Google Voice for Your (Virtual) Classroom

Google Voice is a FANTASTIC tool to use for contacting parents (or anyone, really) while shielding your personal phone number from the public (or just your syllabus. LOL)

Besides simply having a separate number to give out to students and parents on my syllabus, I also enjoy using Google Voice for:

• Texting with families instead of calling
• Whether your parents don't pick up the phone or you yourself would prefer texting, its fantastic as another channel of communication that doesn't require parents to signup for something else (like Remind or Classtag)
• The freedom to communicate from my laptop OR my cellphone (or you could also use a tablet)
• You can place a call right from your school laptop using on the Google Voice app (or use your smartphone, the old-fashioned way)
• Voicemails (and a transcription of the recording) that come straight to my email
• If the transcription is good enough, (which it usually is), you can get the gist of what the parent needs without having to listen to the voicemail at all!
• Screening calls
• This setting prompts callers to say their name before it connects to you, so you can answer the call with confidence that if there's a conversation you need more time to prepare for, you can still send that caller to voicemail.

Check Out These Tips for Searching In Google Drive

How's the organization on your Google Drive looking? Kind of like your desk?

I suspect that most folks' Google Drive models their organization in real life - if you've got everything physical filed away perfectly, you probably have a similar organization digitally. If you have NOTHING physical filed away, your Drive is probably nearly folder-less. My Drive is a mixture of the two, which basically means, I know better than to NOT organize, but often fail at it and just keep all the files in the huge main "My Drive" folder, which is the same as piles on your desk, I think.

That doesn't mean I'm not without my conventions and methods.

I try to name similar purposed files using a similar structure. For instance, my notes each week for the graduate class I'm taking currently are all named, "Gifted Class - mm/dd/yyy"

When planning projects, the FIRST thing I do is make a folder. Okay, not always, but when I do, its really helpful. You'll save a ton of time when kids ask you to reshare those directions or rubric for the nth if you don't have to search your computer for that for the nth time.

Use the specific Slides, Docs, or Sheets URLs. If I know that the file I need is a certain filetype, I'll often go to the URL specific to those to hide the clutter of those other files from my view. For example, the Slides URL is slides.google.com. This is probably a more cumbersome method of just searching in Drive by filetype, but this helps me to declutter my thinking and focus on the task at hand.

I think these methods are helpful for my digital workflow, but their utility is all predicated on the fact that I plan on SEARCH being my "organization" method in the first place.

Check out these search tips from Kasey Bell at Shake Up Learning to make your search more powerful!
Shake Up Learning - 8 Fantastic Ways to Find Anything In Google Drive

"Hangout" with an Expert

My district is holding a STEM Expo next week, and I thought this was an excellent opportunity for my AP Stats students to present the statistical significance projects they design and conduct at the end of the semester each year.

The only problem with my vision was that I don't have any experience on what presenting a poster at a science conference looks like. From what I've heard from a couple of my friends that are/were STEM graduate students, its not really the same as showing some PowerPoint slides and discussing.

Enter my friend of a friend, Washington University doctoral student, Ryan Watkins, who has presented a poster a few different conferences. She did me a super solid and met with my class at 7:30 this morning.

Ryan's bio:

Ryan is a graduate student at Washington University in St. Louis, finishing her Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Science. She graduated from the Florida Institute of Technology in 2010 with Bachelor's Degrees in both Physics and Space Science. She have completed three NASA internships — two at Kennedy Space Center as an undergrad and one at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. She was appointed as a NASA Student Ambassador in 2008 and is actively involved in STEM outreach at all age levels. She has published papers about the effects of rocket exhaust on lunar soil and is currently studying volcanic regions on the Moon using orbital images from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. She plans to continue researching the Moon and become involved in planning future planetary missions after she graduates. She dreams of becoming an astronaut one day, and hopefully be the first woman to walk on the Moon.

Before the Hangout, I sent Ryan's bio to my students through Google Classroom and had them all respond with 2 questions to get help them prepare and make the most of our time. I think the best question from a learning/work perspective came didn't actually get asked.

"What are the qualities a good STEM poster should have (kind of like an informal rubric I could refer back to)?"

It's not entirely common that I will have students (especially earlier than the day before the due date) ask for a rubric to guide their work. And that he even thought to ask someone else (sort of outside the classroom setting) is especially impressive to me. (She ended up sending this great resource from NYU with tips, tools, and guidelines for research posters right after our Hangout)

HANGOUT VS. FACETIME VS. SKYPE
I chose to do this via Google Hangout today for a couple of reasons:

• I wanted to let another AP teacher in the district whose kids are also presenting at the Expo in on the broadcast
• I wanted to archive it in case my chronically absent students were absent, or the kids just wanted to watch it again.

I could have accomplished the 1st goal via a regular Hangout, but to record it, I would have to have been running screencasting software on top of my window (which would be the only way of recording a FaceTime or Skype), I was worried about lag on my network as it was, so asking my computer to also due more seemed like pressing my luck.

The best feature of doing the video chat via Google Hangout was that I could do it as "Hangouts On Air," which automatically broadcasts the chat live to your YouTube channel and then archives as a regular YouTube upload after the fact (which is how it is embedded earlier in this post).

OTHER CONSIDERATIONS
Video chatting or live streaming can be taxing on a network, so if at all possible, you should try to schedule your chat away from peak times (for us, its lunch time), or at the least, inform your technology department and perhaps they can clear some extra bandwidth for you ahead of time.

We spent several minutes before we actually got started getting "in" the Hangout and then getting my settings right before we even "started" the interview, so if you're crunched for time, its good to know that you can start the Hangout before you actually start broadcasting it.

Hangouts On Air and Hangouts actually live in different areas of your Google world. Hangouts you setup via Google+ or the Hangouts app, but Hangouts On Air need to be setup through your YouTube account. Here's some info on getting started with Hangouts On Air.

Algebra on a Chromebook: Google Search Math Tricks

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Need a calculator?
Need a graphing calculator?
Need a unit converter?
Need to calculate a volume?
Need to calculate an area?
Need to find the measurement of the side of a shape, given one of its volume or area?

Your students (and you) can use Google Search to perform all of those tasks without ever leaving the browser window. Does it take the place of having a standard, standalone, scientific calculator? Of course not.

However, knowing these Google search math tricks help me to work more efficiently when I'm in the flow of a project. Having a browser window open is ubiquitous to the modern computer experience, so as often as possible, it makes a lot of sense to me to utilize what I've already got open and available. If I can perform the task without going to a specific online calculator or grabbing my physical calculator, it just makes sense.

So what all can I do?
1. Perform calculations the same way you might on a handheld calculator.
You can even do square roots or logs if you know the proper notation.

2. Graph equations of functions. 

Include a comma between equations to do more than one. Trace for specific values by hovering your mouse cursor over the function.

3. Calculate the volume or surface area of a 3D solid. 
Just type in volume formula of _________. Cone is shown here, but also works with cylinders, prisms, spheres, and pyramids.

4. Calculate the area of a 2D shape. 
If you only search, "area of _______," it will return the formula and give you a text field to enter your dimensions, but you can also specify a dimension in the search. In the example below, I specified a radius of 4 by including "r=___"

5. Convert units 

This is super important for project-based learning, "real-world" problems, or gathering information for 3-act math stories.

The drop-down menu that is currently on "digital storage" below also has options for temperature, length, mass, speed, volume, area, fuel consumption, and time units.

Calculating with Siri and Google Now

It may not be most practical or efficient, but there are some advantages to doing calculations with Siri or Google Now on your smartphone or tablet.

Advantages:

• Hands-free
• Other relevant information and representations also given (only on Siri, via Wolfram Alpha)
• Don't have to open a separate app
• Opportunity to judge reasonableness, check answer - if Siri comes up with a value that doesn't make sense, you have to reevaluate how you communicated that calculation.

Is voice search ready to take the place of your students' scientific or graphing calculators? Of course not! It's not even a practical replacement of the calculator app. However, especially with Siri/Wolfram Alpha, I really appreciate that it gives the students information that didn't even ask for. You know, sometimes they might be bored enough to check it out. ;)

5 Ways to Pwn Your Math Homework With Google Search

I couldn't finish my homework because I didn't have graph paper.
I couldn't finish my homework because I didn't have my graphing calculator.
I couldn't finish my homework because I didn't have my calculator.
I couldn't finish my homework because I don't know how to use my calculator.
I couldn't finish my homework because I don't know how to convert units.
I couldn't finish my homework because I didn't have any examples.

You've only got to teach math for a few weeks before you've heard every one of those excuses. No one answer is going to be good enough for the kid that goes through all of those, but you can use a simple Google search to perform many necessary tasks to "pwn" your homework and save time.

All of these tips work simply by typing in the search box on Google.com, or using the "omnibox" on browsers like Chrome and Firefox.




1. Calculate.
Typing in calculations such as -1*-3 pulls up an onscreen scientific calculator that gives you an answer and allows you to continue with my calculations.

2. Find and print graph paper.
Your teacher does it this way often, too. :)

3. Graph equations and trace for points.
No need to even go to a graphing calculator app or website. Trace along the line to find intercepts, coordinates, and other key features.

4. Convert units.
You may still need to show your work (especially if you're in a lesson on the topic), but this will at least check your work.

5. Solve systems by graphing multiple equations at once. 
Separate with a comma. Trace along the line to the intersection and approximate the coordinates.

BONUS: Find a video tutorial without going to YouTube.
Many graph or calculation searches will also bring up relevant video results that you can play from the search screen.

For more info, all of the documentation about the Google calculator and grapher can be found here.

Getting Google Forms to your Students

I've seen (and done) several trainings and presentations on the power of using Google Forms for rubrics, quizzes, and other assessment, but how to get said Forms to your STUDENTS is an important aspect of the workflow that often gets overlooked or de-emphasized in the course of the training.

WHY DOES IT MATTER?

You can have the greatest Google form/survey in the world, but if you cannot get it yo your audience/students, the form is worthless. When you're using Forms within your Google Apps domain (with other teachers/staff at your school/district), it can be as simple as emailing the live form to everyone on that domain, but the access gets more complicated when students will be using their own Google accounts (or none at all).

WHAT ARE MY OPTIONS?

The solution you choose to send your students your Google Forms will mostly depend on your set-up, but most often you'll have several of these at your disposal.

WITH STUDENT GOOGLE ACCOUNTS ON YOUR GOOGLE APPS 

1. Set up an contact group with your students' Google accounts for each class (done in Gmail or Contacts). Compose an email to the classes you want to submit responses (type the name of that class in the address field) and link to the live form or embed the form in the email with HTML.

2. Create a doc with a link to the live form and share the document with the classes/students you want to submit responses

3. Take the link to the live form and shorten it with a service like bit.ly or tinyurl.com. Put the shortened link on your white/chalk/SMART/Promethean board or projector.

WITHOUT STUDENT GOOGLE APPS ACCOUNTS

1. Set up an contact group with your students' Google accounts for each class (done in Gmail or Contacts). You'll need to ask them for their Google account first. Some may need to set up accounts. Compose an email to the classes you want to submit responses (type the name of that class in the address field) and link to the live form or embed the form in the email with HTML.

2. Create a doc with a link to the live form and share the document with the classes/students you want to submit responses

3. Take the link to the live form and shorten it with a service like bit.ly or tinyurl.com. Put the shortened link on your white/chalk/SMART/Promethean board or projector.

4. Take the link to the live form and post it to your class website

5. Embed the live form on your class website (Process simplified if you use Google Sites)

ON (SHARED) iPADS

I advise against any solution where you email the link to the STUDENTS because I think you lose more time than on a tower/notebook waiting for students to login to email.

1. Create a doc with a link to the live form and put the doc in shared folder on Drive accessible by the default account for your cart.

2. Take the link to the live form and shorten it with a service like bit.ly or tinyurl.com. Put the shortened link on your white/chalk/SMART/Promethean board or projector.

3. Take the link to the live form and post it to your class website

4. Embed the live form on your class website (Process simplified if you use Google Sites)

ON 1:1 iPADS OR BYOD

1. Create a doc with a link to the live form and put the doc in shared folder on Drive accessible by all the students in your class. You'll need to share the folder with their personal Google accounts.

2. Take the link to the live form and shorten it with a service like bit.ly or tinyurl.com. Put the shortened link on your white/chalk/SMART/Promethean board or projector.

3. Take the link to the live form and post it to your class website

4. Embed the live form on your class website (Process simplified if you use Google Sites)

HOW DO I KNOW WHICH OPTION IS BEST FOR ME?

I have an iPad cart in my room from which students access Drive from a shared account, and I will often use several of these options for one Form. Which solution is best for me usually depends on if I want students to have access to the form from home (on their own accounts) or if we'll just be using it in class). My best advice is to not fall in love with any ONE application.

Google Apps for Education: The Secret is Sharing

As we get further into our second year as a Google Apps for Education district, (and Google continues to refine their product), I see the advantage of using Google for all of my office needs over MS Office is the integration of most of my online life that Google affords me.

We do not have the Office 365 tools that level the playing field, so anytime my ultimate goal is to share, collaborate, or publish to the web, I open up a web browser, not my Microsoft Office task wizard.

The presentation below very briefly reviews most of the Google Apps products that we have enabled for our district, and the bulk of the slides are filled with common teacher scenarios that can be served more efficiently or effective by a Google Apps product.

Other Google Apps Resources

Google Apps for Ed - a weekly digest of links, blogs, video and tweets with Google Apps tips and tricks)
Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides Troubleshooting Tool
Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides Help Center - step by step instructions for many tasks
Using Google Docs with your Students - Training Module

Tech Tip: Check Your Spelling With Right-Click

Are you a chronically poor speller?

You can right click in most any text editing platform to get suggestions for correct spelling. This is the kind of tool that you probably notice anytime you right-click something for another purpose, but perhaps forget when you really need (like me). This doesn't encourage the practice of ignoring errors in the first draft (sorry comm arts teachers), but if you're like me and want to eliminate your red squiggles as soon as possible, the spell-check-right-click will save you time from spell-checking the entire document.

Forget no more!

Here's what right-click spellcheck looks like on many of your favorite tools -

"Save to Google Drive" Extension - It's Not Going to Replace Your Social Bookmark Service

Mashable ran a post Dec. 12th about a new Chrome extension called "Save to Google Drive" (Chrome web store), but the service doesn't quite fulfill as advertised. ("New Chrome Extension Lets You Save Web Content to Google Drive")

As I was drafting this post in my head throughout the day, thinking of possibilities, I was hoping "Save to Google Drive" was going to replace Evernote or Diigo as my web-clipping/bookmarking utilities and integrate seamlessly for anyone running Google Drive.

I had visions of my students browsing in Chrome, saving their bookmarks in Drive, and sharing that folder with me and others in work groups.  Here's what I found out.

This extenstion is fantastic for syncing photos to Google Drive to save within my organization or classroom, but do I even want it there?

Why Does This Even Matter For My Classroom?

Sadly, I'd say it really doesn't. Bo.lt is a good service for anyone that wants a reliable backup to pages they archive or create (which sounds like every teacher who has EVER made a webquest), but its not even that great as a social bookmarker for students because it gives me a link I would still need to paste to Evernote or Diigo. I also continue to favor these two options over this new extension because both work well with iPads (Evernote app, Diigo app). Sure, Drive is cloud storage, and has its own app, but I feel let down by the Google Apps experience for my students on the iPad more often than I'm satisfied.

Google Certified Teacher, +Molly Schroeder wrote about it here on Chromebook Classroom, so perhaps she has a different take. Her environment is certainly different (Chromebook v. iPad), and sometimes in technology, that's all the difference.

Tech Tip: Search Google for PowerPoint Files (or anything else)

---

NETS-S STANDARDS in this post:

3a.	plan strategies to guide inquiry.
3b.	locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media.

---

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas... which also means its beginning to look a lot like review season as finals approach. Who doesn't love a good Jeopardy-style review game?

Anyone who's ever had to make one, as far as I'm concerned. :)

But hey, this is the internet. You probably don't have to make something from scratch. Even better than search blindly for "jeopardy powerpoints," you can use Google Advanced Search to exclude anything from the results that isn't a .ppt file (or 9 others formats).

I'm reviewing for a quadratics exam tomorrow, and rather than only using keywords in my search (quadratics+jeopardy+powerpoint), and scrolling through, selecting only the ones that linked to .ppt files already, if I go into advanced search, this is done for me.

 Power your students' research (and your own) by using Advanced Search tools like filetype, usage rights, or reading level.

Enter a search query first, OR go directly to google.com/advanced_search

or select for reading level... or drill down to creative commons fair-use only... or by language... the possibilities are larger than you think.

My lesson plan is complete. 

Quadratic Jeopardy Review

Adaptations for YOU:

I've used this feature extensively since I learned about while doing research for grad school or grant writing to find PDFs after my searches in Ebsco and Google Scholar had been exhausted. More important than filetype for your students will be usage rights (keeping their projects copyright friendly) and reading level (because I know you've seen that shut-down look when they come to a webpage and the reading level is inappropriate)

Stop Posting Your Homework Assignments (As Often)

I've blogged before about my struggles with missing assignments and communicating work with my students and parents. ("Get the Homework Monkey Off Your Back"). Now I'm going to say, you're doin' too much.

If you're supremely organized, or teach a dual-credit or AP course that requires a complete syllabus from day 1, then this strategy will be much easier to implement and adapt for your situation. The basic goal - keep your homework assignment from getting lost here.

You know this backpack too well...you probably trip over it every day.

Another plan for keeping your students and (more importantly for everyone's success) parents up-to-date and informed on class assignments and tests is to share your planning calendar with them. Before you think, "I tried this once before - updating the calendar function on our school's webpages," hear me out.

Your first step is to begin using Google Calendar for your planning. My favorite function in Google Cal makes me feel like it was made just for me. To change the date of an event, simply click and drag it to another day.

Once you get your lessons mapped out you have TWO options: embed the calendar or share it. I do both with my small AP Stats class. Sharing the calendar is the same process as sharing docs with your students or colleagues. Enter their email and they can have whatever level of sharing/editing/viewing control you desire.

The beauty of sharing the calendar that you're already working with is that there is not an extra step to sharing updates with your students and parents. You update, they see it. You've probably run across one before, but here's what my embedded calendar looks like.



Within 2 days of sharing my AP Stats calendar with my students, I had this conversation:

Hey, Mr. Baker, I'm going to be gone next Thursday for a field trip. What are we going to do?
Um...well... ::trying to come up with a helpful answer::
Oh! I'll just check the calendar!

Your students will be amazed at your organization (and you'll surprise yourself, too).

 

Sharing a Computer (with your Students/Co-workers/Spouse/Childen) Without Going Crazy

Classroom teacher:
Does the sound of your students asking to use your computer to check their email or print something give you an unrational fear?
Have you ever passed on checking your email because someone else was logged into the computer, and didn't want to log them out?

I hope you're ready to commit to the next half hour logging in to this machine.

Spouses:
 How often do fits of internal rage rumble inside (or outside) when you go to check your email/Facebook/Twitter/Pinterest/Yahoo/etc., and have to logout your spouse? How many times accidentally commenting as *not* yourself before you consider quitting social media?

You know this is you.

One of my favorite aspects of the Web 2.0 - Google/Facebook controlled internet is the ability to use a cornucopia of services without keeping a flashdrive of passwords and usernames at my disposal. It's a great time-saver to seamlessly move from site to site that I think someone under 20 doesn't really appreciate.

The flip-side of that ease of use, however, is that this always-on state of login culture is NOT station-sharing friendly. But no worries, there's hope for you yet. It requires you and yours to have separate opinions on browser preference, but I promise to extend the health of all your personal and working relationships.

Being logged into your GMail (or any service) is only really true on one browser at a time. Here's the setup on the media PC in our living room at home:

You CAN have it all.

Fortunately for our household, although we both cringe at IE, Beth and I happily coexist on Chrome and Firefox, our internet lives (usually) keeping an appropriate separation.

Application to the Classroom:
You CAN allow students to login to their email to print that paper, access a file, or check their grades as long as your IT department has provided you with at least two different browsers. If they haven't, you can work around with a flashdrive, but that's another story. You only need to remember which browser you're using and to ensure that they use the other.

This could even work on a shared class set of iPads or iPods. Most of the third-party browsers are not my favs, but at the very least students could split logins between mobile Safari and mobile Chrome

I've felt so much more freedom with sharing the computer in my classroom since I discovered this a couple years ago. The biggest advantage I've seen instructionally is catching absent kids up faster by accessing previous lessons, and encouraging students to USE the machine for quick internet searches as questions arise. A student USING an instructional computer in the classroom. Go figure. ;)

Broken Professional Development

I'm sure Amy Mayer @friedtechnology is a highly qualified individual, and I have no doubt I'd learn a lot from her as a Google Apps Certified Trainer, but this attitude is an element of what makes many teachers hate what they understand to be "professional development".

@FriedTechnology: Planning vacation toward end of July. Anybody need staff dev out of state? Could be interesting way to choose destination! #edtech

I can only imagine a multi-purpose room/cafeteria/gym filled with a couple hundred staff assembled by a well-meaning administrator. "We're launching Google Apps this year. I'll be able to train my entire staff all at the same time and we'll be done with it!" Without much (or any) prior knowledge of the school culture, technology in the classroom, or adoption attitudes toward technology, the highly-compensated trainer will go through a presentation of all the great Google Apps bells and whistles. Because a lot of the PD budget has been sent to bring in the trainer, there will not be money/time available for further discussion small group training among individual staff members. The teachers who are motivated and able will be energized and will initiate their own research and begin to plan. Others will hope they pick it up along the way, and some will walk away with nothing, disillusioned by another PD they hope will go away soon.

This money would be much better spent by (with prior planning) developing a cadre of your own Google Apps "experts" in the building/district who will be able to go and deliver more situationally and developmentally appropriate training on Google Apps. This team (who were the ones that would have wound up teaching themselves anyway) are now empowered as leaders in their building that feel the support of their administration as they are commissioned to train their peers. Instead of using extra time to teach themselves and develop their own resources, they now have time to train others and develop/co-teach new lessons with other teachers.

It's really a difference in leadership philosophy. Is your organization looking to build leadership capacity in its members by empowering and nurturing them, or is the goal to lead from the top and assimilate the willing?

Extra note: I have no past, current, or future affiliation with a training session led by Amy Mayer. The tone of her tweet only highlighted thoughts I'd already been mulling over.

"Your Rational Expressions Quiz Will Be Online Today..."

or, "Lessons in Network Management", or, "The Day I Learned NOT to Over-Embed"

These were my words today after spending 5+ hours last night and this morning perfecting my Google Form and handwriting in the rational expressions using my tablet.  With grand plans of going to our math computer lab and having the students enter their answers on my form with different quiz versions on the right-hand side of the page on ppt slides, I anxiously waited for the kids to log on.

And we waited.  And waited.  Then kids were logged in and we waited for the page to load.  And then, we were waiting...

...for this.

After 10 minutes with some kids still waiting for the embedded docs to load, I had to make the mad dash upstairs to photocopy hard copies of the slides (shame on me for not having a back-up plan, I guess :/ ).  During my prep, I thought I got the issues ironed out.  I hesitantly returned with my students to the lab with a prelude of, "It WILL take a long time, just be patient."  This class has more students, so of course, the network was jammed even worse.

My 4th hour was smaller today, so more were able to navigate the page, but I would still rule it a failure.  Thankfully, I'm on lunch now with another pseudo-prep to follow, so I can regroup and re-evaluate my strategies.  Did I embed to much on the page in the spirit of trying to ease navigation?  Is it worth trying to redesign the page?  Does someone around here WANT me to use up the A/V paper supply before the year runs up?

My 3rd hour co-teacher said today, "Man, you'd be in business if you had a school with good, new technology...  ...but then you'd probably go!"  I don't know if that's totally true - I usually like the challenge of trying to make things work here, and I know I'm needed here (and my loans get repaid after 5 years), but I can't say it isn't tempting.

Things I wonder:
If I create a separate page for each doc, would it load faster?
Am I fighting a losing battle?
Can I at least try and use this again next year?