Google Searching

This week I explored lots of the different tools in Google search.  I have used a few of these tools, and during my research I found out that one of my favorite tools, searching by reading level was taken away.  That by far was my favorite tools, so I must reevaluate and so, without further ado, I give you my 5 favorite google searching tools.

5. Google Calculator
Do simple math from the comfort of the google search bar!  When you type in a problem or calculator, it takes you to this scientific calculator.  Much easier than opening the calculator on your phone or desktop computer!



4. Asterisks
Know some of the lyrics to a song, but can't fill in one of the words?  Search everything you know, but leave the things that you don't know with an asterisk.  The results will then pop up as the suggestions start to come below your search.



3. Google Converter
Don't know conversions for tablespoons to teaspoons?  Does the metric system vex you?  Type in the conversion you need to make and the conversion tool will pop up.  The best part is that you can tweak and change the different measurements to learn more about converting the measurements.



2. Google Dictionary
Meet a word that you don't know?  Type "define" along with the word that you don't know and a great definition will come up as well as all the other things that you would expect to find from a paper dictionary without the paper cuts.



1. Shortcuts
And the top tool goes to google shortcut entries.  Want to limit the dates of the posts you are looking for?  Want to find an exact word search?  Want to shorten your search to a single website?  Use the many tips seen below for great searching!

Symbaloo and Pinterest

This week for my class, I was working with the social media page, Pinterest.  My Pinterest is used mostly to save craft and home project ideas, but I follow many posts that are related to education.  Lot's of funny posts too.  I have four boards related to education, mostly different resources for Science.

I also created a Symbaloo.  My Symbaloo has lots of Google Links, of course. I plan on adding documents to each of the Google Docs that I use the most.  I now have this as my opening a page when I open up Google Chrome.  I could see the endless other options though.  A Symbaloo could easily house all of the great resources that students could use during the course a unit of study to learn from.  Students could also make their own Symbaloo of the different sites that they would like to use.  It is very visual and easy for students to use.

As I highlight these two tools and reflect on many others, I can't help but think about all of the great tools that students and teachers can use.  Social media websites are definitely among those great tools, but there is much discussion about the level that social media should play in our educational system.  I have seen a school district open to social media and one that blocks and definitely did not encourage social media use.  In my four years in a district that shows digital citizenship is a necessary skill for the 21st century, I have only encountered one or two situations where students inappropriately used social media where it affected the school setting.  I cannot even start to explain all of the great experiences that I have had with parents, students, and other educators on social media.  Of course, I have some rules that I follow to help create a professional presence online.

1.  Use a professional account to interact with students and parents.
2.  Only post pictures of students who have accounts that follow the professional account with that student's permission.
3.  Post only when students are not in the room to show full attention to the students.
4.  All privacy settings are stripped away with no way to direct message or hide any posts from others maintaining complete transparency.
5.  Receive e-mail each time a post is made in case the page is hacked.
6.  Share the username and password with administrators and colleagues if necessary.

Of course, your school district may have other expectations and it is very important to know all of your districts policies related to social media.  Social media is great, but not so great to put your job in jeopardy!

Teacher Tools for Time Saving

This week I bring you several tools that will help you save time.  Everyone knows where I stand on the amazing time saving that Google Classroom and Drive have on instruction in the classroom and here are some other tools that I am beginning to use that help with limiting the amount of time it takes to effectively lesson plan, teach, collaborate, and share with students and parents.

Tools I have used a lot:

Smore has the capability to share and edit a flyer to make a weekly newsletter become a document you can update and parents and students can see the updated information instantaneously.  It really helps teachers easily share information and you can easily upload pictures, videos, or text.  It is really easy to use and works well on mobile devices.

Quizlet allows you to make and share study guides with students.  There are mobile apps, but Quizlet also works well on phone and tablet web browsers.  Students can also create log ins and make study guides or note cards for other students to use.

Screencastify allows you to create YouTube screencast videos on the fly with a Google Chrome extension.  Make a 5 minute video with directions in just 6 minutes.  Their interface allows your work to get done quickly.  Use to introduce an assignment that students can refer to later.  I have also heard of teachers using these for sub plans, but I have not tried that yet.

Tools I am looking forward to using more in the next weeks:

WhenSend is a tool you can use to send an e-mail in the future.  I have used this tool once, to remind me of something later when our e-mail was not working at school and it was easy to use.

VolunteerSpot is a website like SignUp Genius, but the interface seems easier for the students or parents to use than SignUp Genius.  I will definitely try this program for our next sign up.

Remind is a program I have heard about from many other teachers.  Teachers that have clubs really use this to get information out in the format that students and parents really appreciate, text messaging.  

ShareMyLesson is a website which teachers share resources.  Of the three things I have looked for already on this site, I plan on using each of them.  I really like this site over doing a Google search, because lots of great resources show up on Teachers Pay Teachers for a price.

Google Apps & Add-ons

 This week I was exploring some Templates and Add-ons in Google Drive Files.  There are some really great time saving and additional features that have been made by other Google users and shared with the world.  

The first are Add-ons.  I have used some Add-ons before, but in Google Forms, you can make lots of different customization features.  You can limit the responses, get notifications and lots of other cool things.  Here are some of the cool apps that I discovered.

• formLimiter - allows you to limit the date range, values, and number of entries
• Choice Eliminator - allows you to create sign ups and not have too many people sign up for one item or time
• Form Notifications - get notified by e-mail when someone uses your form
• Survey Monkey - export your data to Survey Monkey for their analytics

• Fudok - creates a PDF of every form submission

To get to see them, open up a Form and click on Add-ons on the toolbar.

 

The next thing that is my favorite new thing are the templates available.  These are docs, spreadsheets, forms, and presentations that Google users have updated that allow you to copy and edit them to make them yours.  These are very similar to the templates available on Microsoft Office Products, except there are many more.  You can find templates for calculators, labels, finance tracking, certificates and so much more.  To get to them, click File > New and click on templates on the bottom.

Check it out to see all the things you can do!

Learning Management Systems

This week, I used and evaluated two learning management systems, Edmodo and Schoology.  Both of these systems emulate the social media website, Facebook. As you can see below, they have a very close appearance to each other.

This allows students and teachers to adapt easily to these two programs.  Now, what do these programs have that my beloved Google Classroom doesn't?  Well, both of them have some extra bells and whistles, but Schoology has a few more options and abilities.  If you are looking to house all of your data in one place Schoology has the ability to take attendance and keep a gradebook.  Edmodo also has a gradebook, but it is not as inclusive as the one offered by Schoology.  Here are some other great features offered by these two learning management systems:

• Folders to store files, links, and assignments.
• Quizzes that can grade themselves and post to the gradebook.
• Polls to measure the opinions to other students.
• Tools to share resources with other teachers and students.
• The ability to control the sharing that students can participate in.
• Storing assignments and other resources so that you can use them at a later date.

If you think I am abandoning this blog to start a Edmodo or Schoology blog, worry not.  Google Classroom still edges them out in the ease of sharing and the ability to see assignments as student work.  Plus, I think we will see some of these features come from Google very soon.  Give these learning management systems a try and maybe you will see some added benefits, of course, to use in conjunction with Google Classroom.

My PLN

This week I have been in the process of building a professional learning community through the use of both Twitter and Diigo.  I have used Twitter as a way to get my news and as a way to connect to parents and teachers, but I never really thought of it as a way to get professional development.  When you think about it, it really is perfect because you shouldn't have to wait for a PD Day to learn something new and if you have a minute and want to get better, you could read some tweets.  As you learn about new tools and sites to use to teach students, you can log and categorize them with Diigo, a tool that allows you to bookmark with the best of them.

In the process of finding a few people to follow and resources to add to my Diigo page, I stumbled across Quizalize, which I am really excited to try.  From what I have seen, it communicates with my Google Classroom account and students take a quiz with lots of different and interesting style of questioning techniques.  Also, the students can play against each other in groups.  No student data is shared, only team data.  You can get an idea of how quizalize works here:

I plan to use this as review for my upcoming unit and will let you know how it works, especially with Google Classroom!

My First Post

Welcome to my blog!  I teach middle school science at Plaza Middle School in Kansas City.  I am starting this blog first as an assignment for my Master's program, but hope to share many of the ways that I use Google Classroom with my students.  I am not new to the world of blogging.  When my son was born 4 years ago, my wife and I ran a blog about the pregnancy through Nolan's first birthday to share with family and friends.

This week in class, I learned about Feedly, a program that combines different sites that utilize RSS feeds.  I had used the old Google Reader mainly for news stories and when that went dark, I moved to Twitter, which has its own limitations, 140 of them to be exact.  I had also started to use Pinterest this summer, but have not used it much because when I have gone to Pinterest for educational projects that I was looking for, I ran into the Teachers Pay Teachers dead end.  I think that the Feedly blog will really help to keep on top of the different blogs that I find to be very engaging and helpful.

The first blog that I have found helpful is Digital Inspiration: Tech a la Carte which I have found time and time again when I am trying to solve a problem using the Google Platform.  A strength of using Google products over Microsoft Office (other than the share-ability) is the flexibility being an online program.  The developers of Google can tweak the program, but those tweaks sometimes can drive the users of Google products go crazy.  "Where do I...?" and "Well, it was here..." are common place if you use Google products because of the on-the-fly changes that are made.  Many of the times that I have looked for these kinds of updates, I have ended up at Digital Inspiration with an easy to follow how to answer.  Let's make this clear.  I am not a programmer, but a heavy user.  They speak my language and I hope they speak yours!