Edgaged

Distance Learning Jamboard was kind of uncharted territory for awhile. It has been exciting to see the updates that have taken place over time as Google has developed this tool from being an interactive TV, to an Android/iOS app, to a web version . At one time, Jamboard wasn't even a part of your Google Drive. As everyone was smacked in the face with distance learning, teachers started looking for great ways to keep students engaged and interact with their learning on a variety of digital platforms.  What is a Jamboard If you aren't familiar with Jamboard, it is pretty much a digital whiteboard where you can organize thoughts, create collages and presentations, and share ideas with a team.  Drawings, images, and post-it notes are all sources of input on a Jamboard. If you aren't sure where to find it, visit Google Drive . When you want to create a new file, check the "more" icon and you'll find it there. Just keep in mind that this will be the web version of ...

Hyperdocs I created a template for anyone to download based on the Hyperdoc Handbook by Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton, and Sarah Landis. These templates are widely known and accepted by many Google Docs/Slides users as it includes the learning steps of: Engage, Explore, Explain, Apply, Share, Reflect, and Extend. I decided to make a template with the steps pushed to the master slide deck so that students aren't moving the images/text around. (To copy this template , you'll need to click on "Use Template" on the top-right corner of the page.) Editing the Master? I've been presenting and training teachers to edit the master slides in Google Slides to create custom learning experiences for several years. Often times I see videos or posts encouraging teachers to create backgrounds in Google Drawings and add them to Google Slides. This does work, but there are two major flaws:  You can't easily edit it if you need to make a change. You have to start over with your G...

At last Audio is enabled in Google Slides! For quite some time, I've been training teachers and students to do a workaround with Screencastify  as audio was a significant feature missing from Google Slides. The process worked fairly well as the user would merely make their recording using Screencastify and insert the video from Google Drive (conveniently in the Screencastify folder). After inserting the video, the user could resize the video and make it completely inconspicuous in the corner of the slide. Then using " format options " while the video was selected, the user could set the video to automatically start with the changing of Slides while in present mode. When presenting on this topic, I typically was doing so from the perspective of using Google Slides for the purpose of digital storytelling ( see my slides ). Digital storytelling is a powerful means for communicating learning and expertise on a topic. As a general rule, a digital story should be kept ...

Life After the Interactive Board If I could choose one word to describe my district's journey with moving away from interactive whiteboards to non-touch displays, it would be adaptability. I posted a long time ago about having life after the interactive board.  The big question that I was tasked with when coming to MSD of Steuben county was if placing such a large sum of money at the front of the classroom is a good investment? What is the return on investment for a teacher to have an expensive interactive board that is primarily used to write on a blank white screen? The entire staff has had to make adaptable their mantra in the transition away from interactive white boards. We've created more focus on student involvement and interactivity in a 1:1 environment rather than the teacher or one student at the front of the classroom.  One exciting thing that happened this year for my teachers that has greatly improved this journey has been the replacement of teacher C...

ICE Conference I recently had the pleasure of speaking on the topic of  Orange Slice Teacher Rubric at the Indiana Connected Educators conference. It was a quick, 30-minute session but it is sometimes refreshing to present just on one focused tool and the implications for the classroom instead of multiple directions. I'm personally connected to the Orange Slice Teacher Rubric Google Docs add-on as the creator is not only a colleague of mine but is a friend. Matt Buchanan is a blessing to our school district as he has transitioned from the physics classroom to our data analyst. His experience as a mechanical engineer and as a classroom teacher gives him a unique perspective as he pursues solutions for our staff.  Presenting at the ICE Conference Why did Matt ultimately create Orange Slice? He wanted to create an easy, effective means for feedback within a Google Doc. It is proven that readily given feedback is a powerful means to help students learn. ...

Three months It has been three months since we started testing "locked mode" in Google Forms for Chromebooks. It has been an exciting opportunity as it promised the possibility of students recording, taking screenshots, or leaving a Google Forms quiz. I've received quite a few mixed reviews during this time. I'm a little late in the game to be posting about the beta version of locked mode, but maybe with this will provide a more honest review. If you haven't tried locked mode in Google Forms, then feel free to check out the video. It is a couple months old, but it will get you started. If you do not have this capability, then your GSuite administrator did not sign up your domain for the early access.  Being a beta tester Teachers were super excited to pilot locked mode when I first announced it. It was going to help resolve a big problem many secondary teachers were struggling with and that was the issue of cheating. Before you jump to the conclus...

Been Awhile Edgaged.net has been a quite place as of late. I apologize for the lack of posting, but it has certainly been representative of the season in my educational career. We've had a lot of new in the last couple years at MSD of Steuben County. I'll make more of an attempt to post in the future. Just in case I don't hold up to that promise, I'm pretty active on my YouTube channel . Feel free to subscribe to me there.  Google Classroom Hack It has been almost an entire year since I came across a quick hack within Google Classroom to save you time an energy when it comes to creating collaborative spaces with Google products (docs, sheets, slides, etc.) To reiterate the linked post, the teacher merely needs to create an assignment, attach a hyperdoc , set the hyperdoc so that students can edit and save it as a draft. By doing so, the teacher can save tons of time due to a cool "reuse" feature within Google Classroom. By reusing the assignment ...

Map hyperslides? Why do that? (Note: I use hyperdocs and hyperslides interchangeably. Hyperslides is not an official term, but I use it.) I'm a firm believer that technology should not be used unless there is some functional improvement to the task a teacher wants to accomplish. Technology for technology's sake is counter-productive. So when it comes to utilizing tools within GSuite, the tendency is that it becomes a digital worksheet; complete substitution for a paper-pencil activity. I want to combat that when it comes to the creating of hyperdocs or hyperslides. The purpose of a hyperdoc is to increase the level of access and collaboration. We'll explore this thought throughout the post. A member of the social studies department at Angola High School asked me for ideas on how he can change what he is already doing and convert it something the students can accomplish on their Chromebooks. He has tons of blank maps where students have to mark and label various ...

ICE Conference Fall is my favorite season. I love the turning leaves; I love the cool, sweatshirt weather. One of the best things about living in the mid-west is that you never get bored with the weather; it is always changing. One gem that happens each fall is the ICE conference . I look forward to it each year, but it has been especially beneficial the last several years as Michele Eaton has done a fantastic job of bringing some great keynote/featured speakers on board and organizing great opportunities for Indiana educators. I'm excited to see how the conference will continue to grow and evolve. I've also had the pleasure of presenting at the ICE conference over the last several years on various topics. Its been interesting to think back to just a few years ago because I was presenting primarily about iPad integration for primary students. Now I'm very focused on utilizing GSuite in all classrooms, but that's very much due to my job change to MSD of Steuben C...

Freedom! The powerful thing about using Google in the classroom has always been the collaborative nature of their products. If you are a lover of GSuite, do you recall the first time you experienced a collaborative doc? My mind was absolutely blown away by the thought of not having to email a document to my colleague and getting it back. The multiple versions of a document created a nightmare! I was instantly done with the email tag with attachments. I felt like William Wallace for a moment and wanted to yell, "freedom!" Okay, maybe not that dramatic, but it was awesome.  Out of Site(s) 2017 was an interesting year of changes for Google's lineup, but my favorite was the update to Google Sites. A user could get used to the old version and it ended up not being too bad as long as you put the time into learning it, but the new Google Sites is intuitive, clean, and simple. Teachers actually love the fact that there are not a million font or color choices. "Jus...

Is It Worth It? Long has it been that companies like SMART or Promethean have dominated display options in the classroom. SMART really revolutionized how we as teachers demonstrate or share content with students. Freedom is what it represented in those days. The idea that a teacher to could grab content from about anywhere and manipulate it before their students' eyes. It enhanced our productivity as content creators.  Technology is ever changing. Students and society is ever changing. Therefore, the way we teach should change was well. Once schools began exploring options for all students to have a device, the need for the teacher at the front of the room (The Sage on the Stage) began to dwindle. Suddenly the students had access to thousands of teachers, and personalized instruction became a reality. If a student wants to know more on any topic of their liking, the resources are just a click away. This landscape causes me to question the need to spend thousands of dollars...

ISTE 2017 The ISTE conference never disappoints. It is a great opportunity to be oriented with great pedagogy, new technologies, and awesome people to build up your personal learning network. As far as GSuite for Education news goes, one of the awesome additions is the ability to do question by question grading in Google Forms. Forms have certainly transitioned much in the last year or so with an entirely new makeover, the edition of quizzes, automatic grading, and now the ability to grade question by question. It is a small update, but it is mighty in the sense that it fills a void that people have desired since the built-in quizzes debuted.  Question by Question Grading In the previous version of Google Forms quizzes, multiple choice and short answer questions could be graded automatically. The short answer has some issues of being unreliable. If a student spells a response incorrectly or add/misses capitalization, the answer is automatically counted as incorrect. Thi...