Transferring your google site into your private account.

If you have made an eportfolio in your school domain using google sites, you might need to consider transferring it into your private gmail account so if you leave the school, it won't be accidentally deleted by the school, and you can keep the eportfolio no matter what school you are at.

I recommend that you make your eportfolio in your private address to begin with, but if you haven't, then this video will explain how you can transfer it
.

Put simply, the first step is to make your "private self" a co-owner of your school site.  This will allow you to make a copy of it in your "private" account, making you the owner of the copy and that is the site that you should use from then on.  You should delete the original eportfolio in your school account.  If you stay in the same school you should make your school email address a co- owner of your private site account.  That way you can edit the site when signed into your school domain account.

If you transfer to a new GAFE (google apps for education) school,  you can add your new school email address as a co-owner.

Even if the school deletes the site when you leave, you will be able to restore it within 31 days from your private account.

Don't forget to delete the orginal eportfolio so that you don't get confused about which one you should be updating.

13 Extensions on My Chrome Browser

Extensions on my Chrome browser are invaluable time saving programmes that can be added to increase functionality.  Let me share some of my favourites with you.

Extensions can be found to the right of your URL bar.  If you don't have any there, oit is because you haven't added any.  You can find them in the settings part of your Chrome browser, the part I call the three sausages.

Click on the three sausages, go to More tools and click on Extensions to search the Chrome store for any of these extensions.  There are thousands, but here are thirteen of my favourites.  I do have a few more hidden favourites but I will tell you about those on another day.

1. Feedly - this is my reader.  I "follow" a number of websites and blogs using this reader.  I can quickly scan the articles in the headlines that Feedly gives me, whenever I have a moment,  to decide whether I want to read them or not.  It saves filling up my inbox, too.
2. Techsmith Snagit - this allows me to take screenshots which can be saved automatically to my Drive.  It also allows me to make videos or screencasts of what is on my screen including rolling videos (scrolling down the page).  All saved to Drive.
3. Diigo bookmarker - collates (saves, labels and sorts) articles that I find interesting and want to share with others maybe at a later date.  Excellent search function withing the library to find articles and you can also join groups of other bookmarkers who are interested in the same things as you are.  Teachers get free accounts.
4. Save to Google Drive - Quickly saves what is showing in the browser - a webpage or pdf, for example, to a destination folder of my choice in my Drive, great when doing research.
5. Appear In - a one-click web based video connection - very easy to use for people who do not have gmail accounts for Hangouts, or Skype software installed, just share the URL of the Appear.in with them.  And you get to chose the name of the Appear.in.
6. One click Google Hangout - all settings for my hangouts are saved and one click will start a hangout straight away without me having to enter all the details of my gmail account each time.
7. Google Tone - sharing a URL quickly with someone on the same WiFi as me. 
   
8. SideNotes - allows you to write notes on the side of any webpage.  When you go back to the webpage, the notes are still there.
9. Alice Keeler Gradebook Split - allows you to have two windows displaying on your screen at the same time so you dont have to toggle between them or minimise either.
10. Goo.gl URL shortener and QR code maker - fabulous for sharing URLs quickly when presenting, and making QR codes which can be on your screen or copied to a document and printed off for easy access in class using mobile devices.
11. Google Art Project - this is sheer entertainment and gives me a new, named artwork each day to look at on my new tab page.
12. Text to speech - this will "speak" highlighted text to me when clicked.  Would be very valuable for challenged readers.
13. One Tab - if I have a lot of tabs open, I can put them all onto one tab and share that page with others - great if I want to share a lot of different resources without having to copy and paste all the URLs onto another document.  Also useful to get rid of the clutter of too may tabs open.

Forms - fit for purpose.

One of the most under-utilised apps of the google suite is the google form.  I blogged earlier this year on how I used a form, embedded in my appraisal site, to collect my professional development.  But the form doesn't have to be embedded in a site.
If you or your students have ipads or even phones in your class, download a QR code reader like Quickmark or QR Reader so that when you produce a QR code then the students can go straight to a form using the reader,
If your students have emails, it is easy to send a form out.  Otherwise share via a link or QR code.
A really good way to get a link or QR code is to get the Chrome extension goo.gl URL shortener.    When you have made the form live, you just click on the extension and you will get a short URL or a QR code to copy and paste, then print if you need to.
Like this:

Some ways that you could use a form include:

• Collect information from your parents, students or teachers using a form (emails, addresses, phone numbers etc) .  
• Take orders for a fundraiser (multiple collectors can get all of the orders in one place, easily)
• Organise your EOTC trip (eliminate the need for those long letters that get sent home)
• Write about an image (insert the image into the form)
• Fill in feedback for student voice on a unit of work
• Hand in work by inserting a link into the form
• Do teacher observations which a specific purpose in mind (or walk throughs)
• Flip your class (add a video)

These are just a few of the myriad of ways that teachers can use forms in their daily work.

The nicest thing about forms is the way that the responses are organised into a spreadsheet.  It is an awesome way to save time and organise.  There are also a number of add ons that you can put into the response spreadsheet to help you even more.  Like the Flubaroo add on which will self-mark short answer or multichoice questions for you.

Go on, give it a go!  You will love forms.

An update on making a digital mihi using Google Maps

Some time ago, I made a video on how to make a digital "mihi" (a greeting and introduction of yourself and where you are from).  This was useful if you wanted to embed this in a google site or in a blog.  Google Maps have changed in appearance and functionality since then so here is a bit of an update.
In a traditional mihi, you usually say, in Maori, where your mountain is, where your river is, what your name is and other information about yourself.  It is a culturally placed protocol to establish links with the people you are introducing yourself to, and you can learn more about it here.
I think it is a nice and appropriate way to introduce yourself, particularly if you go into a lot of different schools as I do, but I also think that in an educational world, a digital mihi can be used for other purposes.  For example, students can be encouraged to make a digital mihi to introduce themselves on their blog.  It is a great way to help focus on improving writing for an authentic digital audience, in a culturally responsive way.
Students love to gather images and videos about their important places, and this makes their learning much more engaging.  It is relevant to them, and they are learning new skills and how to write for an audience.
One enhancement in a digital world may be to embed a sound recording of the student speaking their mihi in a blog or site, but a video is a pretty awesome way of doing this as well and so this method is for you to check out and use as you wish.  I hope you enjoy it.

Do you have a class blog?

When you have a class blog, it is often about a "showcase" - showing your parents what their children are doing in class and celebrating their achievements.
If you are ready to take the next step, it can be very empowering for your students and will help them raise their literacy levels through more careful attention to correct grammar and presentation, with your guidance.
When you use student blogs in this way, it moves the blog from a "showcase" to a "process" portfolio.  Students make progress and are able to show their learning in an explicit way.  If you can encourage your parents to make positive comments and to extend the authentic audience for the students by letting their friends and relatives have the link as well, you will see great progess in student literacy achievement.
Not only will you be able to show learning, you will also be able to show evidence of students reaching the National Standards.  This will make the blog an "accountability portfolio."
You will need to make a decision about whether you want to check every post on the student blogs or whether you will do spot checks and address digital citizenship issues as they arise.  I prefer the latter because the students do need to learn to "live" in a digital world.
Teach the students how to comment positively on their peers blogs and you can also let your parents know what kinds of comments will help their child's progress.
If you have a class blog on Google Blogger and you want to add links to your students' blogs to the class blog, this short video will tell you how you can do this.

I would love to hear your stories of how student blogging has empowered you and your students in these ways.

Recording my professional learning in one place

This year I have resolved to try to record my PLD (professional learning and development) a little more conscientiously, as I have ended up storing it all over the place in other years and it has been messy to retrieve. I have made a page on my 2015 Appraisal Site in order to do this. It looks like this.

I have a form on one side where I can enter the details of the PLD and the response spreadsheet on the otherside which includes links to the resources.  So far it has worked well as it is easy for me to open the site page and enter the information during the PLD session into the form but also view the previous PLD in the embedded spreadsheet.

If you are interested in this method, here is a video on how to do this.  I hope it is useful for you.

Googling: Embedding a blog into your site

A couple of people have asked recently how to embed their blog into their site, so I have made this youtube tutorial of two different ways to do this.


If you want to see other tutorials, have a look in my youtube channel.  My videos are made in the traditional Flipping way - warts and all, so I hope they are of use to you.

In my perfect class

I have been out of secondary teaching for two years now after 33 years.   I loved teaching, and of course, my practice had changed a lot over the 33 years but the rate of change in the last 10 years had suddenly increased and was continuing to grow exponentially.  Why?  Because I found digital technology and new, exciting, more engaging ways to do things.
I often wonder what it would be like to be back in a class again on a permanent basis. Even in the two years that I left, I have thought about so many new ways for me to try to improve student outcomes.  I think about the students I have failed in the past and "what if things were different."    How could I meet every student's needs? How could I design a course with UDL guidelines to the fore.
I have a friend coming over today.  She wants to know how she can rethink her classroom into a modern learning environment.  It is not just the environment that is important, - it is the modern pedagogy.  So I need to start asking questions.
How do I allow students to collaborate, create and connect with others?
How do I make the learning relevant to them?
How do I build on the relationships that I forge with them?
How do I teach them to learn?
I must design my classroom for learning, for inquiry and for discovery but not forget the qualifications that they are moving towards. So now it comes down to the practical stuff.  My friend's school has a newly acquired Google Apps For Education platform to work with so this is the chance for me to say how I would use it in my perfect imaginary class.

In the beginning:
First of all, my students would all have a device through which they could access GAFE.  I would use Google Classroom to  push out the daily instructions to my students.  I would initially get to know my students by using Google Forms and getting them to fill in some information about themselves, including asking them to identify anything about what helps them learn and what stops them from learning that they would like me to know.  Information about themselves would include where they have come from, what school they went to, who their close friends are, how they see themselves as a learner and what they needed from me.
Every student would be introduced to their Google account, and their own Drive with unlimited storage for all of the files that they may have gathered over the course of their schooling years.  They would learn how to share and collaborate with teachers and other students.
My students would initially collaborate on a class Google Presentation and make a slide each for someone else in the class.  It could be a friend, or someone they feel safe with and I could model that by making a slide about myself and perhaps even another student.  It would include a photo and a "flavour" or style that the other student was happy to be identified with.  These two things along will help me lay the foundation for positive relationships with my students.
Along with those two things, would be a brainstorm on good citizenship including digital citizenship on Google Draw from which we could elicit our own class rules together on a Google Doc.  This would be referred to and modified throughout the year as circumstances arose.

During the year
A Google Site would be where I placed a lot of resources and activities for the class.  There would be a Google Calendar on the front page which would inform the students of any crucial dates and class wide assessments that were due.  Students would also have their personal calendars into which they could add the class calendar.
Other pages on the site would contain resources organised into content and assessment pages. Students could choose what content and assessments they wanted to learn about.  The learning outcomes would be clearly identified.  There would be instructional videos, and resource videos as well as written, image and audio resources to account for different preferences. Practical sessions would also be explained though video, and the students would be able to access the resources that they needed to do the practical work through information on where and how they could find them.  Access to formative assessment would be through the site.

 Every day I would have a video or image to start the whole class thinking and group discussion. This may or may not be relevant to the main body of the individual student work.  I would choose appropriate images from "The Big Picture"  for example, or "Ted" talks as prompts.   There might be associated activities which could lead the students into deeper thinking about the matter at hand and these could be on a Form or a shared Document, but could also make use of a number of apps, add-ons and extensions for Google.  Class discussion would be essential.

Work in the class would be differentiated and individualised through the affordances of technology. To some extent, choosing my subject has already allowed for some personalisation of study.  The contexts in which they studied different aspects of my course could be chosen by them as often as possible.  My students could work in groups but would not be streamed on ability.  They would create Forms to test their group members on what they needed to know for assessments.  They would also create presentations, videos and sites to showcase their work, so that others in the class could learn from their work.   Some students may prefer to work alone but they would be required to share their learning later with others in the group.
Students would work collaboratively on constructing their knowledge.  I would expect the students to do a lot of creating resources themselves for example, I would expect them to create their own Sites. There would be time for the presentation of their work to the class.  They would learn to be construcively critical of their own and others work by asking for feedback.  I would collect feedback from them on their learning experiences and what worked best for them.
Links to work that was submitted for assessment would also come to me through Google Forms or perhaps I would use Google Classroom.

Outside the classroom: 
Students would have access to all of the resources and work 24/7. For homework, I would expect the student to use Blogger to report about and  reflect on what they have learned and to embed videos, images, voice recordings and links to which they could refer back to their own work when it came time to revise for assessments.  The new blog posts would be submitted to me using a Google Form so I could regularly check that the work was being completed. Their blogs would also be linked in to the class blog which students could have turns at writing, along with myself as the overseer of the class blog.  The class blog would be a multimedia affair - images, videos, embedded apps.  Students could use their own phones to collect images or borrow the class camera and upload to their Drive and share if need be, or they could use the class ipods.  I would write comments on their blogs and other students would also do the same.  Students would invite feedback from their parents and well beyond classroom or even country borders.  The blogs could also serve as eportfolios.
Parents and whanau could access the blogs and the class site so that they could be involved in their child's progress.  There would be no surprises as there were sometimes on parent teacher night because the progress on assessments would be available on the student mangement system portal as well.
Other connections would be made to the parents using gmail, google docs (newsletters) and google forms,  for example consulting and collecting relevant feedback from the forms onto spreadsheets.

As I wrote this blog, the enormity of the teacher's job hit me.  There is so much that I could do to teach my students how to learn.  In the end, there are only so many waking and working hours that you have.  A teacher's job is never done.  Organising the class needs to start one step at a time.

I wonder if I will ever go back into the classroom to try this out?

Using Google Apps for Education as a Learning Management System

A friend (secondary school teacher) wants to migrate from using Moodle as a learning managment system to GAFE. I am trying to think of ways that will make the transition painless, and also engaging and visually stimulating for the students. The school has effectively dropped access to Moodle and has moved to being a GAFE school.

So what are the main components of GAFE?  

• Drive (storage and also the applications of docs, sheets, slides, drawings, and forms)
• Blogger 
• Sites 
• Youtube 
• Gmail 
• Google Class 
• Maps 
• Calendar
• Google + including Hangouts

Each of these components can be integrated with each other easily and there is a single sign on.

Google Drive is a great place to store and organise resources, documents, images and many different files and, with the added bonus of unlimited storage for GAFE school students and teachers, Google has effectively wiped the floor of other LMS's. As I see it, Google Class is the place to start in getting "the work" to students. I also think that Google Blogger could work in the same way, with the newest information on top, and it could be a lot more visually appealing. You see, you can embed videos into Blogger and students respond quickly to that stimulus.
Maybe she is better to work with a Google Site as that can really be made very attractive and a site can deliver the year's curricular content as a fait accompli for students to refer to as they need to complete assessments. I can also see Google Slides being a great way to present instructions and or content. Google+ groups would be great for her students (who are mainly over 13 years old) but Google Class allows students to submit completed work easily.  I do think that Google Forms can be used effectively for work submission (through sending the link to the work) as well.
There are so many tools available in GAFE, each with so much potential to do many different jobs for us. I also think I am maybe looking at this the wrong way. What if the students were involved in the design of her new course? It is so beneficial for students to create content and thereby create their own knowledge. The difficulty here could be that much of their year would be focused on learning to use the tools instead of the knowledge that they need for their NCEA assessments. I have a reasonable knowledge of all the Google tools available so it would be pretty easy for me to mix them up a bit, but for a beginner like my friend, there is a lot of learning to be done in all tools.
 This is my big picture thinking: Take a google site, build resources around all of the "must knows" on the site. Use Google Class to address day to day "what to do".  The calendar can be used to attach assignment work and give due dates.  Require students to write blogs on Blogger which reflect on what they have learned each lesson and check for learning. Ask students to demonstrate knowledge creation on Slides and Drawings.  Use Forms to gather feedback, formative and summative assessment.  Hangouts make great ways to break down the walls of the classroom.
Now, as well as that there are thousands of apps, addons and extensions that work with Google, but I think I will leave that lesson for another day.
Any other feedback and advice would be greatly appreciated.

Using Google Apps to Flip Learning in Your Class

As you might know, I am a real fan of flipping the learning. That is, using videos to move the instruction or content(for learning) from the group space into the individual learner space - available 24/7, if and when needed. It is a great step to take toward personalisation of learning. In this post, I am sharing the workshop slides that I did at the Ulearn conference this year. There are two main parts in this presentation after the introductory slides. The first is about using Youtube for editing and the second part is about useful tools to use that integrate well with Google Drive and or Youtube. Please contact me if there are any questions you have about the steps to take toward flipping or about this workshop, and do let me know what successes or failures (which are really just opportunities to learn from experience) that you have. Enjoy!!

Google Sites - a great tool for learning

This one is about using Google Sites - lot of text to begin with but you can see where it goes....

Using Google Sites for Registered Teacher Criteria

Here is an introductory video for those New Zealand Teachers wanting to use Google Sites for their eportfolios of evidence against the registered teacher criteria. In the true tradition of flipped learning, it is warts and all.

Hynessight: And here are the slides from my Google presentatio...

Hynessight: And here are the slides from my Google presentatio...

Please use and enjoy these slides from my Google Summit presentation.

And here are the slides from my Google presentation....

Google Apps for Education Summit in Auckland

I am looking forward to the opportunity to present at the Google Summit in Auckland (29th and 30th April) about the many apps, add-ons and extensions to Google Drive and Chrome.  There are so many awesome extras that many GAFE (google apps for education) and even casual users of Google docs do not know about and I am looking forward to sharing some of my favourites.  
Google Drive is cloud based.  That means you might need some of the many apps, add-ons and extensions to enhance the functionality in the cloud.  Luckily you can add these and customise your Drive and Chrome to suit your own needs. 

Drive Apps (- add to your Drive by pressing the Create button, then " Connect More Apps," choose the app you want from the many available and allow it to have access to your Drive).
Here are some of my favourites.

• Pixlr Photo Editor - allows you to readily edit your photos and save them to your drive.  Has many fun options for your photos. 
• VideoNot.es allows you to watch a video from Youtube or Vimeo and some other platforms while taking notes at the same time.  The notes that you take are timed so you can look back at your notes, click on the relevant note and go to the correct time in the videos.  An awesome app for getting the most from your video.  Could be used in research or with older students to analyse videos.  Notes are saved in Drive and you can share and collaborate.
• MindMups - a mind-mapping tool, so easy to use and the mind maps are saved in Drive as well. Awesome for all age students who like to brainstorm collaboratively.  You can add images and links and re-organise your mindmups easily.  Saved in Drive also.
• MoveNote - quickly make a screen-cast using your personlised instructions from the camera, and photos, documents or slides from your computer or from your Drive.   Send the link to the Movenote to others or embed it in a website or blog, or you can save back to Drive as an mp4 file.
• Kaizena - voice comments for google docs.  Easily and quickly add in voice comments, and send them back to the people who are collaborators on the document.   When the collaborators look at their comments, they are redirected to Kaizena where the voice, text and links are accessible by clicking on the highlighted section. Great for commenting on student work.  You can also add in text and links to resources if you want to. 
• Templates  There are thousands of templates which are available at the push of the Create button.  You can make your selection from those listed as educational or any of the other categories.

Docs and Spreadsheet Add-Ons
The add-ons are now part of the dropdown menus of Docs and Spreadsheets and once you allow permissions, they are available for you to use every time you create docs and spreadsheets.  Simply click on Add-ons, then Get add-ons from the drop-down menu and browse through to find what suits you.

• Easybib allows you to get referencing in APA format - great to teach students how to be digital citizens by referencing their work.
• Thesaurus just highlight the word you want a word for and click on the thesaurus add-on and you will be given a number of word options to choose from.
• Open clipart - quite often teachers and students want to use a bit of clip art just to jazz up their presentations.  Of course it is preferable for them to create their own images but this alternative offers hundreds of open sourced clips when they are in a rush.
• Maps - when you put an address into your document and highlight it, this add-on allows you to highlight it and get a map to quickly insert
• Flubaroo is a great script which is now an add-on for sheets and can be used to set up self-marking quizzes.  It is easy to use, just follow the instructions. (I tried it, it works) Hurrah for anything that saves time for teachers.

Chrome Extensions - these go hand in hand with Google Chrome browser which I find definitely the best browser and getting better all the time.  Chrome extensions are great because once you have set your preferences, they follow you to every computer that you use, as long as you sign in to Chrome.  Chrome is so easy, even your preferred theme is saved so you always feel at home.  Some of the extensions that I find most useful are here:- 

• Snagit - a Techsmith extension to capture and annotate your screenshots and store them in Drive.
• Clearly which will take out all the ads and other page "noise" on websites to give you a nice clean document that you can read easily, or save to Evernote for later reference.
• Evernote clipper - will take parts or all of pages and save them in Evernote. You can annotate and edit the clippings.
• Diigo - social bookmarker - I have another blog on this fabulous feature
• Feedly - a reader which collects all your favourite blogs and websites and allows you to access them and read in one easy place to find.

Other apps can be accessed through your New Page Tab.  Some of the ones that I use are 

• Readium - for reading (ePub) published books 
• Gifpal - for making Gifs that you and your students can embed in your blogs and or websites, like this one of my dog Sally.
  

There are thousands more of these apps, add-ons and extensions which are so great for working with Google and Google Chrome.  All I can say is get out there are try some!