Google Forms (now with pictures!)

Every so often, Google pushes out an update to the GAFE suite of tools. And every time, there's a gem or two. This one was a no-brainer from day one, and it's something I'm glad they figured out.

Google Forms can now include images. In a section. In a question. In a possible answer. In an answer given.

Personally, I think Google Forms are one of the most under-appreciated Google Apps. And that's weird, because among ninja-level users...they're heavily utilized. But the average user simply doesn't understand the power in their hands.

I'll brainstorm a couple of ideas for each placement of an image. I'd love to see YOUR ideas in the comments...extra credit for a link to an example!

In a section

• A history teacher includes an image of a primary source, then asks 2 or 3 questions based on that source.
• An art teacher uses an image of a painting, then asks several questions about that piece of art. Update: this appeared on Twitter shortly after I posted this. #greatmindsthinkalike ?

In a question
The several questions to an image (in a section) works just fine sometimes, but there is some scrolling involved. Sometimes that's not optimal, so...

• An ELD teacher places an image, then gives EL students sentence starters and asks them to complete the thought.
• A science teacher includes images of different animals/plant/minerals, and asks students to name kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus or species (depending on what they're learning). Side note: I loved my high school biology class and the units on nomenclature. Weird stuff sticks, like brown kelp is Phaeophyta (my mnemonic device included the fact that Tammy Faye Bakker wore a lot of brown makeup).

In a possible answer

• A school administrator wants to get staff shirts, and presents his colleagues with three options. He has each staff member vote based on the the images (A, B, or C). I copied my real ballot here for you as an example.
• A first-grade teacher teaching about the different emotions makes the question an adjective, then the four answer options are faces from that iconic emotions poster.

In a given answer

• (overheard on Voxer #connectedTLtribe) Students are asked to provide evidence of having read a book or chapter, and that evidence is a photo of their favorite quote or passage. (Then they explain why they chose it.)
• A principal wants to compile a "getting to know you" spreadsheet of his teachers and classified staff, and asks them to submit a favorite photo of themself (for inclusion in the "staff of the week" portion of a newsletter).

I just made a lot of these up on the spot. I'm excited to challenge the teachers at my site to think of other ways to use this fantastic new feature of an already great tool. What are YOUR ideas?

HyperDocs

I know what you might be thinking. Because I thought the same thing. And somebody just said the same thing to me today when I told her I was going to do a post about HyperDocs:

"Isn't it just a shared doc with links?"

Well, yes. And no. But even if yes, that's the power in it!

I'm really writing this post a couple of months too early...I'm going to a HyperDocs all day session with Lisa Highfill this summer, so I'm sure I'll have more to say later. But for now, I'm just going to post a couple of links here:

http://karlymoura.blogspot.com/2016/04/hyperdocs-need-i-say-more.html

https://sites.google.com/site/highfill2013/hyperdocs-explained

https://sites.google.com/site/highfill2013/hyperdocs-explained/5-ways-to-package-hyperdocs

https://sites.google.com/site/highfill2013/hyperdocs-explained/show-what-you-know

And a couple of my very brief thoughts:

1) I think the biggest "hidden" potential in these is the ability to differentiate. Listen...I think we ask too much of our teachers. Really. It's CRAZY what we expect them to do! And when you tell me I have to differentiate my instruction after you've already told me to align it to the standards and integrate technology and be sure to address the needs of my ELs and my SpEds and my SEDs and my gifted kids...I'm fried. So when I find a tool like HyperDocs that can help me meet the needs of all my kids? I'm ecstatic! Yes, there's a lot of prep involved in making a good one. But just think of the payoff!
2) I really love Cate Tolnai's idea of hosting a HyperDoc IN a Google Drawing. Just a design thing, but I love how it looks! http://www.one-tab.com/page/g6mWgn1mQN6P73ckQwGniQ
3) Our ELA teams at the middle school are (finally) going 1-to-1 with Chromebooks next year, and I'm super-excited to see if HyperDocs will help them.

In any event, if you had never heard of HyperDocs, you're welcome. If you had, you're welcome for the reminder! =)

Texting from my computer

I found a new tool today. I can now text from my laptop!

It was born out of necessity. My phone dies quickly, so I often find myself needing to plug it in. Today, I was at a conference, and I had to plug my phone in far away from me. But I wanted to stay connected!

Enter mySMS.

Since I don't have an iPhone (yet), I can't just connect via iMessage. I had to find a solution to connect my Android phone number to my laptop. mySMS is a chrome app and extension that does exactly that.

The mySMS extension in the webstore

I am at my laptop most of the day, so this is a great thing...I can respond much quicker on my keyboard than on my phone...Now I just need to figure out how to quickly insert bitmojis!

Don't Delete Your Gmail!

***For the first time in over a month, I missed my daily blog. I'll give myself a break, though, as I had a rough day at work (dumb CAASPP testing), went to the school board meeting, and didn't leave work until 10:15pm.***

Especially if you're a Google Apps for Education (GAFE) user, you should never, ever, ever, delete an email again. Even if you're a regular Gmail user, you'll probably never reach your limit. But if you have a school account, you should really take advantage of this.

I've got a colleague (he shall remain unnamed) who keeps deleting his email. It's not entirely his fault...it's the power of a habit. Our district formerly had Groupwise, and had a RIDICULOUSLY LOW amount of storage space for emails. Like...within my first month on the job, I had to archive (save) my emails, then delete them from the email server. STUPID.

So this unnamed colleague of mine has grown used to this workflow. I had emailed him something, and we talked about it the next day. I asked him to pull up the email, and he said he couldn't...that he had deleted it. MY MIND WAS BLOWN.

You have unlimited storage, I said. You never had to delete a message again, I said. I like to clear out my email, he said. I shook my head. I let it go (until this post). WOW.

Leave them all there! If you MUST, you can organize! Learn how to use labels. Folders. Archive (why?). You have organization options. But you never have to delete again. EVER.

What's the advantage of having every message you ever sent or received? SEARCH.

I like to remind people that Google is, at its core, a search engine. You can find anything in there. And this applies to Gmail, as well. Here are a couple of quick links to deepen your learning, if you choose:

Search tricks: http://www.popsugar.com/tech/Tips-Gmail-34542860

Gmail Tips & Tricks: https://davidleeedtech.wordpress.com/2013/03/02/gmail-features-for-teachers-tricks-tips/

Next Level: tackling twitter chats

I was scared. I admit it.
I was skeptical. I was even a bit derisive ("Where do these people get the time? They must all be single...")

The idea of keeping up with a Twitter chat was daunting. The technology was not the issue (I had seen the suggestions of using TweetDeck or HootSuite). It was the time. Setting aside an hour to answer a set of questions is hard for me.

Sunday night, I was able to pull it off for my first FULL twitter chat: #caedchat 8-9pm, Pacific time. My wife was busy putting together PTA gifts for Teacher Appreciation Week, so I dove in. And you know what? It wasn't that hard. And I really enjoyed it. And I was pushed. And I learned from others. Everything was perfect.

Fresh from that victory, I decided to give #connectedtl a chance (they're mostly edtech coaches and TOSAs). I joined their Voxer group as a result of CUE Admin Rockstar camp (another post on that another day), and I thought I might try it. It's on Tuesday night at 7pm. BIG PROBLEM: I have a weekly mens group that meets at that exact time, and I meet my mentor for dinner prior to that meeting every week.

So I wasn't sitting at my laptop. I downloaded Hootsuite onto my phone. I knew it wasn't ideal, but I had received the questions for the chat and thought I could schedule my tweets to publish at about the time I thought the questions would launch. NOPE. The interface was wonky, and I couldn't figure it out. So no scheduled tweets! Oh well, I think...I'll just pop them all out at once, and the others will just have to deal with it. But my codependency kicked in, and I determined that I was potentially ruining the chat for someone expecting the questions to come through live.

Forgot to mention: my meeting has a car break-in problem, so we appoint one guy to go out and watch the parking lot for twenty minutes at a time. I volunteered so I could sit in my car and spit out my tweets before heading in to the meeting. In any event, I finally finished the chat at 10:20 (long after all the others had left). But there's a Voxer channel with follow up for the next two days, so I'll be sure to follow up there!

All in all, I encourage chat participation when you can. It's really not difficult, technically. It's the time commitment. One or two a week (and really, a few a month) will probably do the trick for me!

Do you participate in any chats? Leave the hashtag and the time in the comments!

A Newsletter for the Digital Age

What you're seeing below is the first digital newsletter published at Abraham Lincoln Middle School in Selma, CA. I work there as the Program Manager, and this has been a dream of mine for two years.

Why a digital newsletter? Well, we're fighting the battle of kids not taking things home when we give it to them (better said: things disappearing into the black holes that are called backpacks). Printing and mailing a traditional newsletter would get cost-prohibitive quickly, and besides...

*This digital form has clickable links! In this issue, that means links to the athletics website, links to the testing calendar, and a link to the Spanish version!

*We can send this multiple ways: we sent via Remind. When we get our email list up-and-running next year, we'll do that, too. We can put a link (and QR code) on progress reports that are mailed home. We can post it on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. We even print a couple copies to have in the front office (nobody really needs it, but we provide it).

*I can include high quality photos! I didn't take full advantage of it in this issue, but that's pretty neat. The little, grainy photos shared in most newsletters aren't that great. In this format, you can really see the detail!

*The ability to update after sending is nice: If I've got a date wrong or even want to add a whole new slide, it's super easy! Cool, huh!

Shake Up Learning

Want to dip your toes into the learning? Check out the blog.

http://www.shakeuplearning.com/blog/

Want to dive in deeper? Be amazed at the curated resources.

http://www.shakeuplearning.com/resources/

When I present about GAFE tools to teachers, I point them to this site.

MY latest nugget from her: I've been switching between my Google accounts all wrong (and so have you). I fixed that today, and I already love it. No, I'm not going to tell you how; go to her site and figure it out!

Chromecart Calendar

I'm like Kip. I love technology. Always and forever.

But my favorite thing about technology is how it can be leveraged to improve people's experiences. And today's #TechTuesday post is all about that. When I moved up to the Fresno area and began working the Selma Unified School District, one of the first impressions I was able to make was with my idea to digitize our Chromebook Calendar.

If I understand correctly the system that was in place before my arrival, the former program manager would field in-person requests from teachers and hand-write them on a paper calendar. So, a teacher would tell her what dates they wanted to check out on of the school's Chromecarts (a rolling cart that holds 32 Chromebook laptop computers). She would check availability on that date, write them in, and so forth. I think that she probably fielded requests from teachers after she had run out of carts, and had to deal with their disappointment face-to-face (that idea gives me the heebie-jeebies).

Knowing that one of the cool features of Google Calendar (exclusive to Education accounts) was the ability to make appointment slots, I hatched a plan.

I created 12 appointment slots (for the 12 Chromecarts) for each school day in my own account (in a sub-calendar called ALMS Chromecart Reservations).

It's just like creating a calendar Event, but in education accounts an additional option is available to create an Appointment Slot

I made the appointments for hour-long increments throughout the day, even though the reservation is actually for the entire school day

I did this so the appointments would be visible individually (not stacked 12-deep on top of each other).

I shared that calendar with the staff

I created a Program Manager website, where I created a page for the calendar

On that page, I explained the new process

Teachers visit the calendar page, look on the date(s) they want

They click an available appointment, add their name and room number, and voila!

The appointment is now visible in two places: the ALMS Chromecart Reservations calendar, but also on their own Google Calendar!!!

To be honest, it took several teachers a couple times to get comfortable (not a bad learning curve) simply because nobody else ever uses this appointment slot feature. But after that, it's been working pretty much without a hitch for close to two years now! I'd love to be a 1:1 school and render this calendar unnecessary, but until then it's nice to have a good system in place.

Need help? Ask Alice.

Every Tuesday, I'm going to share a tech tip or resource with you. Today, I'm sharing

http://alicekeeler.com/

Alice Keeler is an absolute machine. She is a prolific tweeter and blogger. She curates resources and tips an a crazy rate. I would get all judge-y and make a quip about how she must not have a life, but I have seen the evidence the she does, indeed, seem to balance it all (kids, teaching, presenting, constant tweeting)! I honestly don't know enough about her to write any more here, but that's okay...what I'm sharing is her website and her twitter handle.

If you ever have a question about Google Sheets or Google Classroom, just tweet her: @alicekeeler She'll respond within minutes. Actually, before you hit her up with a tweet, just check out her website! The answer is probably there. Her stuff is just awesome. For instance, just today, she tweeted out a link to her blog post demonstrating how to concatenate. I happen to have known this trick (heck, I might have learned it from her), but I just love it! Concatenating is smashing two things together. Like...I have a column of student id numbers, and want to create a column of their email addresses. Concatenate the ID numbers with @selmausd.org...BOOM. Done.

In any event, check her out. On Twitter AND on her website. On a side note, I was tickled when I saw that she joined the Dave Burgess empire. Love that guy! #tlap