Summer Special: August 1st Pep Talk

Today is the day we all must start to face the truth:

Summer can't last forever.  

With the first day of school right around the corner, now is the time to decide what we want this school year to look like.  Here is a little pep talk from one of my favorite YouTube sensations: the Kid President.

This school year, what will be our Space Jam?

Tech Tool Tuesday: Google Apps Reseach Tool

Did you know that you can search for information and images from right inside your Google Doc?

In any Google Document or Presentation, click "Research" in the "Tools" menu.

A Research panel will appear on the right.

Research Tool Example

For a general web search, type into the search bar and hover over one of the snippets until the buttons appear.
    Preview opens a snapshot of the site.
    Insert Link adds a hyperlink in your document.
    Cite adds a citation in the correct format to the footnote of your document!

For an image search, click on the gray square on the left of the search bar and choose "Images." Then type into the search bar.

To add the image to your document or presentation, simply drag it over to where you want it.  Google will automatically insert it and create a link to cite the image source!

While I love the citing and quick add features of the tool, the best thing about it is how quickly students can find Free Use images.  All they have to do is click on the little black arrow under that search bar and choose:

Free to use, share or modify, even commercially.

Now, students (or teachers) don't have an excuse why they can't give credit where credit is due, or take images that don't belong to them.  They can do what is right without ever leaving their document window.

Minute Trick Monday: Finder's Fee

COMMAND* + F

For today's Minute Trick, I am pulling out my favorite hidden keyboard shortcut.  We all know command+x for cut, command+c for copy, and command+v(Think Velcro) for paste, but do you know command+F?

This keyboard shortcut can be used on any document, website, or window to search for text.  First, a generic search bar will appear in the top right corner of the window.  As a you type, the matching text is highlighted.  It even gives a count of how many times your query appears in the window. You can use the up and down arrow to find the different places you appear.

This comes in handy whenever you are looking for a needle in an electronic haystack?  For example, looking for a specific name in a spreadsheet (a student score in building map score spreadsheets?) or a specific piece of information in an website article.  If you are writing the same email to different students' parents with the same information but have to use pronouns, you can copy the email text into a new email then find all of the "he"s and turn them into "she"s.

In my classroom, I had students use this shortcut when writing dialogue to find the very overused word "said" and replace it with more descriptive words.  You can also have them find all of the times they used pronouns or this/that to help improve their clarity.

Go ahead and try it right now.  Hold down the command and f at the same time.  When the search bar appears in the top right corner, type "command".  Do you see the highlighting?  Can you move through all the different places it is used?  BONUS:How many times do I use the word command?

*Remember, that the command button is the open apple button on older laptops.

Answer: 9 times, the word command was used.  Oops, now it is 10.

Thursday Thoughts: Taking Risks

Is it a coincidence that this quote showed up on my Facebook wall after coming home from watching many of our Emerson alums perform at the Maine South musical today?   It was quite the experience to see these kids we knew all grown up and fearlessly performing on stage.  It also reminded me of something I had noticed previously from the Student Technology Survey results.

When asked how often they are asked to do the following things at school:
    83% of our students said they were always or often able to problem-solve.
    80% of our students said they were always or often able to be creative.  
    76% of our students said they were always or often able to collaborate with peers.
    48% of our students said they were always or often able to take risks.

I'm not sure if the kids were giving us the answers that they think we want or if this is how they truly view what is happening in the classroom.  Either way, it revealed that we have an opportunity to show students the value of taking risks in their learning even if the "right answer" isn't guaranteed.

Personally, I have learned a lot about the benefits of positive risk-taking this year.  Every time I suggest a new idea for your classroom or vice versa, you are asked to take a leap.  While there have been many ups and downs, I have tried my best to have the successes outweigh the failures and appreciate your willingness to always keep trying.

With all this in mind, take a moment and think about what you would attempt in your classroom with technology if you knew you could not fail* Feel free to let me know what I can do to help make your answer a reality.

-If you want to experience a little "Where are they now?," stop by the LRC to check out the "Legally Blonde" program.  As you know, the musical itself is playing this weekend if you want to see it first hand.

-If you want more information about the Student Technology Survey, it was part of the April 8 BATC Report to the Board found here.

*My answer was starting this blog since I am not nearly brave or talented enough to sing on stage like our former students.

Web Link Wednesday: Shop around the Coach's Corner

       From the start of the blogging journey, I want to make it clear that I have by no means cornered the market on good ideas on teaching, technology or anything else for that matter.  Without a doubt, the large majority of I present here will have originated from someone else.  

     While I am "officially" Emerson's Instructional Technology Coach, there are six other ITCs in this district who have so much to offer the Emerson staff.  These are people who I regularly look to for great ideas and inspiration.  I encourage you to shop around their sites to see for yourself.

As a team, the ITCs designed the Coach's Corner to be one-stop shopping for District 64 staff.  You can access it from any of our sites, as well as the district staff portal.  Here are some of my personal highlights:

• Amanda Pelsor, Carpenter's ITC, is a Google Goddess. She also has some great "Step-by-Steps."
• Amanda Walsh at Lincoln is leading the way with Edmodo resources.
• If you are looking for Formative Assessment support, turn to Roosevelt's Caroline Schaab.
• Those of you who have used Wordle and want to take it further, Rachel Lebuz from Washington has a whole list of Word Cloud options.
• Carrie Bellen, Franklin's ITC, was the person who first introduced me to Triptico, a set of free classroom tools that are perfect for the Smartboards.
• Michael Johnson paved the way for this blog with his own Field ITC Blog.  

On the subject of blogs, check out the latest posts from the other ITC's blogs under "Blogs I Follow" on the right side on this website for even more ideas and inspiration.

No matter the source of inspiration, please let me know if there is something I can do to help you bring it into your classroom.

    

Tech Tool Tuesday: Emerson Google Docs Naming System

Student: "I know I turned it in."

Teacher: "I don't have it."

Student: "But I know I turned it in."

Teacher: "Did you write your name on it?"

Student: "Ahhh...."

We have all this conversation countless times with students in our paper classroom.  One of the things that teachers struggle with is finding papers coming in from 100+ kids, whether by hand or electronically.  It turns out the solution is all in the Name.

As I have worked with teachers using Google Docs with their students, we have come up with a simple naming system that helps you, as the teacher, find documents that students have shared with you through Google Drive.  This EMERSON NAMING PROTOCOL looks like this:

Per#   AssignmentTitle  LastName

Per# is the two-digit period number (i.e. 02, 10).

AssignmentTitle* is the exact title assigned by the teacher, with no spaces. 

(i.e. IntroPaper).

LastName is your last name (i.e. Smith).

Assignment Example: 02  IntroPaper  Smith

Remember, Google is built around the search.  Whether images on the internet or documents in your drive, searching is what Google does best.  Once students create documents using the Emerson Naming Protocol, you can use the document's name to search inside your Google Drive.

-If you search "AssignmentTitle" (ie "IntroPaper"), all assignments from any class/student will appear.
      *For easy access later on, you could organize them in the folder by selecting them all and clicking the Folder Icon. For more on organizing Google Docs, see Monday's post.

-If you search "Per# AssignmentTitle" (ie "02 IntroPaper"), all assignments from that period will appear.

-If you search Last Name (ie Smith), any assignment from that student will appear.

Disclaimer: In order to make this work, the AssignmentTitle needs to be unique to that assignment.  Also, every student needs to spell things correctly and share the document with you when they create it.  I usually pull up the Per# AssignmentTitle search up on the smartboard so kids can check that their document was named and shared correctly.

Here are some Google Classroom Poster to help getting your students started.  If we can create some consistency across all Emerson classes, creating/naming a Google Document becomes as natural to students as putting their names on the paper.  It may not end the age-old question "Did you put your name on it?" but it may help Emerson students and teachers know how to answer it.

Minute Trick Monday: Command+Click

COMMAND + CLICK

How do I organize all the Google Docs that people have shared with me without moving them out Shared Folders? 

  This question is one that I have been asked a lot as people's "Shared With Me" list has been getting longer and longer.  The trick is to hold down the COMMAND key when organizing your files.

Here's step-by-step directions on how to take a doc that is in your "Shared With Me" list and move it into a folder that you create in "My Drive." 

1.  Find the desired shared file.  (Hint: You can search for it by typing any word in the doc into the Google search bar in Drive.)

2.  Click on the box to left of the File Name in the Shared with Me list.

3.  Click the File Folder icon above the list to open the ORGANIZE window.

4.  To add the file to a folder in your drive, hold down the COMMAND button and CLICK on the desired folder(or click "create a new folder") in your drive. 

You can use this same tip if you want to organize any Google Doc into more than one file at the same time.