There Is Power In The Avery Label Add-on In Google Docs!

It's almost time for the annual migration of teachers back to the clean hallways of their schools. If you are like me, you make plans to be more organized in some way at the beginning of each year.  One great tool for organizing the room and saving time later in the year is the use of Avery Labels. Google Apps does a great deal for creating and sharing data and it is also the secret to making Avery Labels even more powerful.

The video below walks through the process of using a Google Sheet to hold student information and using that sheet with Google Docs to create the labels.  This is a free tool and you can use it over throughout the year.

bit.ly/aisdaverylabel

Teachers will quickly see the utility of the Avery Label Add-on for Google Docs.  Make labels for desks, wearable name tags, class lists, Science Fair poster labels, the last-minute field trip name tags and more! 

Students also have access to this same tool. Students could create math facts in a spreadsheet and print out their own flash cards or create study cards for projects.

How do you use labels in your classroom to better organize the learning environment? Please share below in the comments.

Holiday Activities via Google Classroom

Happy Thanksgiving week!  The Instructional Technology Team is very thankful for the teachers in AISD that continue to transform their instructional practice and develop authentic ways to engage students using the available technology in the classroom!

Holiday Activities via Google Classroom!

In an effort to demonstrate Google Classroom to teachers and students, The “Holiday Classroom!” class is being shared with all teachers and students in AISD.  Simply joining the class will provide teachers and student access to a few Google Apps activities created for the holiday season. Students will automagically get their own copy of the activities after joining the class.

(*Teachers, see important note below.)

Students and teachers can go into the AISD Cloud and search for Google Classroom. Once open, click the + sign at the top right to select Join.   Join this class using the code, “5adyiv”.  Students can immediately begin working on any activity in this Holiday Classroom! by just clicking on the assignment title and then on the activity. 

The process of joining will create a copy of all activities in a new folder in your Google Drive called “Classroom”. Inside that folder you will see all classes that you have joined, including “Holiday Classroom!”  

*Important: A quick-start guide to using Google Classroom can be found at: http://bit.ly/aisdgclassroom .  Also, it is important that teachers first click the blue “Teacher” button the very first time they access Google Classroom.  They can then +Join a class just like a student.  

One of the activities included is a Thanksgiving-themed "What I Am Thankful For" Google Slide. Simply adding text to this slide completes the activity, but students can explore other tools within Slides as they become more familiar with this creation tool.  Check out the activity at: http://bit.ly/thanksgivingslide .

Leave a comment or feedback on these activities or implementation strategies that you found helpful.  We would love to share your feedback with other teachers. 

Make a Google Doc Open As a Copy?

When sharing a Google Doc via URL, you can make a change to the URL which will make the student create a copy of the Doc automagically.  All it takes is a simple edit at the end of the URL.

For example, I have a 8 Page Booklet foldable template that I want my students to use.  I have shared it with the world using the following URL:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1PdA_wyw2FCtOOmYUBog8bzPSC0GGyFxLrz0L-SjNi_k/edit?usp=sharing

If that link is in an email or on a webpage that they have access to, they can simply click the link and be able to view this template. The students will then need to File/Make a copy to use it for an assignment.

Now, I can save my students a couple of steps, which can be valuable in many classrooms, and give them a link that will automagically open up to the Google "Make a copy" dialog box.  When the students click "Make a copy", Google will place a copy (that the student now owns) into the students' Google Drive.

To do this, you need only edit the URL that you are sharing with the students.  Copy the URL above and delete everything at the end, starting with "/edit?....".   Replace it all with "/copy" and then share that new edited URL.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1PdA_wyw2FCtOOmYUBog8bzPSC0GGyFxLrz0L-SjNi_k/edit?usp=sharing  becomes:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1PdA_wyw2FCtOOmYUBog8bzPSC0GGyFxLrz0L-SjNi_k/copy  .  That's it.

So, if you are not using Google Classroom to distribute templates to students, sharing Docs with this Copy tweak may just be the small time-saver that makes a difference in your day.

Safely Using Images From The Internet

Probably one of the biggest problems with students using the internet for school work is the inappropriate or illegal use of images found online.  Teachers like to think that Educational Fair Use means that anything can be used with students.  Not so.

(Click to enlarge)

A teacher in my PLN (Professional Learning Network) shared the picture below.  A teacher in her district found a picture in a Google search and copied it from the search results page and used it in a presentation. That presentation file was uploaded for a few days on her website for students to use and then taken down.   The company, a part of Getty Images apparently, has tools actively searching the internet for their work and they found their image.  The teacher was sent a bill for $1480 for the use of the image online.  Legally, it had to be paid.

Researching into this more, there are a good number of educational institutions sharing that they have been hit with similar bills.  The teachers that posted the images online are responsible for paying the bill, often in the thousands of dollars.

Looking for an authentic object lesson for students or teachers about copyright and the use of images found on the internet?  This is pretty authentic.

Where Do I Get Online Images For The Classroom?

Not everything on the internet is evil or copyrighted.  Students have access to a wealth of images that can be used for reports.  Do keep in mind that the practice of citing your image source for each image can help the writer be mindful of copyright permissions for images used.

Google Image Search

There is a lot in The Google that is legally useable. Go ahead and use the Google image search, but change the settings to only search for images that have been labeled for reuse or reuse with modification.

Again, these photos belong to somebody. They are just letting you use them for free if you give them credit with a citation.

Flickr Creative Commons
Flickr.com maintains a Creative Commons (https://www.flickr.com/creativecommons/ ) that houses millions of photos that are free to use.  This page quickly describes the Creative Commons licenses and groups the photos by license.  Not all of the photos are elementary safe, but teachers can collect some great images and provide them as a photo bank for classroom projects. Look for the Attribution icon for freely-usable images.

Google Docs Research Tool

One of our favorite tools in Google Docs, the Research tool is found in the Tools menu in Docs and Slides. (Google support).  Using this tool, students can search for images, websites, statistics and more right beside the Google Doc they are working on.

Finding an image is as easy as typing your search term at the top and clicking the 'G' to give you access to the Images search.  You can now find a good image in the results and simply drag over to your document.  I love showing this to teachers in a large room, just because you quickly hear gasps of joy as they realize that the Research tool automatically creates a footnote for that image and places the citation at the bottom of the page.  No rolling the typewriter up from the bottom of the page anymore.

Images, websites, quotes and more can provide a clickable citation for your document.




More Online Resources For Free Images For The Classroom
Our friends at Harvard Law School Library have published a guide for appropriate use of online images. Finding Public Domain and Creative Commons Media. They share a few more resources and legal definitions for public domain images.

What are some sources that you use with your students?

Publish Google Docs as a Webpage

Sending a letter home to parents has come a long way since the mimeographed letters that turned many a teacher's finger dark blue.  The increased use of Google Docs in our classrooms means that some teachers are finding good reasons to send Google-created docs home to parents. 

The issue starts to become, "I don't want parents to login to anything to see my Google Doc." One way around this question is to publish the Google Doc as an HTML website.   The document retains all of the content but is displayed on a web page by itself for any web browser to view. 

Any Google Doc can be published to the web.   Open the document and select "File/Publish to the web... ".

By default, the document will be visible to anyone on the internet.  Click Publish and then OK to complete the process. 

Once published, you will be given the URL that you can share as is (or shorten with goo.gl, bit.ly or some other shortener).

You can stop publishing the doc at any time using the "Published content & settings" drop menu and clicking "Stop publishing".




There are a number of other ways to publish information or send it to parents, but the Publish to the web option can quickly share your Google Docs with anybody without requiring a login or Google account.

Go Outside The Box Using Google Apps

When using Google Presentation or Google Draw from your Google Drive, you should notice that your workspace or page is usually surrounded by gray space which is not a part of your printable document.  We usually try to avoid putting anything useful there because, well, it won't be visible in your Presentation or printed page.  We can make that gray space very valuable!

One great reason for teachers to use that gray space is that it can be a place for assignment directions or resources that you don't necessarily want on your final products.

Open this document for an example:  Math Fraction Assignment  (Thanks to Google, you do not need to have a Google Account to view this document.)

Usually, the documents we share just contain content on the main workspace.  This particular assignment utilizes Google Draw and the gray space to the left.

That gray space isn't very big to begin with.  To make it larger, create any shape, like a square.  Drag the square to the gray space, off the edge of the screen.  As your object goes partially out of sight, notice that your scroll bar at the bottom of the window moves to the right.  You can now scroll farther to the left, exposing more gray space. 

My favorite use of this space is to use it for math manipulatives.  Students can copy/paste or move them to the workspace and use them to demonstrate lesson objectives.

This 'extra space' is available in Google Draw and Presentation.  What are some other ways that you would use this space with students? 

Collaborating with Google Docs

Google Docs is gaining wider acceptance as a tool that students can use, but managing the work that students create still has a way to go for many teachers.  One of the biggest strengths of Google Docs is that it is a fantastic collaboration tool for the classroom.

In the video below, I quickly show how students can take any document and share it with other students.  Students can edit the same document simultaneously from anywhere.  Students can see previous revisions of the work and restore an old version if something went terribly wrong during a late night editing session.

Teachers can share with any student by using their studentlogin@stu.austinisd.org account.  Because the district connects the class roster system to Google Groups, the teacher can also share a document with the entire class by using just one class account.  Class account ID's start with the campus number, the teacher's E#, and the class period, followed by the special @crs.austinisd.org subdomain.

Sharing documents is easy and can allow for much less paper flowing across the classroom.

How would you use the Share button with your students? How do you have student collaborate on documents?

Sharing Google Docs With Your Class

Many users quickly learn to share documents via a users email address, but teachers in the Austin ISD Google domain can also very easily share documents with the entire class or single students.

When you are ready to share a document, click the Share button as you normally would in Google Docs. In the 'Add people' box, start typing the name of the person you wish to share the document with.

In the picture above, we typed 'john' and a list of names that contain 'john' automatically populate the share box. It is very important that our users carefully look at the domain after the @ sign before selecting a name.  The subdomain 'stu.austinisd.org' is only for students.  So, johnsmith@austinisd.org would be a teacher while johnsmith@stu.austinisd.org could only be a student.  Before sharing sensitive documents with other teachers, please check the address fully.

Another subdomain that we have is the 'crs.austinisd.org' domain that is reserved for class groups. Students accounts are automatically added into a crs group by the class scheduling system. Teachers do not need to create these group or manage the movement of students between classes or schools.

In this picture, we see that two different addresses have been selected to share this document with.  The first is a class account. These follow the format,  
CampusCode/Teacher'sE#/Period#@crs.austinisd.org .  Like the other addresses, the crs addresses will autopopulate as you type in this box.

You also have the ability to attach a message with this sharing process.  From this same picture, we see a teacher giving editing rights to an entire class and a specific student.  Students can use the Google 'File- Make a copy' menu to make their own editable copy that they can then save to a collection that the teacher has created for all students in that class.  Collections can be shared in the exact same way as above to help manage student document sharing with the teacher.

How would you use document sharing in your classroom?  Share!

Publishing From Google Docs

Most teachers know that Google Docs can be used to view, create, and edit documents online.  We can share those documents with others in a number of ways.  One of the easiest ways to share involves publishing the document as a webpage on the internet.

After creating your Google Doc (word doc, spreadsheet, or presentation), make sure you give is an appropriate name and give Google a few seconds to save the document.  To publish your doc, simply go to the File menu within Google Docs and select "Publish as HTML".

 

Publishing the document to the Web essentially just makes it viewable as a webpage while it remains in your Google Docs directory of files.  Publishing will give you both a document link that you can share with others or an embed code that can be added to a standard website page and viewed within that page.

 

Make sure that you check "Automatically republish.." so that you can continue to make changes to the original document and those changes will automatically be seen when viewing the original shared link. 

Publishing the document as HTML is great for when you are sharing a document with someone who doesn't have a Google Docs account.  The document is strictly a viewed webpage and any web browser can view it without having the user login to any account.   Teachers can use published documents as parent newsletters, instruction pages for students, an easy 'home page' for a classroom, and a great way to share a report with the world.  

How would you use this in your classroom?  Do you have an alternate way of easily publishing a document so that it is seen by anyone with basic web access?  Share!

Need A Teacher Webpage?

A teacher's webpage can be used in many different ways.  The website can be used to communicate with parents, a classroom environment for the students, or a project pace that the class could share with another class at any other school.   The historical problem with teacher webpages is that creating and maintaining the webpage could be a daunting adventure requiring special software and knowledge of internet publishing.

In Austin, teachers were given a webpage tool that was fully supported by the district. These teacher webpages were simple, but integrated into the district's network so that the creation was mostly content creation and not website creation.  Instructional Technology staff have been training campuses for a couple of years now and training is still available from the old IT wiki:

AISD Teacher Webpage Setups - From the Great and Wonderful Susan Monahan

          The pages below, but on their own page:  Teacher Webpages
          Page, Properties, and Photo   1_prop_photo.pdf
          Handouts  2_tchwebpage_handouts.pdf
           Calendar  3_tchwebpage_calendar.pdf 
           News  4_tchwebpage_news.pdf
           Links  5_tchwebpage_links.pdf
           FAQ's  6_tchwebpage_faq.pdf
           Add a Page  7_tchwebpage_addpage.pdf

The New Alternative - Google Sites

When the district adopted the use of Google Apps, we were able to include the use of Google Sites as a district-supported website creation tool.  Teachers can find the Google Sites resource by going to the AISD Cloud, opening Google Apps (AISD - Start - Collaboration - Google Apps) and clicking the white 'Sites' link at the top of the page.

Google Sites not only provides a very customizable website location, but also provides many templates for education webpages.  The templates are pre-formatted for classrooms, after school activities, or just teacher communication sites.  Once you understand the editing process, you can quickly update the content without every having to do any design work.

AISD teachers can sign up for summer training on Google Sites through the eCampus professional development catalog. There will be a full day training offered that will get almost any teacher up and running before the end of the day.

For the self-starters or independent-level technology users, Google has provided many resources for educators to use to help create their functional website.  One resource, http://edutraining.googleapps.com/Training-Home/module-5-sites   is the classroom component for some online Google courses.  Self-starters should be able to use this site to create their own Google Site.

There is much one can do to customize Google Sites, including embedding web content from other sites like YouTube, Vimeo, or Flickr.com. The site can have multiple pages and a teacher can assign edit rights to specific pages to specific teachers or students with AISD usernames.

Do you have a Google Site already?   Comment below and share your site address so we can share in your success!

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Searching Google Docs For AISD Content

The more we use Google Docs in AISD, the more we will find some of the advanced features more important. For example, I create the world's greatest Literature Group lesson in Google docs and have shared it with AISD.  Later, I meet Mr. Smyth at a meeting downtown and he said he would be interested in seeing my lesson. How will he be able to find it quickly?

Make It Visible
To the right, you see how I made my Doc visible. I chose to not make it viewable to the entire world, but just to all 7,000+ AISD employees and 80,000+ students.

By marking the top AISD button, any teacher/student will be able to search Google Docs and find my document. 

*WARNING: This is a good and bad thing. Don't share any confidential material like this as someone could search and find it by accident.

Now that my document is saved with some unique name and I marked the document as visible by all AISD searches, my colleagues can find this document and open it WITHOUT  me having to share it with them specifically.

Use The Advanced Search

The more documents you have in Google Docs, the more you'll use the search box. Typing and searching for keywords will quickly go through your own docs and show suggestions for your search.



Basic Search



However, I can also search the vast amount of docs that live inside the AISD Google Docs domain. By using the advanced search drop-down, I can use the 'Search AISD' link at the very bottom. My search results now will come from my Docs as well as all other user-created docs in AISD.

Using this with students can be quite useful.  For today's problem statement, I want my students to open up my document, add their thoughts and submit at the end of the week for a grade.

1. Create a Google Docs and name it something unique, like "MartinP5PhysicsandPolitics". Share that document with AISD, as above.
2. Students will login to the Cloud and do the advanced search for that file name, and open the file.
3. Because I want this file to be a template, I didn't give anyone edit rights.  So my students' first action will be to go to the Google Docs File menu and 'Make a Copy' of this document. They now have their own copy and can edit it to their heart's content.
4. By the end of the week, they can share their document with me. (They won't change any privacy settings because they don't need anyone to find their work.) The share with me, giving me edit writes so that I can leave comments on their work.

There are a number of different ways to share with others, but I'll put that in a later post.  Leave a comment if you have done this with your students. Did you find it useful? What did you do differently that worked for you?