What To Do With Those Kids’ Blasted Cell Phones

by | Sep 29, 2016 | Teacher Blog

This year, my school officially adopted a BYOD policy for the students.  This is a great step forward, but in a culture that sees cell phones as enemies to education it, lets say, hasn’t been openly embraced.  We have gone from the days of “only drug dealers have cell phones at school” to today, when, “only the Amish don’t bring their phones to school.”  Unfortunately, many teachers, myself included, haven’t been quick to acknowledge the fact that cell phones are really powerful educational tools.  They can be used for simple tasks like doing calculations and referencing dictionaries and thesauri, to more complicated activities like research, interactive activities, QR scavenger hunts, augmented reality, and educational games.  Now that is not to say that phones aren’t still a distraction.  They are a tool, like a textbook or whiteboard, that are valuable but open to abuse (I’m thinking about the numerous sketches and terse remarks scribbled in the margins of textbooks).  Today I want to share a few cell phone centric tools that you can use in the classroom, plus a few ways to manage cell phones when not used in class.

The Tools

In an attempt to be as open as possible for everyone, I want to focus on tools that are device agnostic–that is to say they can be used on any device with an internet connection.  These first four tools would be considered Learner Response Systems (LRS). LRS are not new.  The first systems were simple remotes you gave to each student that connected to some sort of hub.  You give a question, the students answer it with their remote, and answers were tallied by the hub–Think final voting round of AFV, but for teachers.  These LRS were expensive and tied to a specific device.  The new crop of LRS are web based, free (or mostly free), and device agnostic

Socrative

Socrative is my main tool for LRS.  It is easy to set up and allows a wide range of options for creating and administering quizzes. I use it from everything from exit tickets to complete test.  Instant results are sent without running to the workroom to run scantrons. Plus, it is harder for students to cheat because it can randomize question and answer choices.  I also like that I can download and print nicely formatted copies of the test for those that don’t have access to a device.  Below is a rather exhaustive video of the features of Socrative.

Kahoot

When I want something more competitive and/or fun I opt for Kahoot.  Kahoot is the same idea as Socrative (a LRS utilizing cell phones) but throughs in a competitive aspect that makes the process more fun for the kids.  Students compete against each other for points, and the addition of music and videos (and sometimes music videos) adds an exciting dynamic.  The downside to Kahoot is that you are limited to the length of questions, number of answer choices, and there isn’t a way to create a quick question.  Take a look at the video below for a rundown of how to use Kahoot.

ExitTicket

ExitTicket is a new app for me.  It does many of the same things as Socrative and Kahoot, but allows you to track student’s progress in more detail and over time.  That alone makes it a valuable resource.  The short video below gives you an introduction to the app or you can check out their videos at exitticket.org.

Plickers

Sometimes you end up being the only one with a device, or you want something more kinesthetic.  Plickers is the LRS app that can deliver in both of those situations.  Instead of each student having the device, you as the teacher, have the device, and the students have printed individualized QR codes.  I haven’t had a chance yet to try it out in class, but I can see it as fun alternative to the typical LRS.  Below is an introductory video for Plickers.

The Other Tools

Google Forms, when combined with Flubaroo, is another great alternative for giving assessments. It is in no way a LRS, or entertaining, but it gets the job done in a straight-forward and painless way.  To get started, create a quiz in Google Form.  Next, share the link (not the form itself) with your students using a URL shortener like Tinyurl or Bitly.  Once the students have taken the assessment open up the response spreadsheet, add the Flubaroo Add-on, and grade away.  The directional video below should get you started.
I have never used these two systems, and honestly, don’t know much about them, but I have heard quite a bit of chatter about both lately, so I thought I would add them in.

 

 

Classroom Management When Not Using the Device

I’m not going to insult you with statements regarding ‘the key to keeping kids off their phones keeps the kids authentically engaged with innovative’.. and yada-yada-yada.  We all know and do that, and yet still have kids who use their phones when they shouldn’t . Seeing this, we would like to throw the phones against a wall (or maybe that’s just me at times).  So what do we do then?  Below are some ideas, simple ideas I might add, that teachers are using to control phones when not in use.
  • Charging Stations- One thing that I know for sure that entice kids to willingly give up their devices is free charging.  A few powerstrips or an expensive charging station will give the kids a reason to put their phones down and keep the out of reach when not needed.
  • Shoe hangers-This one can be controversial in the terms that you may not feel comfortable having students put their phones in “your possession” in a shoe hanger, but it keeps it out of their reach.
  • Tupperware- Place small “phone size” tupperware (preferably disposable) on each student desk.  It is helpful to attach the containers to the desk using double-sided tape or velcro.  At the beginning of class the kids put their phones in the container and seal the lid.  They cannot break the seal on the lid without effort and noise, thus keeping the device out of reach.
  • Facedown method- This one is super simple and doesn’t require you to purchase anything.  When the student sits down they are to place their phone face down on the corner of their desk.  If they touch it, you take it.  For groups, have them stack the phones, one on top of the other, in the center of the group.
If you have other ideas, please leave them in the comment section below.
It’s been fun.  Until next time, peace.
-Cody

The Basics of Google Drive

by | Sep 28, 2016 | How To, Student Blog, Teacher Blog

Many of you have files and folders saved on flash drives and local drives on your main workstation. It is beneficial to have these files in your Drive account so that you can access and edit them anywhere. This blog post should help you with this (and yes this is a shameless plug for my own blog).

While you are waiting for your files to upload you can enjoy this music video from my cousin Andi’s band The Show Ponies. She’s the red head.

Now that is done we can move on to how to navigate and use Drive. This first video is about 18 minutes long but does a great job of introducing you to all the basic functions of Drive. It uses the older version of Drive, so if, or when, you begin using the new version of Drive you will notice a slight difference in layout and naming of features.

Once you have started to create files and add files to Drive you will need to organize them. The following video is a quick tutorial on how to create folders and organize files.

Now that your files are uploaded and organized it is time to collaborate. The following video shows you how to share and collaborate with Google Drive.

This article is Google’s catch all, and be all, of Drive information. I cannot more highly recommend this resource. You need to take a look at all the resources available on this site.

Seeing it in Action

Being a teacher I am always trying to find new ways to teach my kids and new tools to make my life easier. Lets be honest, teachers love it when we can make life easier while giving kids a stellar education. Lets be even more honest, not much about the educational machine is meant to be easy. Now that I have said that, I want to talk briefly about how Drive has made life easier for me.

First, I utilize Google Docs in my professional learning communities. I have, including myself, five people on my team and it can be difficult to coordinate all of us. To help with this we use a common Google Doc that we can all use in real time to create and share notes and planning ideas. We can then go back at any point and reference what we talked about in our meetings. We use a shared Google Calendar to keep ourselves organized. We can create, edit, and chat about upcoming lessons. We also create the calendar in a Google Sheet so that we can share the document with parents that want to know what is going on in the classroom.
(I also used “we” to start four consecutive sentences. I would typically discourage my students from this. I might change it later if I’m up to it… Crap! I did it again.)

Another useful tool for me in the classroom is the marriage that is Google Forms and Google Sheets. I create Google Forms for students to fill out so that I can get contact information. I create Google Forms to create exit tickets. I create Google Forms to pool interest in a topic or to schedule events. (I did it on purpose this time.) The great thing about Forms is that the data automatically populates a Google Sheet so that I can manipulate and analyze the data.

That is about all I have to say in this post. There will be a follow up post that will focus on more advanced features of Drive. But before I leave you I would like to give you a few reasons to switch the the new Google Drive. The Drive allows you to edit Office files without Office, share documents in a more streamlined manner, and so much more. Google Drive’s blog has a comprehensive article on the changes to Drive. It is worth the read.

Thanks for taking the time to check this post out.

Cody

Behind the Scenes: The Video Team

by | Sep 27, 2016 | Student Blog, Teacher Blog

What is the Video Team?

The Video Team is another one of the branches that root from Royse City High School’s Chrome Squad.  The main message of the Video Team is to create and provide helpful and beneficial videos on technology tips and how-to guides for both teachers and students.  The Video Team helps inform everyone about their Chromebook and how to use their Chromebook to its full potential.

 

Meeting the Guys Behind the Video Team

The hefty responsibility of running the Video Team is held up by three C4L members–Tyler Crumrine, Devon Brawner, and Alex Herrera.  Tyler, a junior, just joined the Chrome Squad this year.  When he isn’t giving his time to editing and creating numerous thumbnails for countless technology videos for our teacher staff and student body, you can find him participating in a wide range of other extracurricular activities, such as Debate, SNHS, NHS, and Student Council, in which he holds an officer position.  Tyler also spends a substantial portion of his time giving his heart to volunteering and worshipping at his church.  He referees soccer, helps with younger kids, and worships every weekend there.  Playing video games is also another one of his many hobbies when he isn’t attending to C4L business for the Video Team.  Devon, also a junior, is a new member of the Chrome Squad, as well.  He has had a seed of passion and curiosity for technology even before he was recruited into C4L.  Aside from sorting through hours of helpful video film, you can find Devon giving his all on the baseball field, for he holds a place on our school’s varsity baseball team, beaming with every play.  Alex, a senior, has been a part of the Video Team within the Chrome Squad ever since its establishment last year.  Because of his seniority between the other two members of the Video Team, he has been kind of put into the position of the leader of the branch.  When he isn’t making videos for your technological benefit, you can find him participating in NHS or playing guitar on his own time.  Alex is the type of laid-back yet systematized leader who sets the guidelines for the Video Team.  All three of these hard-working guys devote a portion of their time outside of school to work on various tasks regarding the Video Team, like creating thumbnails, editing film, and backing up video files.  As a whole, they all make this branch of C4L function outstandingly.

 

Impact of the Video Team

The Video Team plays a pivotal role in the Chrome Squad.  Because the guys behind this branch of C4L, staff and student alike have the opportunity and resources needed to efficiently operate and use their Chromebook to its greatest capability.  Without a doubt, every member who makes up the Video Team is the puzzle piece that fits together and completes the cohesive puzzle of the Chrome Squad.  You can find their useful and informative videos up on the C4L website.  These videos will inform you about anything and everything you need and want to know about your Chromebook from the very basics, like keyboard shortcuts, to essential apps, like Digital Planner.  You might even see some collaboration between the Video Team and RCTV in the future!   Undoubtedly, you’ll be seeing a lot more of Tyler, Devon, and Alex as they take you along for the ride of their Chrome Squad journey as needed puzzle pieces of the Video Team.

Getting Google Apps and Extensions

by | Sep 26, 2016 | How To, Student Blog, Teacher Blog

Heady Academic Stuff:

Extensions are bits of computer code added to the Chrome browser to add to the functionality of the browser. It is like supping up your car, or upgrading the appliances in the kitchen. Chrome will work well without extensions, but extensions make it awesomer (technically that isn’t a word but you get what I am saying).
Apps are essentially shortcuts to websites. They may be customized by the developer to work seamlessly with Chrome and Google Drive, or they might just be shortcuts. Either way they are a great way of keeping close access to websites that are useful to you.

Now, before I get too far into this I would be remiss to not tell you that installing extensions and apps is slightly different on a Chromebook vs a Chrome browser. You need to access the store no matter what, but those two platforms access the store differently. The Chromebook has a Store app located in the app tray (those nine dots in the lower left corner of the screen). It should be the second icon you see. The Chrome browser is different. You will see the same app tray, or nine dots, in the upper right corner of any Google page or you can go to this site: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/

From there you can begin searching for extensions and apps.

Extensions

Now that you are to the Chrome store you can start looking for things to add. Lets start with extensions. On the left side of the Chrome store is the search field that you can use to find extensions by searching for either a name or what you want it to do. For example, I want to be able to do a Google search just using my voice (using your fingers to type is just too much work). I would just type “voice search” in the search field. This brings up both apps and extensions that meet the search criteria. I can limit that search by selecting from the the options beneath. Once you find the extension you want click FREE to add it to your Chrome browser.

My new extension is the microphone on the left.

Extension will appear as icons next to, and in some case in, the URL bar. To use the extension you will click on it, verify information (you only have to do it once), and then you are off. Right clicking on an extension will give you access to adjust setting and delete the extension. If you don’t know where to start with extensions you can take a look at my favorites here.

Apps
The process for finding and installing apps is the same as extensions, but they are housed in a different location. On a Chromebook apps are housed in the app tray. It is a little more cumbersome to access apps from a Chrome browser. You can access them by typing “chrome://apps” into the URL bar or by clicking the “Apps” shortcut in the bookmark bar (if you have that enabled). The first thing I would do after installing an app is installing the extension “Blackmenu” to make it easier to get to your apps in a Chrome browser. I have several more apps to add to my list but what I have so far should get you started.

So I Got a Chromebook…

by | Sep 26, 2016 | How To, Student Blog, Teacher Blog

..and now it is time to do some damage–or not. My school just issued Chromebooks to all of its teachers. I have excitedly waited for this over the past few months because, despite the naysayers, it is a surprisingly functional tool. I will most likely churn out several Chromebook specific posts, but I decided to only include three features in this post–Google Cloud Print, Chrome Remote Desktop, and the “Keyboard Shortcut App” (which doesn’t have an official name). These three stood out to me as immediately usable as I began familiarizing myself with the device and making it my own. Hopefully, they are as useful for you as they have proven to be for me.

Google Cloud Print
So, Google Cloud Print. The name sort of explains everything. It allows you to print wirelessly using Google’s services. It is a feature universal to all Google products. You can use Google Cloud Print (GCP) with an GCP enabled printer or any printer connected to a computer with a Chrome browser. What makes this so vital is that you can’t directly connect a printer to a Chromebook. Connecting to a GCP equipped printer is as easy as opening a print dialogue (ctrl+p) in any chrome window or tab, selecting the printer, and clicking print. Unfortunately, my school doesn’t have GCP equipped printers. Fortunately, like I said earlier, you can connect to any printer using GCP as long as you have a computer connected to it that has Chrome–one more reason why you should make the switch to Chrome if you haven’t already.

To set up GCP at my school I did the following (which should be the same for anyone):
1. Open Chrome on your desktop (this is the computer connected to the printer)
2. From the Menu (it looks like this) select Settings, which will open a new tab.
3. Scroll to the bottom of the window and select show advanced settings.
4. Find the Google Cloud Print section (third from the bottom) and select “Manage”.

4.This will open up a new tab with the printer management dialogue. It looks something like this:

5. Select “Add printers”. This will bring up a menu where you can select the printers connected to your computer. (If your school uses network printers like mine, you will need to make sure they are installed on your desktop first.) The dialogue should look like this:

6. Select the printers you want to add, press “Add printer(s)”, and follow any other directions that follow.

Once this is done you can print from your Chromebook anytime you want as long as the printer and connected computer are on and awake.

You can also share printers with other users so you can stay logged into Chrome with your personal account on your home computer and still print from your Chromebook at home. Navigate to this tutorial for instructions.

Chrome Remote Desktop
There are all kinds of screen sharing applications out there. Some work better than others, but most require a purchase of some sort in order to get full functionality. Chrome Remote Desktop (CRD) only requires two computers using Chrome and an internet connections and you can remotely control your desktop from your Chromebook. You may ask why would you ever need to remotely access your desktop. Let me propose some reasons. A main complaint about Chromebooks is their lack of functionality, but you have the full functionality of your desktop when you remote in from your Chromebook. Maybe you saved something to your desktop instead of Drive. Remote in and you have access to all the files on your desktop. I have used it to update a Photoshop document on my iMac at home and a Excel spreadsheet saved on my desktop in my classroom, all while sitting in the teacher workroom waiting on copies. Now tell me that is not both cool and useful rolled into one ball of awesomeness. The process of setting everything up is a little involved (though easily accomplished even by novices), so I am just going to direct you to Google’s directions.

Keyboard Shortcut “App”

The keyboard shortcut “app” allows you to see what actions can be completed
with just a key combination.
Alright, so there isn’t an official name for this and I’m not sure that it is an app, but it works extremely well and is easy to use. This thingy-wopper brings up a visual, and interactive, layout of your Chromebook’s keyboard and allows you to see all the keyboard shortcuts your Chromebook can preform. There are a lot of keyboard shortcuts, and they make it so that you rarely have to take your hands off the keyboard to navigate the computer. You may not think much of it–lots of devices have lists of keyboard shortcuts–but this is the first I’ve seen that is both easily accessible and easy to navigate. To begin, press ctrl+alt+/. It will bring up the “app”. From there follow the instructions. When you are ready to exit the interface, you press ctrl+alt+/ again. You can access this feature from anyplace in your Chromebook.

Most Asked Questions About Google Drive

by | Sep 26, 2016 | How To, Student Blog, Teacher Blog

As of last year my school had local network storage for all of the teachers and students. It was nice in the sense that we could access our h drive (as it is called) from anywhere on campus. When we made the switch to GAFE and gained access to Google Drive we were able access our files anywhere. The problem now became getting all those years of collected files from our h drive to Drive. It was/is such a common predicament that it has become the most common question I get asked around the school–other than does your beard bother you.

This led me to writing this blog post. I’m going to attempt to explain how you can transfer all of your files from your computer (whether it be h drive, my documents, or any other location) to your Drive account.

Prepping Your Files to Transfer
So first things first, you need to prep your files for transfer. If you are like me you have files tucked within folders which are tucked within folders, and they are in turn tucked in more folders. You also probably don’t want to recreate all of that organization. Thankfully, there is an easy way to accomplish this:

1. Create a new folder in a location you can find (like the desktop) and name it something you will remember. In most cases you can right click and select “create new folder”. Once everything is said and done you will delete this folder.

2. Copy and paste all the files/folders you want to move to this newly created folder. The easiest way is to select the first item you want to move (it could be a file or a folder) and then hold down shift and select the last item.

Moving the Files
For the next step you will need Chrome. When you upload the files you have a couple of options on how the files will look when they get to Drive. Option one: you can leave the files as they are; the file format will not change. For example, Word documents will be uploaded as Word documents. The downside is they are more cumbersome to edit, collaborate, and access offline. Option two: you can convert all of your Office documents to Google documents. The benefit is easier editing, collaboration, and offline access. You can even download Google Documents as Office documents. (Do I sound a little biased?) To enable Drive to convert your files you need to enable it by:

Selecting the gear icon in the upper right corner>upload settings>Convert uploaded files to Google Docs format. (See below)

Now that we have that out of the way we can upload the files.

1. Open a Chrome browser tab and access your Drive.
2. Press the upload button to the right of the red “Create” button and select “Folder” from the menu. (See picture below.)

3. Another menu will come up and from there you will select the folder that you created earlier. Press “Upload” and a new window will open showing the progress of your upload. I will warn you that you if you have a lot of files to upload it will take time so start the upload in the morning.

Unpacking
Now that you have all your files on Google Drive it is time to unpack.

1. Open your newly uploaded folder and click on the check box next to “TITLE”. This will select all the items in the folder.

2. Next, select the “Move to” icon (it is a gray folder) and select “My Drive” from the menu that appears. Click done and you are unpacked.

3. Now you can go back to the original folder you uploaded and delete it.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is the easiest way to upload all your files from your computer to Drive while still keeping everything organized.

I hope you enjoyed, or at least learned something.

Cody