A Reflection on Student Presentations

I was on one of my campuses and received an invitation to watch student book reports in Ms Cole's second period class. This teacher's team uses technology regularly throughout the week and I was ready to enjoy some good presentations, most-likely slidedecks. 

Sitting in that room, it was quickly clear to me that the students were not just doing slidedecks. For starters, there was a buzz in the room with excited students ready to share. They were at their desks, ready to take notes about the book reports. The teacher began by just stepping back and letting the first student take control of the computer. The green flag was dropped and the students were off!

After only about six student presentations, I witnessed Google Slides, Prezi, MovieMaker, PowerPoint, iMovie, Videoscribe, PowToons, Scratch animations, YouTube and more. Students were citing resources from Pixabay, Wikipedia, Flickr and either making or using copyright-free music in their presentations. Final products were shared on the classroom wiki, from a YouTube link of their movie or on another web-hosted site. 

I was impressed by the products that they created, but walked away with permission to share because of what I heard in conversations. "This is fun watching everybody's presentations. You get to how everybody was creative." Students asked questions about the content and about the technical aspects of the presentation. "Does PowToons have any online tutorials?" one student asked. 

Let's put some light on Ms Cole for a second. Her conversations often included, "How did you do that?" and "I don't know what that is. Could you teach us later?" The classroom was a learning environment where students were free to evaluate and choose the technology that best helped them demonstrate their content. There was a criteria for 'must use technology', but Ms Cole let them use their experience over the year so far and their natural techno-curiosity to become engaged in their learning at an electric level.

The teacher had a large part in getting students to this point. The project requirements included a storyboard of some kind to help plan their product and were held to a firm deadline. Students were asked by their peers, "How long did that take you?" Each student was able to give a good estimate and explanation. "It took me 6 hours one weekend," said one movie maker, "because I was learning new software. Next time it will take me much less time." The teacher regularly posts assignments in her classroom wiki and students started the year by typing work into the wiki or providing links to their Google Apps content. The technology had become a natural extension to the classroom learning process.

There were hindrances. The classroom is not a one-to-one class and has some of the oldest hardware at the school. Students didn't have training on their online tools and had to problem-solve things. (For example, Google Slides won't let you play a song throughout the presentation, so the student played the song in one tab before starting the presentation in a different tab!) Often seen as a huge disadvantage is that she was working with 4th grade students who had to learn to access the district servers and Google products without email or on-campus technology support. Yes, these were 4th graders! 

The students had become content creators with the encouragement from the teacher. She admits to the students that she is just as much a learner as they are and that the classroom community must learn together and help each other. Ms Cole doesn't claim to be the biggest technology guru in the state, but her students are benefitting from her willingness to try new things and allowing her students the creative opportunities that keep them coming to school enthusiastic about learning. I very much enjoyed these presentations and the student enthusiasm in the room.

What could your next step be to transform your classroom into a more student-centered learning environment? Are you already there? What could you share with peers that could help them in their next steps? 

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.

"Breaking News" from Classtools.net

Every once in a while something free and dead simple to use really catches my attention.

Breaking News is a very simple FREE tool that allows you to create breaking news screens like you might see on a news network.

This can be a great way introduce a presentation or spice up the graphics for a student newscast. Teachers will definitely come up with creative ways to use it (post your ideas in the comment section). 

The end result can be downloaded, tweeted or linked via an i.imgur.com address.


After trying the site in various browsers, I had varying results.
All tests were on a Windows 7 machine.
I will test on Win 8 and OS 10.x when I get a chance.

• Firefox worked best on the site.
• Chrome worked but became slow when I uploaded an image.
• Safari on Windows did not upload an image.
• Same result for Internet Explorer 9. 
• I will try IE 11 when I am on a Win 8.1 machine.
• Works great on a Chromebook.

The site uses java so you may need to tweak your java settings.

The Interface is brilliantly simple:

The resulting image:

This tool is easy, useful and fun.

The Easy Classroom Radio Show iPad App!

Teacher circles have started sharing the question, "Aye, it's the end of the year. What creative thing can we be do'in?"  Forgive the accent, but I just spent 15 minutes listening to Scottish Free Independent Radio on Spreaker.com.  It was a wee bit entertaining, without the haggis.

Radio Shows are great tools for student publications because you don't have a video track that necessitates a great deal of protection from the teacher.  Student voices can be anonymous sources and allow for much more flexibility in publishing original student work. 

Spreaker DJ is a FREE app that helps you create a radio show.  The app is very simple to understand and, with the free account, very easy to publish to the internets.  You have access to audio from your iTunes, two soundtracks with a fader for them, sound effects, and a few nice technical tools for those that want them.  When you start the recording, there is no pausing, so it's a one-take recording with no editing available.

Think of it this way, students must write, revise, and rehearse their show before taking a turn at publishing.  They will have a lot of fun with the creation of the show. The content could be the class' online Dailey Agenda or topic review.  What a great way to finish out the year by encouraging student publication of their thoughts and ideas learned in class!

 

Publishing the show can either be done as a live broadcast or recorded on the iPad and quickly published up to your Spreaker website.  Parents can be given the show's website address and keep up with the classroom events via the internet. 

I took 10 minutes to learn the app and make a recording.  Here is my first effort, as an example.

http://www.spreaker.com/user/5828508/the_one_that_started_everything 

"I don't have an iPad.  I am so sad."    Don't be sad!! Spreaker.com also has the ability to record your radio show off the website. 

I'd love to see what teachers do with this.  Please share if you get a class radio show online!

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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!

Easy Publishing - Posterous.com

One of the hassles of putting your work on a website is learning how to set it up and then having to go to the site to post on it.  There are some great tools out there to minimize the hassles, like the blogs out there that let you update your posts just by sending an email. Well, Posterous.com goes one step farther, er, or easier.

I've had a Posterous account for a number of years and missed one major advantage to Posterous.  The first-time user can start their Posterous account, simply by emailing posterous@posterous.com from the email account they wish to use.  The resulting reply email has already begun the setup process and you are technically a couple of click away from immediate posting!  The video below gives a great demo for Posterous.



Once it is setup, you can simply email your text, picture, document, or video to your Posterous email account and it will get published on your site.  You can still edit and manage the post from your Posterous management page, but you don't have to.

Also, cross-posting is a breeze.  Posterous allows you to connect to your blogs, Twitter, or Facebook accounts and auto post to them from your single Posterous posting. Very easy!

Why Posterous for the classroom? Your main Posterous webpage is organized as a blog. You could have the student of the week send an email at the end (or beginning) of the day to post the day's agenda or assignment list. Since you can post via email, sharing iPad creations via an app's Share via Email options can make sharing iPad products easy without having to setup network printing or filesharing on the iPads.

How would YOU use Posterous in the classroom?  Would love to hear from you.