomQ is its extremely easy interface -- there is no way to get lost, and in fact, a teacher could easily manage a session from a small screen device like a phone.
A screen capture to demonstrate what ClassroomQ looks like from the perspective of a teacher on a phone. Note that the class code is marked out in the image, and if you turned the phone horizontally, the student name and commentary would perhaps format better.
How could you use them? Mote provides an alternative feedback method for students that appreciate a kind of commentary beyond just text (and hearing their own teacher's voice feels more personal!). Students that struggle to understand "tone" linguistically will have auditory support. If your students are challenged by reading (pre-literate, EL, and/or ECE) they will also appreciate a voice recording that you can play and pause and repeat as needed. Students that have their own Mote accounts could make voice commentary that would enhance peer-to-peer feedback as well as potentially create a "voice discourse" without the possible distractions and anxiety associated with a video commenting tool like Flipgrid. (Although in fairness to the wonderful video-centric Flipgrid, they recently have added the ability to make text comment responses to videos.)
As the video below discusses, ClassroomQ can be more than a way to digitally raise hands for help (whether your students are in person or at home, or a mixture of both); for example, the video mentions using it as a game buzzer to answer review questions. You could also gather instant feedback for how your lesson facilitation is going, determine the order of when volunteers will present, or initiate classroom discussion managed by the teacher if students utilize its comment feature. (This last idea may especially come in handy if you have blocked chat and muted student mics in a virtual meeting.)
You can also imagine some interesting possibilities for app smashing. Perhaps a student lets you know via ClassroomQ when they are ready for you to read over the opening paragraph on a Google Doc, so you then can make a Mote voice comment for next steps. With ClassroomQ, you may also selectively choose to share your screen in a teleconference meeting and let all students see student comments, as another way of facilitating discussion.
Downsides? While both tools have a free initial tier, you have to pay for upgraded features:
Mote pricing for premium features start at $19/year for an "Essential" individual plan which extends your Mote time from 30 to 90 seconds; the $39/year "Unlimited" individual plan allows for voice-to-text transcriptions of your voice comments, in-app translation of those transcripts to one of multiple language options (a potentially powerful ELL feature!), and more.
ClassroomQ pricing for premium features start at $19.99/year for individuals (school or district licensing also available) to lift the limit from 5 students in queue to an unlimited number, the ability to see who joined your session, and exportable session data.
However, the free versions of both tools offer significant usefulness and may be more than enough for your classroom needs. If nothing else, the free versions give you an opportunity for a robust try-out of the tools before you shell out dinero. Most importantly, cost is only at the teacher level -- ClassroomQ doesn't require a student to ever make an account, much less pay, and Mote voice notes can be played by students without them ever creating an account (although they need to make at least a free account to create a Mote).
Are you using Mote or ClassroomQ? How do you integrate them into your classroom? Leave Comments below!
As our district has returned to school under non-traditional instruction (NTI), I have been visiting the teachers who are in our buildings -- planning, assessing, synchronously teaching, meeting online with students in small groups and one-on-one -- as the students are unfortunately at home. As always, I am impressed with not only the teachers' innovation but their positive attitude in less than ideal circumstances. The current growth and transformation in their teaching will have long reaching effects. As our new superintendent Dr. Sugg often quotes, we are creating a foundation for "better than normal" learning when students are once again in our buildings.
Often in my classroom visits, I end up sharing an aspect of Google. I realize that I have amassed, in various one-sheets and blog entries, several helpful tips and tricks....enough to put together this blog entry as a "greatest hits" collection. Some of these are not well known, others could be considered hacks, but the common theme is that all of them are pragmatic and could be easily applied tomorrow in a digital classroom.
Calling OUT by phone in Google Meet. Helpful when your student needs to participate or be contacted but does not have Internet. (Note: this may end for the "free" educational version of Google Meet on September 30.)
Translate captions and chat in Meet. A potential game changer for EL students. All of the Google Translate languages can potentially be used!
Google Classroom and Guardian Emails. Parents can receive a weekly email "report" on what is going on in your Classroom, although it takes a few steps of setting up.
"Google Jamboard." A relatively new Google app that will soon be integrated into Google Meet. Think of it as a collaborative "digital corkboard" for brainstorming, an entrance/exit slip to assess student thinking, or a place to capture opinions.
"Google Keep." An underutilized and underappreciated part of the Google Suite, especially if you couple it with its mobile app! Make short notes, create artifacts, track and document your conferring.
Inserting audio in Google Slides. While the insertion of audio is simple, this Doc details ideas for how to create the audio in the first place, pedagogical examples why audio in Slides could help, and options for formatting the audio's appearance/playability.
Take a picture inside your Doc (or Slides, Sheets, Drawing). Did you know that you can Insert>Image and directly utilize your webcam? This Doc shows how, but also gives pedagogical examples of when this could be helpful.
And here are some of my favorite Chrome Extensions:
Mote (audio comments on Google Docs and in Classroom)
Welcome back to school! Due to a new K-8 school being built, Shelby County went to a contingency calendar and our first day back for students was today. So most of you have at least a few weeks head start on us.
Since my last entry, Edtech Elixirs has hit a happy birthday milestone. My first entry was August 1, 2014. That makes the blog five years old, with an average of a thousand views per entry (as of today, 141 entries and over 141,000 views)! Not coincidentally -- as the blog began partially as a resource for Shelby educators -- I also had my five year anniversary with the district as well. As always, I thank my blog readers for giving me the audience to share my edtech findings and think-alouds, and I thank Shelby County for allowing me to follow my edtech integration passion.
And now onto today's topic focus . . .
Back in June, I attended the third annual Deeper Learning Symposium hosted by Jefferson County Public Schools. One of the presenters was Danna Pearsall, who shared her knowledge on Nearpod. I learned about a few new features, including the ability for students to take (and then download) notes while participating in a Nearpod Presentation. These notes -- complete with the slides themselves --- can even be added to their own Google Drive! (It should be noted that the notes feature is only available if the presenter gets the paid version of Nearpod. More on that in a bit.)
An example page from downloaded student notes. This is a premium "Gold" (i.e. paid) feature of Nearpod and needs to be enabled by the teacher.
Before I go any further, I should mention that Nearpod itself feels like an old friend that I actually first tried out back in my classroom teaching days. When I came to Shelby, it was one of the earliest edtech tools I recommended to staff, and I wrote about our teachers using it in the first year of Edtech Elixirs. As much as I admired Nearpod in the past, I continue to be impressed as it grows, thrives and improves in 2019 and beyond.
What is Nearpod? Put simply, it is a teacher-paced, guided presentation tool with interactive elements that can help you assess your students in real time, as well as give you data reports to analyze later. Although you can create a presentation from scratch inside Nearpod, most will prefer importing a finished one into the platform, and that is where I want to make a tangent before discussing more about the tool itself. The real power of a tool like Nearpod is that it is a schema scaffold for tech-hesitant teachers to expand their edtech integration ability into the classroom.
How do we reflect on the deepness and richness of edtech implementation? Consider SAMR as a way of analyzing the net effect (pun intended!) of when technology is integrated into a classroom lesson:
Substitution is where new tech replaces old digital/analog tools, but the task is unchanged.
Augmentation is the same task, but there is more functionality and improvement of effectiveness because of the technology.
In Modification, you have redesigned parts of the task, and begin to see the transformative nature of the technology use.
Redefinition is the ultimate transformative experience that usually reaches an audience or collaborators outside of the four walls of the classroom. Here, we design and create tasks previously inconceivable thanks to the technology.
One of the things I love about SAMR as a reflective tool is that the focus is on the task, not the technology. There are no points earned in SAMR for mere edtech usage; it is all about integration and intentionality. As an example of this, consider Skype. When it first became a mainstream tool, it seemed like something out of a sci-fi show. (On a screen or flat panel, Skype stillreminds me of the Star Trek viewscreen on the bridge of the Enterprise.) .However, if you got a person to Skype into your classroom and just ends up a talking head that is remotely piloting a PowerPoint, how transformative is that compared to a guest speaker coming in person and droning on for an hour? You are, from a learning perspective, breaking even at best. If it is a non-interactive lecture, one would be better off with the guest shooting a video, burning it on a DVD, and mailing you the disc. (At least you could pause a DVD!) As you can see, it is not Skype itself, but the use of Skype that has to be analyzed via the SAMR lens. So it is with any technology you bring into the classroom: you need to first consider your task at hand and the academic objectives you want to meet.
The act of going from S/A to M/R means going from tech enhancement to tech transformation of what a learning experience can be, as well as going from a teacher-centered to a student-centered environment. Who is making the tech choices? Are students creating or consuming? Put another way, if the electricity and Internet go out, a S/A lesson can theoretically be improvised and continue ("I'll guess I'll lecture without pictures," or "I'll hand out a multiple choice quiz on paper instead") whereas a M/R lesson would be dead in the water.
Understanding SAMR is all well and good, and most teachers can make a Substitution move fairly easily, such as going from an overhead projector to a PowerPoint. The struggle is finding a pragmatic way to get to "AMR" edtech integrations. Here it is a question both of appropriate tools that stretch without overwhelming the educator, as well as finding a judgment-free way for the educator to grow their pedagogy. While Substitution often (but not always!) is typical of a traditional pedagogical environment (i.e. direct instruction, lecture-minded, teacher-centered), it is unrealistic to assume an experienced teacher can or even should jettison all of their former skills and tools to move into a transformative pedagogy. Indeed, there are times that Substitution (or no tech at all!) might be best, or traditional lectures and direct instruction may be necessary to properly meet the specific and contextual academic objectives at hand. The only concern is being stuck in an instructional rut of always doing Substitution/traditional approaches when other ways might be more effective or impactful on learning.
And that is why a tool like Nearpod can be a powerful tool, especially for teachers just learning to grow their edtech practice. Nearpod's original genius was its assumption that many teachers already have a storehouse of instructional material -- PowerPoints. Nearpod makes it easy to import these pre-existing PowerPoints into Nearpod Presentations. All that's left is adding interactive elements such as polls, open ended questions, "draw it" features, and quizzes. When a teacher is ready, he/she turns the Nearpod Presentation into a live session. A nice bonus: since the session will be pushed to the students' screens, you don't need a main projector or display. A student doesn't need to create an account; the teacher's live session generates a unique code only good for the current event, and a student easily joins the session with that code and signs in by providing their name. (While there are apps for Nearpod that makes it somewhat easier to join a session from a mobile device, any device with a browser and Internet access will do.) The pacing -- that is, when the slides advance -- is completely in control of the teacher. When interactive elements occur, teachers can see the data in real time, and even share a student answer anonymously to all the screens for the sake of discussion or highlighting a good model example. At the end of the live session, a final report is generated for the teacher where you can review the data/answers from all the interactive elements as a PDF. Thus, Nearpod's potential for Augmentation and beyond can be plainly seen. Students are interacting with the teacher, content and each other in new ways; a teacher can use the assessment data to impact and change instruction in real time as well as for future planning; a student can think and reflect more deeply via the interactive assessments than a Scantron bubble test could ever reveal. And imagine if, instead of Slides and PowerPoints, students created Nearpods to lead interactive presentations, or to gather data from a user group as part of a Design Thinking invention process! In short, Nearpod allows for genuine blended learning.
Here is a video which demonstrates how Nearpod led an instructor from his former mode of PowerPoint presentations and pushed him forward to a transformative classroom (1:13):
It should be noted that while the features mentioned above can all be done with the free Nearpod version, paid versions exist (currently $120 and up annually for an individual license) that give additional tools. The licensing is based on a teacher, or "creator" account -- a student participating in Nearpods never has to pay or even make an account. Additional features for the paid version include some additional interactive/inserted material elements (such as inserting YouTube videos), increased online storage space for your Nearpod Presentations (from 100 MB to 1 GB and up**), enabling the student notes feature mentioned earlier, and perhaps most importantly, the ability for students to do a Nearpod Presentation "anytime, anywhere" (perhaps personalized to student needs!) instead of only when a teacher makes a live session.
If you are interested in pre-made Nearpod Presentations, there is an online store. Thanks to a multitude of partnerships with companies such as Common Sense Media, Teaching Tolerance, CK-12, PhET, Newsela, and BBC Worldwide, the catalog is deep, with high quality lessons across a wide gamut of content and grade levels. However, while some of these are free, many of them cost from a few dollars for a single lesson up to approximately $30 for a bundle.
Other features of Nearpod that have been added in the last few years include:
Google Slides Add-On. There already was a free Chrome Extension (Nearpodize) that could take your Google Slides and convert them into a Nearpod Presentation. However, you can now easily insert interactive material while creating your Slides, then upload it all to Nearpod. From the Slides menu, choose Add-Ons > Get add-ons and search for Nearpod. Read here for more details.
Nearpod 3D. You have a gallery of over 100 three dimensional, manipulatable objects to insert into your presentation. Students can rotate them and zoom in and out. The gallery categories are Ancient Times, Amazing Places and Things, Environment, Human Body, and Microscopic. Read here to find out more.
Nearpod VR. Imagine taking your students on a virtual field trip and seeing a place in a 360 degree environment. Nearpod has an extensive amount of VR Presentations in their store -- some free, some not. Two things are outstanding about Nearpod VR. Firstly, there are incredible choices across multiple contents -- even ELA and math! (Recently, lessons were added that incorporate Historical Perspectives and Literacy, which fits nicely with new social studies standards.) Secondly, Nearpod VR works fine on any device, including Chromebooks. While phones in goggle headsets may make VR more immersive, Nearpod VR requires no special equipment or setup. For more details, read here.
The Nearpod Google Slides Add On allows you to insert activities while composing your Slides, which then can easily be uploaded / converted to a Nearpod Presentation. Note that some of these activity options only work with the paid version.
If there was a downside to Nearpod, it is definitely the price point for the premium features. While I appreciate what you get for free, and that the paid licenses have likely enabled Nearpod to endure and improve for all these years, I just wish there was a tier between free and $120+. Perhaps a middle option of $20-30 a year to allow student to take notes and teachers to give students Nearpod Presentations that are personalized "anytime / anywhere" lessons/homework?
Nearpod starts with existing edtech schema and pedagogy (PowerPoints, direct instruction, lecture) and builds upon it to create a deeper learning experience. I could mention other edtech examples that do the same, such as Google Docs, which takes what teachers and students already know about word processor programs and has the potential to improve the task of writing itself (i.e., Google Docs allows students to have real-time collaboration and use Comments for more effective peer feedback). The point here is that tools like Nearpod and Google Docs stand on the threshold between traditional and transformational pedagogy. These tools are part of a much needed bridge of a larger transitional pedagogical framework, necessary for improving not just edtech integration, but the nature of teaching and learning itself.
**Update: the storage size is updated, as of 8/14/20. As with all edtech, other elements of Nearpod described in this entry may also change over time.
In the same way that it took a while for me to get around to Google Keep, I am a little late to the Google Jamboard party! Better late than never, I suppose. This new-ish tool is a welcome and free addition to the Google Suite of tools.
How does it work? Think of Google Jamboard as a digital corkboard, where you can add "sticky notes," images, and doodles. Like most Google tools, you have the ability to collaborate with others on the same "Jam" in real time, and export the results as a PDF or image file.
You can add viewers/editors or create links to Jams -- here's a sample one I created shown in the pictures above -- which works like in most Google files.
How could you use it? Students could use Jamboard as an informal discussion tool (much like a simpler form of Padlet), as a way to graphically organize notes, or to keep track of the planning and completion of a project. It should be noted that the mobile app version of Jamboard allows for more features, such as the integration of Google Drive files, as well as making drawing easier with your finger rather than with a trackpad and cursor; there are also some options to integrate Jamboard with remote presentations.
Downsides? I have only a few quibbles. The select tool does not allow you to choose an entire doodle for easy removal, which means you have to manually erase them if you are several edits down the line. I'd also like to be able to upload images from my hard drive instead of only from Google searches, your Drive or Photos. [Editor's note 4/6/21: you can now upload image files from your computer into Jamboard!] But for a free tool that is so easy to use, it's hard to complain!
What are some creative ways you could use, or are using, Jamboard? Share in the Comments below!
Note 9/29/23: Google has announced a sunset date for Jamboard. After September 30, 2024, you will no longer be able to make a new Jamboard or edit old ones; you will only be able to view previously made Jamboards. After December 31, 2024, Jamboard will be shut down completely. For a similar whiteboard-like product that is available free for educators, check out my blog entry on Figjam.
Note 4/15/20: As with many tools, several updates have occurred to Google Jamboard since this entry was published; you can find these updates under the "snowman" three dots in the upper right once inside of a Jamboard. One of the major ones was the removal of the "jam code" function. I therefore removed the text describing this along with some screenshots of what that looked like.
Note 4/6/21: Jamboard has gone under some major improvements in the two years since this post was originally published, including integration into Google Meet, the ability to see Revision History, and more. I highly recommend watching this friEDTech video presentation on Jamboard below (30 minutes); here is the link to the Slides that went along with their session.
Recently, a teacher asked for a recommended text to speech tool for Chromebooks. Of course, a Chromebook means it has to be a Chrome extension and can't be a program to install. While there are many to be found, most text to speech extensions fall into one of two categories. The first: they are very useful but cost for their full capability (a popular example is Read & Write for Chrome). The second: they are free but offer limited usability and/or functionality.
I hadn't looked in a while, so I was glad to take a peek at the Chrome Store to see what was available now. After playing with several and reading Chrome Store reviews, I found one that I can easily recommend: Read Aloud. It is free with no hidden charges.
Note the bullhorn extension icon for Read Aloud in the upper right.
While some text to speech (TTS) tools may excel in an area or two, Read Aloud ranks highly across multiple aspects:
It is easy to use!
It grabs text from the website, simplifies the font/formatting, and puts it in an easy to read “box”; it then highlights text as it reads (although in settings, you can turn highlighting off).
Multiple male and female voices are available in a fairly normal “American” accent. These are included at no charge.(Many TTS tools have only one voice with an English affect, or additional voices cost additional money.)
It works on Google Docs.(Many do not!)
You can adjust speed and pitch.(Many only have this option for a premium/paid version.)
It is one of the few TTS tools that can read a PDF that is opened inside a tab of your Chrome browser.
It is important to note that while typical websites should be fine, Read Aloud will NOT work inside a learning management system (LMS) such as Schoology or Edmodo.However, this is true of nearly all TTS extensions (such as Read & Write), paid or free.
You can get to the settings (gear icon) by hitting the bullhorn icon, then hitting stop to end reading the text aloud. Here you can change the voice with dropdown choices, use the sliding bars to adjust speed and pitch, and turn text highlighting on or off. You can also test what this sounds and looks like without using an actual website page.
Do you recommend a different text to speech Chrome extension that is free? Share in the Comments below.
Are you needing students to make a journal, as well as see and possibly comment on each other’s blog? Finding a tool with easy visibility and simple user interface inside of some kind of protected space can be difficult to find, in addition to doing all of it for free. (While Blogger is an excellent free Google tool -- obviously I'm a fan! -- I know it is blocked by some districts due to monitoring and privacy concerns, or considered to be too complicated for their younger students.)
One way to have safe, free, and easy blogging, especially with younger students, would be to utilize and organize Google Docs in some kind of “HyperDoc” stylized fashion.* How much you do, versus how much the students do, will determine the amount of heartache and labor involved to set it up. The steps below assume a higher capability/age of student, perhaps upper elementary or older (which will make the least amount of work on you); adjust and scaffold the work flow for K-2 students as needed.
Create a Google Doc that serves as a journaling “template.” Be sure to make a space/field at top for them to type their name and a way to date each of their entries. Make it a sharable URL as "view only." Copy the URL.
Do the “force copy trick” with the URL so that, when the URL is clicked, it forces the user to copy to their own Drive.
Provide this “force copy URL” inside of your learning management system (LMS). As students click the link and save the copy to their Drive, make sure they change the words “Copy of” inside the title of the Doc to “First and Last Name” (for example, “Copy of Journal Log” becomes “ADAM WATSON Journal Log”).
Have each student open the sharing link on their new Doc. Make sure the permission is “[District Domain] Users Only, view and comment.” The student should copy this URL.
Create a simple Google Form for students to submit responses; again, link the URL in a LMS. Ask for their names, but make sure the Form automatically collects their email addresses. The students should paste their journal’s sharable URL as an answer to one of the Form’s questions. (Note: organizationally you may want to create a different Form for each class; the reasons why will become obvious in the next steps.)
Within the responses tab of your Form, make sure you create a Sheet to go with the Form’s responses. You now have ONE spreadsheet that has links to ALL of the journals of the students. Now, make the Sheet “view only” and provide that link inside a LMS for your students to access.
By clicking on the Sheet’s URL, you now have an easy way for students to access each other’s Journals and read them (without the students, or you, creating hundreds of sharing permissions). Additionally, if they Comment, they will be identified (no anonymous comments allowed) and some privacy is maintained as students have it restricted to visibility only within your domain's users. By having “view and comment” instead of edit rights will also prevent students from intentionally or unintentionally writing over each other or even nuking each other's journal with deletions. Of course, multiple Sheets also make it easier for you to look at the various journals class by class. Bonus #1: collecting the journal URLs in this way avoids receiving all of those inbox-cluttering sharing email notifications. Bonus #2: the Form and Sheet automatically organizes the journal links without you spending time creating multiple Google Folders and organizing all of the student journal Docs inside them.
One last step/tip: if students are to respond to each other's journals, make sure students understand not only what a valuable “uptake” Comment is (beyond “that is great!”), but also make the expectations clear. Should they Comment on someone else’s journal twice a week? Two different journals, or two Comments on the same journal ok? Should they eventually Comment on all student journals at least once? Do they need to reply to the Comments made by other students? Will they be assessed qualitatively (do you have a rubric?), quantitatively, or both?
Note that using this same workflow could be applied in other ways you want students to make a copy of a template, share it with you to review, and possibly have others give feedback. One example could be a Personalized Learning Plan (PLP) that students initiate, periodically reflect and edit, and share with you (and their advisors). And speaking of personalized learning, if you want to really create an intricate, HyperDoc work flow that could track mastery per standard and per student as well as link to archival evidence, I recommend taking a look at my “SCANMoST” directions. While SCANMoST was originally created to optimize the 2017 integration of Google Drive into Schoology, it could easily be adapted for Google Classroom or any LMS by utilizing the same “force copy”/template work flow.
* "Stylized" is an important qualifier here. I should definitely point out that HyperDocs are a larger construction than merely a heavily hyperlinked online document; as this article by Jennifer Gonzalez defines very well, a HyperDoc is a "digital document . . . where all components of a learning cycle have been pulled together into one central hub." The potential impact on pedagogy and personalized learning go way beyond just providing a helpful organization structure for a teacher. Nevertheless, the further you read into my entry, the closer you get to the student-centered "hubs" that would meet Gonzalez's definition of a HyperDoc.
Three and a half years ago, I wrote a blog entry titled "Garlic Necklace, Not a Silver Bullet." I discussed how we need to embrace the messiness of multiple solutions instead of trying to find the perfect one. This is especially true if you are trying the seek a single student edtech device that you hope achieves all goals: "While your 1:1 device may be one kind of device, you still have access to laptop carts, iPads, and computer labs (with large desktop hard drives and powerful processors) for specialized work. And speaking of devices that do specialized work, let's not forget that many students already carry one in their pocket: a smartphone."
That last part -- how do we find ways to integrate instead of ban the powerful microprocessor many students carry around in their pocket? -- echoed in my head when Heidi Neltner recently introduced me to a new mobile Google app, Science Journal. It is available for iOS and Android and requires a smartphone or tablet; according to their site, it will also work for "some" Chromebooks that can install Android apps. But once you get past the device and installation hurdle, it is free and an amazing resource for science classrooms.
How does it work? After installing Science Journal, you will need to give it permission to access your device's microphone and camera. You will also need to state your age, as Google wants users to be 13 and older; it only asks for this once on the first time you open the app. (This strikes me as a bit odd, since no personal data can be collected, as no account creation is possible and you cannot yet link it to a Google Drive account. That said, it does collect and send anonymous data unless you turn this off in the app's settings.)
The app starts with a "Welcome to Science Journal" experiment example you can play with, edit and archive. (Similar to Google Keep, you can "clear the screen" by archiving experiments that can be retrieved later, or of course you can delete them.) Creating a new experiment is as easy as hitting the purple "+" button in the lower right.
Once inside an experiment, you can edit the title at the top by clicking the top right pencil. The top half of the screen is where data and notes are captured. The bottom half (which can be slid up to take up the entire screen) is where you have four icon choices. The first allows you to make journal text entries. The third allows you to take pictures; with the fourth, you can insert images. The second icon is where the magic happens, as this is where you choose a sensor reading tool.
You have the following sensor tools to choose from: Ambient Light (lux), Sound Intensity (dB), Pitch (Hz), Linear Accelerometer (m/s squared), Accelerometers for X, Y and Z axis, Barometer (hPa), Compass (degrees), and Magnometer.
By utilizing your device's various sensors -- accelerometers, light sensor, microphone, compass -- Science Journal allows you to see real time data as you move the device or expose it to sound, light and other stimuli. By hitting the icon in the lower left black band, you can take a picture "screenshot" of the data which gets added to your experiment's top half data collection area. By hitting the red button, you can make a playable "recording" of data that is added to your collection area. By sweeping up and hitting a grey "+" button underneath, you can open another "card" for a different sensor reading tool to happen simultaneously.
Last but not least, you can make some adjustments to the sensor reading tool by hitting the three dots on the right of the sensor tool name. One of the options is to "enable audio." This creates some pronounced auditory feedback as the data input changes! (You also hear this in the data "recordings" discussed above.)
One word of caution. Speaking to colleagues about this app, a common concern discussed is students getting . . . ahem . . . so excited about science that they risk damaging their device as they enthusiastically gather data. While protecting school devices is important, you also want to be able to tell an unhappy parent if little Johnny breaks his iPhone that you had a thorough class conversation about proper management and care of technology. Even better: if you are asking for students to install the app on their own devices, a letter home stating your purpose and getting parent permission first may be a good proactive choice. (You know what? That 13 and older age requirement may now be making more sense.)
How could you use it? The ability to use this app in a science classroom or lab (individually, in collaborative groups, or in a station rotation) is pretty self-explanatory. The key is that Science Journal empowers students to be experiential, inquiry-based learners. I imagine this app could be helpful in the prototyping and early research stage of Design Thinking. The journal entries jotted in the app could be the beginnings of deeper reflections or detailed lab reports, and would then be copied and pasted into other places such as Google Docs. (Consider taking screenshots that you can plug in as images inside a Google Doc, Slide or Drawing.) And why not have a cross-content PBL with science and music? The band OK Go has an educational site full of "inspiring tools for playful learning," and some of their experiments (like this one) specifically utilize the Science Journal app as a music making tool!
Downsides? I wish Science Journal could work as a web-based product, perhaps through a Chrome Extension, but keep in mind that anything bigger than a tablet begins to get unwieldy as you start flipping, spinning and moving your device around to take readings. More importantly, I hope that it soon allows integration into your Google Drive account, so your experiments could at least be saved to the cloud and possibly shared and published.
If you are using Science Journal, share your stories in the Comments below!
Update 9/22/20: Google announced that the Science Journal app will be removed from the iOS and Google Play Stores after December 11, 2020, at which point Arduino will be creating their own app version built on Google's open source code. This will eventually re-integrate Google Drive with Arduino's version of the app, but that won't be the case on day one. If you have already installed the app, it will not be removed from your device, nor will your data be deleted -- however, Google will no longer support the app with updates or help. For more on the announcement, click here.
Sorry for the long blog break! With Shelby students back to school since August 1, I have been busy helping to onboard multiple new digital platforms for our district. Let's break the silence with a discussion of one of the newest members of the G Suite apps, Google Keep.
Google Keep is a free tool optimized for making short notes, and like the rest of Google Drive, saves it to the cloud for easy access across devices. At first, I didn't jump to use it -- I have been a fervent fan of Evernote back to my classroom teaching days (up to nearly 2000 notes as of this entry, if you must know!) and wasn't convinced in what ways Keep filled a needed niche. But I've grown fond of it, not least because of how others have demonstrated its utility to me. I've discussed Keep in several presentations over the past year, and it is one of the tools I'm most likely to hear about from attendees months later. So with that in mind, I thought it time to give it an Edtech Elixir blog entry!
How does it work? You can access your Keep three major ways: by opening a new browser tab and going directly to keep.google.com, inside of a Google Doc by going to Tools > Keep notepad (only for business or education accounts), and lastly, through its mobile app. The mobile app has some unique features; more on that in a moment.
When looking at your full Keep inside a browser, you can see your notes as tiles that continue downward as the newest notes start at the top. (You can also "pin" notes to keep them at the top.) Creating a new note can quickly happen by utilizing the bar at top. Various options appear as you make the note or as you edit it later, including attaching pictures, making a simple drawing, or creating a checkbox "to do" list.
From the left side, you can quickly navigate to certain notes. Examples include a specific label, just your reminders, or notes you have archived. Archiving can be a good way of clearing the field of notes that are no longer useful or relevant, without actually "trashing" them.
Notes can have "Reminders" added. What is intriguing is that you can choose to make it time based (which will tie into your Google Calendar and remind you accordingly), or you can make it place based. With Google Keep as an app on your phone, that means you will be pinged once you get within so many feet of a place. An example might be getting reminded to buy milk once you hit the parking lot of your grocery.
Notes can have collaborators. This allows one or more people to have real-time editing rights. It's important to point out that currently there are no "view only" options for notes, so an editing partner can do their worst and there is no function like "version history" to easily revert to a previous incarnation.
As ways to organize your notes, you can change the color of the note itself, or add "Labels." Colors can create a personal visual cue for certain types of notes. Labels can create a system of tags that allow you to sort your notes into categories by utilizing the Keep navigation menu on the left.
At the bottom of the note, the "three dots" menu gives you several more options:
If you upload a picture, you can grab its text so you can edit and manipulate. From playing around with this feature, it is remarkable how accurate it works! (An example is below.)
Under the same three dot menu, you can also "Copy to Google Docs." If you feel like the note is beginning to chafe under the restraints of Keep, this is an easy way to grow it with a quick export. From a writing perspective, the brainstorm ideas or first paragraph prompt responses of a Keep note can become a full blown Doc when the time is right.
The Keep mobile app allows you to view, sort, and create notes much in the same way as the desktop version. However, there are several features unique to the mobile version. Drawing (either on a blank canvas, or annotating a picture) is a much easier interface on a phone or tablet. Voice recording is only possible on the mobile app. On the desktop, you can upload images, but the mobile app integrates the device's camera so you can take pictures.
Last but not least, there is a Google Keep Chrome extension. This is especially useful if you want to quickly clip and save URLs of sites to your Keep.
Back in June, I was a facilitator for the #KyGoDigital Northern Kentucky Regional. It made a little history as the first statewide virtual PD event. In one of our breakout sessions, I discussed Google Keep during a Hangout on Air (37:00). It can serve as an overview and live demo of the tool:
How could you use it? For those that love Post-Its, Keep is a tool that naturally takes that same "quick note" idea and expands the concept digitally, allowing for better organization and making it nearly impossible to lose your thoughts.
My wife and I both have Android phones and personal Gmail accounts, so we have found Keep to be an easy way to make collaborative shopping lists. One of us can add items as soon as we think of them, which the other will see in real time; as a person shops and checks off items, it's also easy to see their progress through the store! For school, consider how you and your colleagues can also share similar lists of things to get or tasks to accomplish.
By creating an individual note for each student you mentor or need to confer with, then collaborating on that note with the student, you can create a great system for capturing conferring notes and seeing what the current goals are. Collaboration allows for it to be a virtual dialogue. In theory, this note could eventually be exported to a Google Doc at the end of the year as a longer record of the student's progress and growth. What a wonderful way to track and monitor personalized learning!
If you want to capture learning (either in pictures, observation notes, and/or voice recordings), Google Keep on a mobile device could be a great way of doing so. This doesn't have to only be done by teachers! Students with their own phones or tablets could do it for themselves. The students could then use the Keep artifacts as a starting point for portfolio collections and deeper reflections.
Daniel Edelen, a former teacher at Shelby's Clear Creek Elementary, was one of the first to show me the instructional possibilities of Google Keep. The following Facebook Live video (12:00) was from our 2017 Edtech Share Fair, where Mr. Edelen briefly describes how he used Keep with his students. (An excerpt of the video also appears in the #KyGoDigital session above, but here is the full presentation in better quality.)
Downsides? The formatting of text is very limited -- not only are you unable to change a font or text size, but you cannot even bolden or italicize. Without some kind of organization structure (pinning, color coding, labels, archiving), it may become unwieldy as you scroll and scroll through your growing notes. I would like to see a "view only" sharing option to protect from the potential editing complications of adding collaborators. However, in fairness to the tool, the best use of Keep recognizes that it is optimized for quick content creation and easy integration across your Google Drive cloud access; more lengthy or complicated documents would be better suited for Google Docs.
As I mentioned in the beginning, I love Evernote. With my many years of crafting Notebooks and Tags to organize my digital life, as well as its robust content formatting and options, I will not give Evernote up any time soon. Still, it's worth pointing out that I pay for the Evernote Premium features that allows, among other things, a significant increase of material uploading capacity. On the other hand, Keep is free, very user friendly, just one click away from your Google Drive, and easy for collaboration with colleagues and students. I highly recommend taking some time to try it out!
How are you using Keep? Are you a fan of Evernote or another cloud-based notetaking program? Share in the Comments below.
Summer is looming, and the last day for students is either already here or coming soon. It is also a natural time of transition. Students and staff may be leaving the district, but they don't want to leave their oodles of Google files and folders behind. Additionally, educators may be the owners of Google goodness that others will need access to after they are gone. What to do?
Depending on your needs and situation, one or more of the following tips should help.
1. Transfer ownership of your Google files and folders.The process is simple to do (while perhaps tedious one file/folder at a time) and done in the same way you share viewing and editing rights in Google. Keep in mind that there's no going back once you transfer, and it would be a good idea to give a heads up to your administration and the new owner what you're up to. Also, for your educator/business account, you cannot transfer ownership to a personal account outside of your domain, or vice versa. You can only transfer ownership between two domain accounts or between two personal accounts.
2. Utilize Shared Drives. I go into more detail about Shared Drives (formerly known as "Team Drives") in a previous blog entry, but here are some highlights:
Any files and folders made by a member of a Shared Drive remain in the Shared Drive, even if the member who created the files/folders leaves.
Unlike individual folders in a person Drive, Shared Drives are easily accessible by your Google Administrators for your domain. This can come in handy. For example, say the creator of the Shared Drive is the only person with "full access," and they leave the district. Google Admin can (re)assign the "full access" rights to another member of the Shared Drive, along with other management functions.
You can move your personal files, but not folders, into a Shared Drive. (Only Google admin for your domain can move folders into a Shared Drive.) For more information and limitations on migrating files into a Shared Drive, read here.
3. Use Google Takeout to copy files and folders to your personal Drive. This is an option if you have a G Suite Education/Business account. (Those with personal Gmail accounts have options to download their data.) It is a straightforward way to copy, not technically "move," the contents from one Drive to another. There are three things to keep in mind. First, while a G Suite for Education or Business account has virtually unlimited storage space, a personal (free) Gmail Drive does not. (You might want to consider an upgrade, paid annually.) Secondly, the transfer itself may take several days to complete; don't wait until the last day of your G Suite access to start the process! Third, when you do Takeout, the default is to also copy ALL the files/folders that have been "Shared with You." I highly recommend that you take a bit of time to review these before starting your Takeout; any that you don't want copied to you, go to the Share rights for that folder/file and remove yourself from sharing access. While you can easily see in your Google Drive the size of your own space used, it's these "hidden" shared folders that exist on other people's Drive that can quickly cause a rapid bloat in your Takeout copying process.
The directions for Takeout are pretty straightforward. While logged into your G Suite account, go to this site and put in the account that should receive the data. A verification code will be sent to that account's Gmail. Once you get the code, enter it and the transfer can begin.
Have a happy, restful, and invigorating summer!
Update 6/20/18: I discovered you cannot transfer ownership between a personal account and an educator/business Google domain account. I added this information in #1.
Update 5/6/21: A few years back, "Team Drives" were renamed Shared Drives. Since I annually pointed back to this entry at the end of every school year, I edited the language above to reflect the name change in order to avoid confusion. I also slightly edited the information about the limits of moving files and folders into a Shared Drive, reflecting the latest Google updates in functionality.
Update 8/20/22: After recently doing Takeout, I personally became very aware of the potential "Shared With Me" folder bloat problem. I added a disclaimer in #3 above, along with a link for how to pay for a Drive space upgrade.
Greetings from the last month of the 2016-2017 school year! As we near the end of one cycle and prepare to begin again in July, I have had the pleasure and privilege of recently attending and presenting at two professional development opportunities with one more major regional PD coming in August!
For the third year in a row, I attended the free Innovations for Learning conference in Lexington on June 1. (For the first time, their registration numbers resulted in a "sell out"!) In the morning, I partnered with the KDE KyGoDigital team to work with CIO's and TRT's about how Google apps and other key edtech can impact instruction. In the afternoon, I presented a few sessions on game-based learning / gamification, as well as innovative presentation tools for teachers and students. This last session was livestreamed via KDE's YouTube channel:
Note: CheckThis, the last web tool in the presentation above, just discontinued its service.
IFL is an incredible and generous opportunity from Fayette County to learn, share and network. I highly recommend attending it next summer if you can, and follow the conference hashtag at #IFLLEX.
On June 7-9, Jefferson County Public Schools had its first Deeper Learning Symposium. (Follow their hashtag #JCPSDL.) Nearly two thousand JCPS educators descended on the Kentucky Exposition Center to expand their conceptualization of what learning needs to be. As a person who had their presentation proposal accepted (once again on the topic of game-based learning), I was a fortunate non-JCPS attendee. While several sessions were intriguing, one of the more inspiring sessions was a keynote screening of the documentary Beyond Measure, which happens to feature the journey of Kentucky's Trigg County Public Schools from traditional methods into a new mode of teaching and learning. I was excited to see educators, many for the first time, talk about using Twitter, competency-based education, the power of PBL, and so much more!
As we look ahead, don't forget that EdCampKY will be at Bardstown Middle School on August 26, 2017. Be sure to get your free tickets here!
Update: Note that "Team Drives" have now been renamed "Shared Drives." As of 8/12/19, this entry still has valuable information, since the functionality described below remains the same.
Welcome to Derby Week! Coordinating a trip to the track, or the right outfit and hat with your significant other's wardrobe, takes some collaborative effort. So the timing of Team Drive arriving in our G Suite domain on such a week is fortuitous. Okay, maybe Team Drive can't really help with planning your infield festivities, but it can help colleagues with a better way of working together.
The video below gives a brief (4:47) and entertaining introduction to the tool (poor Jenny and her lunch!):
You're probably asking yourself, "Why use Team Drive? Can't I already create folders and files to share?" The short answer to the second question is yes. However, Team Drive can help resolve or avoid some common problems I've seen and dealt with for our domain, and gives you more options for managing access to materials.
(Cue announcer voice:) "Has this ever happened to you?"
You share a folder with a colleague. However, they put that folder in one of their shared folders, either resulting in unauthorized access or annoying requests sent to you for permission to access by people that don't need it. (Keep in mind that sometimes just the name of the folder or file may reveal private information.)
A file or folder is inadvertently moved by a colleague completely out of its original spot or is deleted, so others lose access.
Subfolders grow and grow, which increases the risk that one or more people with access can view things they shouldn't or have access to materials they don't really need.
A department creates a shared folder, then another, then another. Over time, all these folders clutters up your Drive (especially your "Shared With Me"), or they become difficult to find. If only they were all in one easy to find, searchable location . . .
A person creates a folder (or a whole tree of them), then leaves the organization. When their Drive is shut down, the materials may get lost.
Team Drive can help us avoid these issues, mainly by minimizing the damage caused by overlapping nested shared folders that give full editing rights to more people than intended. By creating unique Team Drives for ongoing projects / grade team levels / schools / building administrative needs / district programs, you can keep work distinctly and effectively outside of your personal Drive. You can also minimize or eliminate movement or deletion of folders and files, especially if you micromanage the permission levels of the Team Drive members (which in my opinion seems easier in Team Drives):
Note the difference in Team Drive's "edit access": the user could edit a file or upload new ones to folders, but he/she can't move or delete files, unlike editing rights in personal Drives.
Team Drives can live outside of one person's account, so when a person leaves and has their Drive shut down, it won't be as catastrophic. You can better organize your Drive experience by having shared folder tree hierarchies become Team Drives instead of yet another folder sitting and cluttering up the top of your personal Drive. Lastly, keep in mind that students would have the same benefits from making a Team Drive around a collaborative effort (for example, around a unit's PBL work).
I've started to play with Team Drives, and here's a few findings. While you can always change your Team Drive access levels (add or delete members, change a person's level), you don't have the same "file to file" ability to change permissions like you do in personal Drives. For example, if I decide Bill has "view access" to a Team Drive, I am unable to make one of the Docs in the Team Drive editable for him. Bill will have "view access" to everything -- unless, of course, I change his level. So make sure to give each person the highest level you feel comfortable granting, and only allow full access to a bare minimum or just yourself. Speaking of "full access," I like that only users with "full access" can move or delete files. (In an individual Drive, a person with editing rights can inadvertently wreck havoc.) Since permissions in Team Drives can only be established at the top, consider access for Team Drives as time savers for permissions you may have had to decide for every item and level.
The ability of your Google Admin to view and manage the Team Drives is also interesting, and perhaps one of the unique strengths of Team Drives versus personal folders/files. What happens when the creator of the Team Drive leaves your G Suite domain? The Team Drive continues and the members remain, although your Google Admin may need to designate someone with full rights so that it can be self-managed. If all the members leave your domain, the Team Drive goes into limbo; however, your Google Admin can add members and manage their permission rights until passing the full rights baton to at least one of its members.
Last but not least: I highly recommend people create unique Team Drive names. For example, from your district Google Admin console perspective, "4th Grade" could belong to any of your elementary schools, whereas "CCE 4th Grade" quickly helps an admin recognize it belongs to Clear Creek Elementary.
For more information on Team Drives, check out Google's online help and directions. Happy collaborating, and may your Derby horse win all the roses! Update 5/3/17: I added a picture of the Team Drive access levels (from the Google online help), more information on my "few findings," and some minor edits. Update 6/12/17: I added some more details about what happens when the owner of the Team Drive leaves your domain, along with the short paragraph about making unique Team Drive names. Special thanks to Chris Walsh for the information!
Since our 1:1 rollout, one of the most popular requests from teachers is a way for students to quickly share to a central display -- mainly, a projector screen. There are various “sharetech” devices we have out in our district environment that help with this (AppleTV, Chromecast, Screenbeam), and the issues usually boil down to:
Two of these are not device agnostic (AppleTV only work with iOS devices, Screenbeam with WIndows).
This sharetech sometimes works inconsistently on school wifi, especially when students are on a different network than the teacher or the device itself.
The sharetech can be pricey, making a “per classroom” equitable solution costly.
Since many of our (older) projectors are VGA but these devices are HDMI, it requires adapters or special cables, costing even more money.
This year I discovered Google Cast for Education. (Note: only people with G Suite for Education accounts can be “receivers,” but anyone with an updated Chrome browser can cast.) It’s free, and works through the Internet, which means it doesn’t matter if people are on different networks. Still, it sounded too good to be true. Are you telling me that even on school networks, so long as the teacher is connected to his/her projector, a student could just share their screen with a click? Without buying any hardware? For free??
After a request by Amy Dickenson (a fifth grade teacher at Painted Stone) for ways that students can share their screens, I took an investigative plunge. As far as the answer to those three questions above, the short answer is: yes! I next enlisted Ms. Dickenson and Dan Edelen (teacher at the 3PT program at Clear Creek) to try it out. More on their findings below!
Here is a short (1:25) video overview of the tool from Google:
How does it work? First, make sure your actual browser is logged into your G Suite for Education account. Click on the little button in the top right of your browser that has your name. Make sure the account shown is your G Suite — if not, log out and log in with the correct credentials.
Next, the teacher should install the app. Students do NOT have to add the app in order to cast to someone, so long as their Chrome browser is version 52 or higher.
The first time you launch the app, it will ask to establish some settings.
Choose a “Receiver Name” — that’s you! (Something like “Mr. Watson’s Computer” is probably good enough.)
I would recommend checkmarking “Automatically full screen new presentation sessions” but leave the other two uncheckmarked.
You can always change the Settings later.
You are now ready to receive! (You can close the app at any time and launch it when you like. Remember, no one can cast to you unless you have the app running, and a student can never “hijack” your computer.)
In order for students to “find” you, teachers have to add student names to allow them to “see” your device. Click the blue Share button while casting and add their Google account emails and the appropriate permission level. (Can they present automatically as soon as you are casting, or have to request permission?) This interface is very similar to how you would share a Google Doc with others. Note that you only have to add the names once, not every casting session. Also, Google Cast for Education automatically pairs up nicely with Google Classroom (you can set up permissions for an entire class instead of individual students).
Students can cast to the teacher’s device by:
clicking the Google Cast app icon in their Chrome browser and choosing the correct receiver name (if not installed, that’s ok…try the other two options)
right click inside their current Chrome tab screen, choose “Cast to…” and choosing the receiver
clicking on the Menu (three lines) or More (three dots) in the top right of browser, choose “Cast…” and choosing the receiver
You can choose to cast just the current Chrome tab or your entire desktop.
One last note: as a teacher, you could cast from one of your devices to another of your devices attached to the projector. (For example, from your laptop to your desktop computer plugged up to the projector.) Just follow the student instructions on your “mobile” computer to cast to the “fixed” computer, and follow the teacher directions on the receiving device. You do NOT have to put yourself on the permission list.
An educator made a comprehensive video showing how to use Google Cast with shots of the teacher and student screens (5:34):
How could you use it? Ms. Dickenson discussed how this makes student sharing so much easier. For example, she has a student who will teach a seminar on how to turn Slides into a movie; the student presentation can be shared without plugging in and out of a projector. It’s also faster casting versus sharing through Google Drive; with a click, the class can see the student tab/desktop. With a “fixed” computer in place, others can easily be mobile and share (students AND co-teachers). As Ms. Dickenson put it, “I like it, because it won’t always be my material on display -- it will be the students, too. It gives them a voice, and help them believe what they create is important and they can change the minds of classmates, and even the world.”
Mr. Edelen was excited about the idea of creating stations around the classroom, centered around displays and Chromecasts. (The ability to cast to a Chromecast as well as a receiver computer is built into the function and app.) Sharing can occur at a rapid speed. He also discussed experimenting with possibly casting a tab to one display while casting his desktop to another!
Downsides? When I played with this on our network, I’ve noticed that when you set person for “Request permission,” there may be a long delay for the request to show up on the receiver device, or it may not show up at all. You may need to play with permission access to get this to work; while “request access” is likely preferred, try “present automatically” if you have trouble. (I should note that Ms. Dickenson and Mr. Edelen did not have any trouble.)
If students install the Google Cast for Education app, they could cast on each other’s devices. This could get troubling without the proper digital citizenship culture, but remember: you can only see a cast if the app is running, and casting can be controlled if the receiver makes sure they have to give permission first. Also, you could argue that students can already share a Google file with “bad stuff” too.
I hope that Google Cast for Education creates an easy and free way for students to share their presentations, exhibitions, and thinking in a whole class environment! Be sure to share your stories and ways to use Google Cast below in the Comments.
