Digital Stickers

This idea of digital stickers was first introduced to me last year by Jacqui Sharp http://literacyandict.wikispaces.com/Weemees. Jacqui had a number of great ideas for the 21st Century Classroom.

I used this with a group of year 4 students some who were motivated by collecting a sticker or two that was individual and appeared in their digital work. Read Emma's work which Was given the Magic imagination sticker. Add stickers or ideas to a collection here in an open google doc . How to do it is copied from a support document after Emma's wonderful story

Emma's Happy Place

My happy place is free with rivers, streams and it always has a great big rainbow. It’s my favorite place because I can go in it whenever I want. The people in my happy place are tiny and they only eat  vegetables.Only on Monday they eat ground beef.They eat vegetables    because they don’t like eating animals.The only animals in my happy place are kittens, puppies, butterflies, rainbow birds and unicorns. The grass never turns brown. In the middle of my happy place, there is a big river that has clear, blue, sparkling water that is fresh enough to drink straight away.There are no houses in my happy place so the people sleep under trees. The trees look like huge umbrellas. I never share my happy place with anybody! In my happy place, I feel free because it’s out in the open. The only time it rains is on Thursday and Saturday. My happy place has 1 more day than the real world. Its called Flowerday.My happy place is in my head. :D

 

One of the new features of Google docs is the web clipboard which allows users to copy to a web clipboard and then paste into a Google doc, spreadsheet presentation etc. I have been using this to make digital stickers for students writing.

The web clipboard menu in google docs

There are a few specific cases in which the best way to copy and paste is using the web clipboard menu. When you copy a selection using this menu, the content that you copy is stored and associated with your Google Account. That means that you can copy more than one selection and then choose which one to paste later; it also allows you to copy something on one computer and then paste it on another. To copy a selection using the web clipboard menu, follow these steps:

1. Select what you'd like to copy.
2. Click the Web clipboard menu that appears in the toolbar of your doc.


3. Click Copy selection to web clipboard.
4. In the destination document, click the web clipboard menu; you'll see the selection that you previously copied. If you copied multiple things, you'll see a list of the items that you've recently copied.
5. Place the cursor where you want to paste the content.
6. Click the Web clipboard menu.
7. Select what you want to paste. Depending on your selection, you'll see different formats that you can choose from to paste what you've copied (for example, HTML or plain text).
8. Select a format.

Drawings

You can use the web clipboard to copy shapes from drawings and paste shapes into drawings embedded in Google spreadsheets, documents and presentations, or to copy and paste a drawing from a doc into the standalone drawing editor.

Click the web clipboard icon and select Copy shapes to web clipboard. Then, open the doc that you want to paste the drawing into. Click the web clipboard icon and select the drawing that you want to paste from the menu.

Presentations

You can't use the web clipboard to copy and paste standard text and images in Google Docs presentations yet. You can select entire shapes on a single slide and if the shape is a text shape, the text will be copied to the server clipboard.

Charts

You can use the web clipboard to copy and paste charts from a spreadsheet into a document or drawing.

Here are some more of the stickers.

How Google Docs Might Help?

During the last school holidays I worked with colleagues looking at the use of Google Docs for literacy and at teacher dashboard an interface layer that works with Google Docs. We asked those present to add their ideas about what they already knew about Google Docs, Teacher dashboard and their use (White Hat – “What information is available” thinking). Let’s start by reflecting on what they said.

TEACHERS: What we already know about Google Docs?

“Lots of people can work at the same time. Documents can be shared with others easily. Students can file away you work in subject areas. That is collaborative and can be accessed anywhere. Useful in collaboration. Edit, change, comment, assess, note label et cetera on work as it happens. That allows teachers to print student work. Helpful to teacher marking-Can edit the same (or a copy of the doc) and send it back to the students are instant feedback and feed forward.”

Or in a wordle

 

STUDENTS:  Key thoughts  about working with Google Docs in Teacher Dashboard

Lets us become able to complete our work to a higher neatness and a lot quicker.

Teacher can see it at the same time or I you are working in a group then you can work on bits at a time so one person does not have to do all of the work.

lots of people can work on it as well so it can make the completing of the document much faster and it could have more information on it.

I think that teacher dashboard is easier for us so that we don’t have to keep on sharing our work with Mr Clark, we just have to save it with a title.

It is also really great as Mr Clark / the teacher gets to look at every one's work at once instead one by one.

Or in Tagxedo

.

The students reference the idea of collaboration and the power of this more than the teachers as well as the ease with which everything takes place. The students also seem to have a clearer description of the capabilities within Google documents.

Finally interms of what we think/believe I’d like to outline what I believe will work best for learners using Google Docs and why.

I believe documents with multiple readers and collaborators add most to learning…

These documents allow students to: see how others write and to build on ideas. This motivates them to present themselves well in a highly visible environment. Because others are working with them it is more likely that the work will have meaning beyond compliance (sometimes a significant feature of individual work). We could almost add documents with a purpose on the end of the multiple users and collaborators. I believe we will see more educators working in this way as they come to understand the significance of this new paradigm of access. There are a couple of little tricks and organisational ideas that might help when working with many people to one document. It wont happen overnight but it will happen. I'll put these ideas together into a next post.

As I write this this is a little bit of a broken record element to what I am saying

Time to move on…

My understanding is that people will adopt things, change practice and persist when they have a clear reason for doing so:

so

The next steps are to work and share in a similar environment to the students ourselves for our own learning and modeling…

Reality Check Market Day

Market Day Marketing


I was thinking that the year 8s were up for a big challenge with their Market day.
The big challenges I see are

• Co-ordinating the group together so everyone works for each other in clear roles (I guess alot of people are using google docs for that one)
• Having a catchy product name and an inviting stand
• Having a quality product and selling it to the public

I found a whole lot of pictures from last years market day perhaps having a look at these might give you some ideas about colours, styles, signs etc that are effective.

Any comments on the Market day from last year?
What style of fonts work etc


Advertising with a jingle


One piece of software for recording jingles is  audacity here is one persons guide
If you look for a tutorial video on youtube you will probably find one I call this Watch and Do

Something Special about Google spreadsheets

I am not sure how many times I'm going key use Google spreadsheets in the way that this video from John Thomas shows but regardless of that I'm impressed. What the video really shows is that Google tools go deep: they search, they connect, they interact.
I've been trying to model the application shown but had forgotten how to make the column reference sticky with a $ thanks for that too John.

Might also say I don't think Google are done here I look forward to the day where I can use with in a spread sheet searches for relationships. The first few searches that come into my mind are:

1. Wars, countries involved, civilian casualties, primary issues
2. Inventions, year patent registers, major impact, formal training of inventor
3. Sports, number of players in world, calories burned per hour by athletes, size of playing field
4. Race, average life expectancy, infant mortality, most common religion

While these didn’t quite work out for me YET it was fun trying and not only that it made me think.
Sometimes I feel that thinking is better than having the right answer. Thinking brings us a relationship with our information.

Wanting Gmail to be the default mailto: program

Sometime there is a link a webpage fro an email reply or address that I want to send to. What has been hapeening is my linkclicking will start up Outlook a program I now no longer use.  I have come across Google's Gmail notifier, which has helped me make Gmail my default mail client, which means it will open a Compose window when I click on a web page email link. Here’s how you do it adapted from Lifehacker

Download and install the free Gmail notifier

. In Windows, right-click the Notifier icon in your system tray, and select 'Options.' Then check the box next to 'Use Gmail for internet mailto: links' and click 'OK.'

Mac users, in Gmail Notifier Preferences, go to 'Settings,' and select Gmail from the 'Default Email Program:' drop-down menu, like this:

The Google Message

The video below was Recorded over four minutes and sped up. It is an attempt by student to show how
they can utilise and collaborate using Google docs and a record of their thoughts of the impact of technology
on their learning

A First look at message from Media team on Vimeo.

What Students want to Say to us

The Key Message: That we don’t just enjoy using the computers but they help us to do research.
               We can learn alot faster using the technology we have today.

I found Says it on Lenva’s Cool tools for teachers Wiki and
put some of student messages into images

The students came up with these in a Google Doc

Sayings we could use:

1. I can do 3 different types of homework at once on a laptop and still talk to my friends.
2. I can see France, England, Japan and go on top of Mt Everest all in one day just by clicking a few buttons.
3. I can search, listen to music, type and personalize at the same time.
4. I can be made more interactive.
5. I understand the topics by thinking real world problems.
6. I can see more clearly how things happen and work.
7. Instead of taking forever by drawing diagrams, I can make diagrams online.
8. I can think about how to make some technology better which expands my thinking.
9. I can use art programs to make my ideas more creative.
10. Most people don’t think how technology helps us in learning... we do.
11. We explore our technology instead of using it only for it’s designed purpose. We become curious.

Tomorrow we looking to develop this more into a movie watch this space

So You're Married Now

Google Apps for Edu is being widely adopted by an education community recognising the capacity of collaboration to improve outcomes for organisations. This is a developing ecosystem with some of the administration tasks we have been used to with active directory taking place in different ways with different tools. This can be complicated when organisations decommission exchange servers in favour of this cloud-based solution. One of the teachers at my school got married and took her husband's name. We wanted to change her name while retaining all of her documents and e-mail. We have been using Google-sync but needed now to change the account name in Google before resynching  to it with an alias address so that she could receive mail from people using her maiden name.

Changing names

The product we used is the Google Apps Manager. There are a couple of steps to installation and then you need to follow the syntax examples to ensure that the naming you want takes place. We did this to rename the teacher with a new married name after which we could connect to her correctly from active directory where we also changed her name. I wasn't aware of the ability to create an e-mail alias using the same utility but it is there. This your only option that I know about should you have decommissioned your exchange server like we have. Good luck and I look forward to hearing your Google apps manager stories.

Start here at the wiki

How Good is Good enough?

 
“A school or schools operating in isolation is no longer good enough in my mind.”
Why? this is the way things have always been done and it has worked.

The potential understanding of what is out there has changed we often apply this to our understanding of students learning.
At the school level we are now seeing this take place and I am happy to be part of groups that are trying to network develop and connect on behalf of their regions.
In New Zealand I think we are on the right track with regional capacity being developed by the key stakeholders. Regional groups extend pre-existing clusters and therefore connectivity. 
A fantastic example of this is

Manaiakalani an Auckland Community who are achieving multi dimensional improvements for their community.
The result is a ambitious project that is looking to bring 1:1 to a community without huge financial resources and includes wireless internet access to homes supported by Housing New Zealand.

This community is trying to transform itself led it seems by the Tamaki Transformation Programme Board. The complexity of successful change makes it vital that we look beyond ourselves and look to others while understanding that the sharing.

So what are the features of this project that we could look to for our preferred futures????

• Long term vision and community ownership of outcomes
• No constraining of dreams big expansive goals such as bringing connectivity to students in their homes
• Working with multiple agencies and supports
  • Housing New Zealand
  • Work and Income New Zealand
  • External consultancies eg Hapara putting interface layer over google docs that is purpose built for learners and schools.
  • 
  • Folksonomies by this I mean communities of goodwill eg software developers
• Focus on student achievement and well being
• Connected thinking and community

So what do we need to do?
At a regional level we can use presently operating networks such as principals associations and curriculum interest groups and add to them further collaborations with. Think LONG TERM 

• The willing
• Charitable Trusts
• Regional and local councils
• Multiple Govt agencies
• Libraries
• Tertiary institutions
• Community Educational Leaders

I like this video which tells a story about why collaborations are so powerful

 

Kia Kaha Manaiakalani

Printing in Gmail

For those of us new to gmail there are a few things to learn. While I try not to print emails and be paperless many of us often need to. Here is a video pointing out howto without getting all the stuff on the side.

Googlewave don’t believe the hype?

Google have many of us waiting to find out what wave is and what it might mean for us. Having had a bit of a read around the place and not having an invite myself I became interested. Rather than add yet another review the connections I looked at showed something new and powerful The you tube example is a realtime dialogue with translation. Below this in the iframe is Daniel Tenners take on what Google wave is and isn't for the full page is found here. Personally I think this is going to be big for collaboration and that connectivity is going to be the big delivery point for personal learning in online connected real time environment like google docs etherpad and google wave.

Ride the wave if you have trouble reading the frame below Daniels website is only a click away

Google docs Ulearn

Some Ideas for Google apps integration and use of Google docs. These simple tools are so connected and so online that they are changing the way we work play and collaborate (or me any way ;—)  ).  You are able to edit and add to the slides below. There is a lot more to add to the story so please have a go and I will be able to reflect on how this can grow from a simple start. Connectivity is King, Queen, Matai and Keli’i

Googledocs a quick learn

We are starting to use google docs for our students

Why for those who are not sure?

Once we get over the wow look at this, look at that; we need to focus on how to improve learning.

Nick Rate has a good idea for writing the pic below links to his full post with examples.

Colours could also be used to identify (multiple concurrent authors is powerful learning just ask Vygotsky)

• ownership
• parts of speech
• editing process
• thought process
• de bonos thinking hats
• perspectives
• main ideas
• disagreement
• discussion points

This Google presentation has some other good ideas

 

I am working with some teachers on this tomorrow and it needs to be about teaching and learning

the good thing with google docs is I know it can be just that.