Google Maps and Google Sheets Make Interactive Maps

Trevor Beck published a great video that shows how students can use a Google Sheet of data and import it into Google Maps to make an interactive map.  The video is pretty easy to understand and follow!

How can teachers use this?  

• In a world history class, combine economic data with geographic tags on the map for easier comparison between locations.
• Use the Layers to provide hideable data. Have one layer for German troop movement and another for Allied troop movement.  Spreadsheet data could provide dates of military action and casualty statistics. 
• Historical data regarding climate change could be collected in a spreadsheet which could be imported into the map. Layers could provide points for specific decades.
• Record biographical information for people important in Texas history.  Import the data into a Google map that shows where these people lived in Texas.
• Similar to Google LitTrips, connect fictional events in a historical fiction story to their real geographic locations.  Edit the tags to include student-made art that illustrates the events.

What are some other ways that you could combine spreadsheets and Google Maps in your classroom? Please share in the comments below!

AISD Anchors of Support

An anchor is usually seen as a heavy object tied to a boat to keep it from moving.  In this case, our Anchors of Support are connecting teachers to a constant source of support documents for the technology being used in classrooms today.

Teachers can search their Google Drive for "Anchor of Support" or just go straight to them at bit.ly/aisdanchors .  This link takes you to a growing collection of support documents that will continue to be updated and added to throughout the year.  We will be highlighting some of these on this blog, so come back and search the site or look for the "Anchor of Support" in the right margin.

Discovery Education- SOS Activities

Discovery Education not only provides quality media for teachers and students to use in class, but they provide Board Builders and a great new resource, the SOS Activities.  These activities provide highly effective instructional strategies that can increase student engagement and deeper content discussions.  This anchor, bit.ly/aisddiscoverysos , provides support for getting started.

One SOS Activity that students enjoy is The Snowball Fight.  (This link explains this strategy in a video, or search 'Snowball Fight' in Discovery Education to get the video and PDF resources.) After watching a video or reading a passage, students write one thing that they learned on a clean piece of paper.  The teacher announces "Snowball Fight" and everybody throws their page into the middle of the room. They retrieve a new page, read it, and then add one new idea to that page. After repeating this a few times, the students have at least several ideas to bring into final discussion about the video or passage. 

Kahoot 

Teachers are using Kahoot with students as a easy Formative Assessment tool. Our Anchor (http://bit.ly/1efDsXF) provides information for getting started using this tool on desktops, laptops and mobile devices.  Students do not need an account and can easily use their personal mobile devices without installing any software. 

Want An Anchor?

For what classroom instruction would you like to see an Anchor of Support? Share a comment below so we can make sure you get what you need for your instructional time.

Google Drive Revision History - A Powerful Tool for Teachers

This is the first of a series of posts on Google Drive features that classroom teachers may find quite valuable.

As a classroom teacher it is not enough to grade an assignment and move on. Why a product misses the mark is as important (if not more so) than the mark itself.

This was a problem I struggled with as a classroom teacher.

Is the work below expectations because I did not present the concepts well? Did the student misunderstand the assignment? Was the project completed in a rush the day before the deadline? The answers to these questions each suggest a different way to help the student and teacher improve.

In the "dark ages" of classroom technology, we used Clarisworks/Appleworks.  Students would bring their printed writing to the writing conference. We would discuss the work. I might make a few suggestions for improvement. The student would work on the revisions and later turn in a revised final draft. It wasn't chiseling on stone tablets but it was Old School. I am certain, but couldn't prove, I frequently received a freshly printed copy without any changes.

I needed a good way to find out the "who, what, when and where" of the project timeline.

• Who contributed (especially important for group assignments)?
• What was contributed, changed, pasted or otherwise added?
• When was is done?
• Where was it done? (This one is easy.)

Teachers and students in Austin ISD now have access to Google Drive and the extensive suite of productivity applications it provides. There are too many features for one post.
I want to highlight the revision history available in most document types.

Revision History shows time stamped changes in the document. It is accessed from the file menu within a document.
File>See revision history

There are several useful features in revision history:

WHO?
Notice that each collaborator is listed with different colored text. Collaboration is a crucial skill but group projects can be difficult to assess. Did everyone contribute or did Vanessa, Diane and Shelley do all the work while Marc and Howard played "Monty Python quotes" and made rude noises? That almost never happens but you get the idea.

WHAT?
Clicking on an entry in the revision history will show the changes made at that time. Did Howard change one word and call it a "revision"? Did Marc paste an entire paragraph without citation? Once again, examples are for illustrative purposes only.
Howard never does revisions. His work is perfect from the first draft.

WHEN?
Every entry in revision history has a time stamp. Now it is easy to tell if an assignment was finished two weeks ago and polished or if it was done start to finish the night before the deadline.

A teacher can easily tell the who, what and when about the work from revision history.

WHERE?
That is easy- anywhere there is internet. Google Drive is available on the internet 24/7, no software to install and nothing to buy. A device with a browser and an internet connection is all that is needed to use it.

Whiteboarding In The USA!

I'm starting this post with Beach Boys music in my head and picturing a white longboard cresting over some waves out in California.  There are a few problems with that though. I don't really like Beach Boys music, Cali water is way too cold for me, and the interactive whiteboard (IWB) resources I'm writing about are actually from the UK and not Cali.  (Apologies given to my California friends.)

I was reading the daily list of Diigo posts I get and saw a link for free whiteboard software. I'm not an IWB king and don't see them used with great efficiency in most places, but this link had me intrigued. A website (http://getwordwall.com) was giving away their IWB software for free until Christmas.  I downloaded it only to find it was for UK teachers. My Pappy always said that it doesn't hurt to ask, so I emailed them.  Within two days, they responded twice, the last time announcing a product update that allowed for US installs!


Wordwall 3 is an easy install on your Windows-based pc. (Alas, no Mac version.)  The activities were easy to create and very quick.  Almost any teacher would be able to get started with little support.

The publishers are giving the software away for FREE until Christmas.  Just download it from http://getwordwall.com and use the product code NOVDEC12 .  Then you will have a free and fully-functioning product.

The kicker for me was that the publishers opened up the installs to the US by saying, "We'll do that if you just share with as many people as possible."  So, please pass the word.  The software at retail price is not cheap and this is a fantastic deal. If you have been waiting for that big wave to ride, this is it!! Start paddling and get to the software.

Some of my friends also found the announcement on another UK site, http://www.whiteboardblog.co.uk .  I hadn't seen that one before and have already found a good many instructional ideas for integrating the IWB into the classroom.

What? You don't have an expensive hardware device that receives touch-based inputs?  Then, just use it on your Windows computer. The mouse will do the same thing as an interactive device. Project your laptop or desktop onto a wall for the visual, but have students use a mouse.  Heck, splurge and get a wireless mouse and place the students closer to the board!  You got the software for free, so tell the principal to pony up for a mouse!  (Principal friends, don't shoot me. But that really would be money well-spent in this case.)

Please, leave a comment on how you use IWBs or IWB software in the classroom. What has been your success?

Comics In The Classroom?

Comics and graphic novels are still very popular with young readers. Year after year, they also prove to be excellent resources for teaching English acquisition classes, visually presenting complex steps, and an engaging resource for students to use to demonstrate understanding.  Visual literacy, as a concept, has been around since 1969, and using comics in the classroom is an excellent way to develop those skills.

Comic Use in the Curriculum
A Best Practice for the instructional use of comics is to start small with very narrow criteria. A first comic criteria list could include: Use 5 frames to tell the story; Use at least 5 speech bubbles; Use only photos from the server directory provided by the teacher; Show good understanding of the concept of supply and demand.  With a very defined time limit given, students can quickly create that comic.  As you repeat that assignment product, add more elements of the comic-creation tool. Elements provide backgrounds (setting), creative text art (Wow! BAM!), the ability to change and edit fonts, and to make multiple-page comics as well.

Teachers have had success with using comics to quickly tell a story, but then used that as the pre-write or outline for a written story. The student has the dialog, but also has a visual setting, a plot, and character description to draw from. 

Comic Life
Austin ISD licenses the installed application, Comic Life, for all student computers, Mac and Windows. If the application is not on your computer, teachers can easily install the application over the district network.

Comic Life uses the photo libraries on your computer (iPhoto or MyPhotos) but can navigate to any connected storage for photos or use the built-in cameras on your computer.
Pages are easy to create. One can drag one of the many page templates to the main window to start their comic.
Panels are the shapes on the page that Comic Life uses to house your images. Panels can be resized, deleted, reshaped, and edited.  Dragging and dropping an image onto a panel will make the narrowest dimension of that image fit exactly into the panel.
Dialog bubbles can be dragged up to the page. Click and drag the point of the bubble to the source of the speech. That point will now be anchored to that place while the bubble can still be moved around independently.
Narrator text box is your non-speech text, such as ‘Back at the ranch..’ .
The Lettering text is your title or few word exclamations. There are many styles with each style with the ability to be further edited.
Click on the gray right next to the page to deselect all elements on the page.
    Click on a panel to edit the panel.
    Click twice inside the panel to edit the image in the panel.
The green squares at the corners are your handles for altering your panel or image.
The curved arrow in the center is your rotation tool.
The Libraries tab provides a collection of elements to add to your page.
The Details tab provides the ability to edit any of the elements on the page.
    Click on the gray right next to the page and Details will edit the page.
    Click on a panel and Details will edit that panel.
    Click twice inside the panel and Details will edit the image.

Publishing Comic Life
The easiest publishing is of course just printing the comic. Printing them on the monochrome laser printers is not always bad. Shading main ideas in colored pencil is not only very artistic, but a great way to make ‘the red shoes’ stand out on a page.

Comic Life will also export the comic as a gif image or series of images, as an html file that can be placed on a webserver for internet viewing, or as a Quicktime file.  If you have the ability to place a folder of files on a web server, the html version is great because it gives you navigation buttons for multi-page comics.  Example of web version with navigation. Publish as PDF online example (Gail Laubenthal's work).

Charles Thacker published this ComicLife reference which contains a different tutorial on using it in the classroom. 

Online Alternatives
Make Belive Comics allows you to make simple line art comics.
ToonDoo has said they are creating an education portal, but it hasn't been seen yet. ToonDoo is a nice tool, but not totally vetted for graphics and privacy.
GoAnimate is a great tool, but also is open to some non-classroom friendly graphics. They do, however, have a pay-for-use education site at GoAnimate4Schools.

Have you had a class publish their classroom comics? Do you have experience using comics with students?  Leave a comment below to share your ideas!

Taking Pictures in the Classroom! pt 3

In this last part of the series, I wanted to share some different avenues and alternatives for sharing instructional photography with students in the classroom. There is no way to cover every option, so this will hopefully open the door for greater discussion and sharing.

First off, we've discussed taking photos and getting them onto a local network. What can we do with those photos? One uniform tool that all Macs and Windows computers have in AISD is MS Powerpoint. Students can access the teacher's folder containing the photos and insert a photo onto a Powerpoint slide.  A simple criteria could be to point out 4 concepts from the lesson by drawing a line arrow to them, adding text that describes them, and saving it back to the server. Slides could be combined into one class presentation or students can take turns adding a new slide to the teacher's presentation.  Either way, the software is already on the computer, the draw tools are simple, and the students have a quick and easy way to demonstrate comprehension of the instructional goals that day.

The other computer-based idea that is often over-looked is the use of the Comic Life application available on all Mac and Windows computers. (Granted, you have have to install it, but both students and teachers have the ability to do that through district network-install tools. Ask your campus technology leadership for more information about that.)  Comic Life will access your network-saved photos and let you create graphic documents that use text, engaging graphics, and your photos to tell a story or demonstrate a point. Comic Life also can access your webcam and take the pictures directly from the camera into your Comic.

The internet includes many sites that allow you to upload something to it, edit the media, and then either save it back to your computer or publish it for public viewing.  These interactive sites make up much of the Web2.0 environment. (Web1.0 was considered the mostly access-and-view web and less interactive.) The benefit to most Web2.0 sites is that they are platform independent. I should be able to do the same thing on that site regardless of the type of computer I am using. (The recent exceptions are mobile devices that don't have Adobe Flash capabilities.)

One such Web2.0 site that works well for classroom photography is Picnik.com. Students can simply go to the site, upload a picture from their computer, edit it with filters/stickers/text/etc, and then save it back to their computer.  The great thing about Picnik is that it requires no login or account to be created. Simply upload, edit, and save back to your computer.  The graphic tools are easy to use and the creative aspects are truly engaging.

A great site for sharing photos is Posterous.com, now called Posterous Spaces. This site is great for sharing and discussing photos, docs, or other media with a class. The recent update to their services gives you a greater ability to share only with certain people, even people who don't have a Posterous Spaces account. Cell phone users can share a photo to the class site by emailing the photo and a thought-provoking comment to your Posterous email account and it's instantly up for classroom discussion.

Mobile devices also present some interesting options for using photography during instruction. There are apps for both Android and iOS that allow you to take a picture, edit and then share it with others.  I presented one such app, PhotoPad for iOS, during a recent Intel Webinar on Mobile Apps in the Classroom. (The teacher discussion can be found online!) PhotoPad gets extra credit from me because it uses the photos on the iPad, lets you draw on them, and then I could email the photo out to be shared. Combining that with Posterous makes graphic representations of classroom instruction easily shared with others for discussion. (Here's a silly example.)

This list could go on for days!  I know there will be future posts about the classroom webcam used with instruction, but this just gets us started.

Do you have experience using the camera during classroom instruction? What camera did you use? What software or website did you find helpful?

Differentiated Instruction

Dennis Grice is an award-winning educator out of Southern California who champions technology for the classroom. He shared a blog post recently about differentiated instruction, providing a different view of how we can see our students AND teachers. It's worth the time to read it here at the beginning of the year.

As educators, we have to remember that our students learn in many different ways and we are tasked with meeting those needs all year. Technology use in the classroom must also bear the weight of differentiation since not all of our students (or teachers) have the same level of technology experience.  It is incumbent upon us to not avoid authentic opportunities for technology integration because all of our students won't be fearless with the new concept, but we can use our junior Steve Jobs in the classroom to help us scaffold a lesson so we can have that experience.

How can we provide a range of technology instruction in the classroom?

• Pre-teach a small group of your techno-fearless students a particular skill that will be used during a lesson. They can help provide leadership in small groups when you can't be everywhere at once.
• Use Science-lab procedures when working in small groups. Assign four different roles in the group that rotate for the next project.  Techno-reluctant students can observe and learn skills while still being an active part of the project.
• Just as we sometimes provide a rich assortment of student product materials for certain lessons, we can provide the opportunity for students to use technology tools that meet their capacity for showing excellence.  Some students may just be showing minimal proficiency with MS Word document creation while another may use Publisher to show the same lesson outcome.  Teacher-provided photo banks can help beginners focus on the content rather than the search for the perfect photo online, while other student may have the opportunity to take their original photos for the same exercise. 
• An beginning-level user may start a project with a teacher-provided template while a student who has a deeper understanding may be able to create their own document from scratch with more freedom.

There are just a few ideas. What ways have you found to provide multiple levels of instruction using technology in your class?   What tools do you think provide a good opportunity to differentiate during a particular lesson?

We look forward to continuing this discussion this year.