FTT - Improving Student Communications with Google Products

Improving Student Communications with Google Products

@LisaBerghoff/@MrKimDHS

As mentioned earlier this year in a blog post about the SAMR model, its creator, Dr. Ruben Puentedura, is the real deal when it comes to innovation and wisdom in instructional technology and education. He's identified some complex challenges impeding the adoption of educational technology, and one such challenge is the ability to scale teaching innovations. Here's what I mean by scaling innovation:

Amazon has these wonderfully active factory floors where giant, roomba-like robots zip and zoom in perfect robotic harmony to move about hundreds of thousands of our impulse Amazon Prime purchases. While some jobs were unfortunately made obsolete, the efficiency of this system is crucial to support both the staggering growth of the Amazon empire, and our obsessive need to have [insert random household item here] delivered to our doors in two days for free! 

These efficient little machines are innovations that can be easily scaled. What works for one Amazon factory works for ALL Amazon factories. Unfortunately our classroom innovations do not always scale. Beneficial apps or digital resources that work for one class may not work for another class for various reasons like student age, course content, ability, instructor, and unfortunately financial support. 

This is what creates such value in tools like Gmail, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and other G Suite applications. These (relatively) free tech tools offer so much diverse utility to help establish digital equity and scale teaching innovations. (Disclaimer: I do not work for Google, nor do I get paid to advertise their products...but I am willing to. Call me Sundar!)

So on to the stuff! Heavily inspired by Vernon Hills High School's tech coaches, here are some simple ways to develop student communication with Google:

Student to Parents - Weekly E-mails

Encourage students to keep parents in the loop with a simple weekly/bi-weekly message. "Feedback Fridays" can be a quick 5 minute routine built into your curriculum. 

Student to Student - Class Backchannel

Create a Google Doc where students can communicate with each other during an activity in a non-intrusive or disruptive way.

Student to Teacher - FAQ Page

Ask students to contribute to a Frequently Asked Question doc or form. For individual projects or papers, create a Google Doc where students can add important questions. Students can initial questions they would like to be answered. 

Have other ideas for developing student communication skills? Post below!

FTT - Google Calendar

Getting Started With Google Calendar

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

Even before I started in District 113, I've had teachers and administrators ask me about the best way to take advantage of digital learning platforms. There are tons of great things to do, but my experience tells me that the biggest game changer is the ability to share live digital calendars with our students. As an adult, I have grown to rely on calendar reminders, emails, and text messages to remind me of important upcoming events. I know that a simple calendar with due dates and test dates would have made me a better student in high school. 

That's why I was always stunned by the fact that we had teachers and staff on one digital platform and our students on another. In order to share calendars with students, we were asking our teachers to live in two different digital worlds. Our switch to Gmail changes all of that and I'm really excited about the possibilities.

There is too much to know about Google Calendars to share everything in one post, but today I want to focus on what I believe are most important things to get started using Google Calendar well: settings, sharing, viewing and hiding calendars, editing events.

Settings:

Every Google App has its own settings so that you can customize it to work the way you'd like:

There are two ways to get to your calendar settings. The first is to click the pull down menu bar from "My calendars" on the left hand side of the screen:

Or, as with every Google App, you can click the settings gear in the upper right hand corner:

The first thing I changed in settings was "Default event duration." In Outlook, the default for a meeting was always 30 minutes. I like to events set at 60 minutes. But you have several different choices. However, the most important part about settings has to do with how you view your calendar. I like to look at it this way:

I want to see the whole week, including Saturday and Sunday, at one time. Notice at the top of Google Calendar, you can choose to look at your calendar by Day, Week, Month, 4 Days, or as an Agenda. However, one of those will be a default view. In other words, every time you open your calendar it will default to...something. I like the Week view. But in settings, you can choose any of them.

You can also set a Custom view for your calendar. If you only want to see a five day calendar, you can make that a Custom view and then set that as your default.

Sharing Your Calendar:

You can change share your calendar with colleagues, spouses, or students by clicking on the pull-down menu bar next to your individual calendar and selecting "Share this Calendar" from the list:

I don't expect everyone to be as open and public as I am, but my calendar is shared with anyone who wants to see it. People who add my calendar can only see when I'm free or busy, and they can't make any changes to my calendar, but anyone can see my calendar. By default, we should share our calendars within District 113 with free/busy times so that admin assistants and department chairs can see your calendars and propose meetings during common free times.

But, you can also choose to share your calendar with individuals. In the example I've included below, I've shared my calendar with several of my colleagues and my personal Gmail account with different permission levels. If someone sets appointments for me, I want them to be able to see all events and be able to edit events.

Viewing Calendars:

In the example calendar I posted above, I can actually see 3 calendars at one time. The first is my normal work calendar, which shows my scheduled school events. The second is my calendar for home, which shows when my daughter's concerts and school events are, when my wife or daughter has something important planned for us to do, and when I need to mentally prepare for family coming to visit (this shared home calendar has prevented many arguments and created some measure of family peace - I highly recommend a shared calendar at home). The third calendar doesn't have many events on it, but it is the most important. It shows when I have tickets to see Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. For easy differentiation, my work events are in grey. My home events are in red. And my Star Wars events are in Orange.

You can hide or view your different calendars by clicking on their titles on the left hand side of your Calendar screen. In the example below, I can see the Joseph Taylor, Birthdays, Brian Verisario, and DHS Library calendars. However, the Free Tech Tools Tuesday calendar is hidden (The color block is white and the text is greyed). 

If I click on the Birthdays, Brian Verisario, and DHS Library calendars, they will be hidden from my overall view. But all I have to do is click them again to make them reapper. If you decide that you want to get rid of a calendar, or if you want to change the default color for a calendar, take your mouse and hover over the particular calendar, then select the pull down menu for the calendar:

From here you can select "Hide this calendar from the list," which means it won't appear on your calendar or in your list of calendars any more. Or, you can simply choose a new color for easy differentiation.

Editing Events:

While you can do an event quick add by simply clicking on the calendar and typing in the name of an event, you can add a ton of information and invite other people to events by clicking the "Edit event" button.

 

At the top, you can add a title, change the date and/or time, or make the event an "All day" or "Repeating" event. You can also put the event on a different calendar. For instance, I could use the pull down bar next to Calendar to add this to my home calendar instead of my work calendar. You can add a description, add an attachment (especially useful if your are using this with students), color code individual events and add guests. My favorite part about Google Calendar, though, is the fact that you can decide what notifications to add - and how frequently. And I can choose to be notified by email, web browser, or SMS text notification.

By the way, I would love to be able to set the calendar so that all of my students can be notified of major events through SMS text messaging - but I can't. These are individual settings. However, in calendar settings, everyone can set up default notifications. So, you can walk your class through that process or send a short hand out home so that parents know that kids can set up text notifications.

These are just the basics for getting started. There is a lot more information to come, and both schools will be setting up hands on training sessions in the very near future.

FTT - EDpuzzle and PlayPosit

http://nyphotographic.com/

Alternatives to Zaption: EDpuzzle and PlayPosit

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

For good and for ill, technology is always changing. The company that created and supported Zaption, one of our favorite "Free Tech Tools," was sold and the new company announced that the product would be taken offline.

The good news is that while we tend to highlight our favorite online tools, there are usually pretty decent alternatives in the EdTech world. EDpuzzle and PlayPosit (formerly eduCanon) are both great alternatives for teaching with online video. Like Zaption, both allow you to take ANY online video, embed questions, and assign it to students or groups of students. 

EDpuzzle 

Edpuzzle.com is a free Web2.0 tool that is designed to help teachers make any digital video interactive. With a few clicks of a button, teachers can add personalized introductions, comments, or questions to any portion of any digital video available through the products listed to the left. Furthermore, the videos can be assigned to groups or classes, and teachers can monitor student progress as they view the videos and answer questions, and the videos can be locked so students can't skip important parts just to answer the questions.

Videos and lessons created on Edpuzzle.com are public and searchable within the platform. The idea is that we are all creating products that could potentially help other students. So part of the power is that you can simply log into to Edpuzzle.com and find a video lesson that has already been created and assign that to your students. You don't always have to start from scratch. 

To get started, simply select your video source and use the embedded video editing guides to add voice-overs, comments, or questions. As an added bonus, EDpuzzle.com integrates nicely with Google Classroom, allowing you to easily import your roster and share "puzzles."

PlayPosit - formerly eduCanon

PlayPosit works pretty much the same way EDpuzzle.com does except that it has been designed to integrate nicely with any LMS, whether you use Google Classroom, Edmodo, or Schoology. Rather than "puzzles," you create and assign "bulbs" to your students.

The best way to see the way PlayPosit works is to try it out. Click here to open a public "bulb" created for a Ted Talk video. Notice, you'll have to answer the embedded questions before you can move on in the video.

Here's how my friend Mike uses PlayPosit in his classroom:

I use PlayPosit for a couple of purposes. One of them is to disseminate information via the flipped classroom model. Students can access the lesson that I've created in PlayPosit and watch the video presentation for class discussion the following day. The best part of PlayPosit is that during the presentation, kids have to answer a few questions during the video. This serves the purpose of not only checking for accuracy in their viewing, but also as a focus point. It also allows me as a teacher to design questions that are timed to emphasize the points that I wish for them to know. Finally, the questions are required. The video will not go on until the question is answered. It is a creative and interesting way to get started with the flipped classroom model.

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Have you used EDpuzzle or PlayPosit in your classroom? Tell us how. OR tell us if you use a different tool for embedding interactive videos in your classroom.

FTT - Google Slides Q&A Feature

Getting Interactive With New Features in Google Slides

@joe_edtech / @LisaBerghoff

Let's face it. I'm sold on Google. I'm Google Certified. Google Apps is my GoTo product in nearly every situation. I even suggested once that my work title be changed to "The Great Googley Moogly!" Copyright laws and a sense of responsibility prevented that from happening. 

However, I know that there are a lot of people out there who resisted adopting Google Slides initially because it was clunky and a little cartoonish. In the last few months, Google has added three features to Google slides that just might have its doubters taking a second look.

1. Presentation Templates

You never need to start a presentation from scratch. If you go to slides.google.com, or "File - New - From template," you can choose from a selection of professionally designed slide templates. All of the templates come with a variety of slide types and suggestions for presenting data.

Each of the templates has a variety of different slides that can be customized with pictures, colors, themes, etc.

Google Slide Template "Your big idea"

2. Embedded Q & A Feature

Every once in a while, Google has to retire a tool that has reached its end of life - usually because it simply isn't being used by very many people. One such tool, and one that I really liked, was called Moderator. Using Moderator, teachers or presenters could provide a space for students or audience members to ask questions during a presentation. All of the members of the class could see the questions and vote on their favorites. The more votes a question got, the more it moved to the top of the list of questions to be addressed by the "moderator" at the end of the presentation. The idea was that we usually have a limited amount of time to ask questions at the end of presentation. A tool like "Moderator" ensures that the most important questions- the ones most people in the audience want answered - are asked first.

While "Moderator" is gone, its best features are now a part of Google Slides! When you go to present, you can turn on the new Q&A Feature:

The Q&A Feature isn't complicated, but it is probably easier if you see what it looks like before you use it. So, I made a very short demo video below:

3. Virtual Laser Pointer

It's always good to be able to focus your audience on a single bullet point or statistic in your presentation. If you have a laser pointer, that's fantastic - but the FAA may want a word with you. If you don't have a laser pointer, you can use the new built-in pointer in Google Slides. When you are presenting, you can choose to turn your "laser pointer" on and it will create a highlighted trail as you move your mouse across the screen. 

For those of you hockey enthusiasts out there, the NHL tried something similar with the puck on TV broadcasts a few years ago. This seems a little more useful.

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Noticed something new in Google that might be useful to share? Please tell us about it in the comments below.

FTT - OpenBadge.me

Changing the Educational Game

with Digital Badging

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

A couple of years ago, I attended a conference that hosted a TEDx event instead of a Keynote address. Perhaps the most outstanding speaker I saw that night was Ali Carr-Chellman from Penn State University who talked about her program, "Re-Engaging Boys." If you have a few minutes, you can watch her TED Talk below:

If you don't have time to watch the whole thing, here's a brief summary of a couple of the statistics she cites:

• For every 100 girls suspended from school, there are 250 boys suspended from school.
• For every 100 girls expelled from school, there are 335 boys expelled from school.
• For every 100 girls in special education, there are 217 boys.
• For every 100 girls diagnosed with emotional disturbance, there are 324 boys.
• The numbers are worse for boys of color, or boys who come from economically challenged homes.
• Boys are 4 times as likely as girls to be identified with ADHD.
• 60% of Baccalaureate Degrees go to women - some universities are approaching 70%

One of Professor Carr-Chellman's suggestions is that we can re-engage boys by utilizing video games in the classroom. While her research might be the most extensive on the topic, Professor Carr-Chellman's conclusions are not unique. There is a growing chorus of teachers out there who suggest that adding some elements of gamification can boost student engagement across the board, but especially in boys. 

I started thinking about this topic again because Lisa and I attended the CoSN conference two weeks ago, and the most dynamic session I attended while I was there was about gamification in the classroom by Dr. Liz Kolb from the University of Michigan. Dr. Kolb said her research was really in its beginning phases, but she had seen some positive results by adding elements of gaming to her preservice education courses, and she reported that those gains were highest amongst her male students.

Dr. Kolb suggested that it is fairly easy to start the process of gamification by instituting some student choice into your classroom activities and awarding students digital badges based on accomplishments. I think I'll have much more to offer the district from Dr. Kolb's work in the very near future, but for those of you who might be ready to start badging in the classroom, you need two things. You need a site for creating badges, and you need a site for posting and awarding your badges. For this week, let's focus on creating digital badges.

Part of the Mozilla Open Badges Project, OpenBadges.me allows you to create simple graphic badges that you can download to your computer and post to any website. According to the website, the OpenBadges.me "designer provides a simple way to layer different shapes and images on top of each other to create an attractive Open Badge graphic. The tool lets you add text, color elements, move certain elements and even fade items in and out - all presented in an easy-to-use web page."

Click here for an easy to follow guide on using OpenBadges.me. If you get stuck, you can even go to the guide and post a question. Someone from the Open Badges community will respond to your question.

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Next week, I'll provide you with three different platforms for posting and awarding badges to your students.

FTT - Twitter for Professional Development

"Follow me! Follow me to Freedom!"

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

Well, that might be a little dramatic, but I always get excited when we can connect in very cool new ways. And this is cool, I am writing to you from my "spacious" coach seat on board my American Airlines flight to Washington DC. Lisa and I are attending and presenting at the CoSN National Conference on Ed Tech Conference this week. Of course, we'll share our presentation and all of the new resources we get when we get back. But, we really don't want to wait that long to tell you about the great things happening here. 

Even if you never send a Tweet, Twitter can be an amazing Professional Development tool for educators. This week, Lisa and I will be Tweeting out lots of information from the Conference, some of it you'll be able to use in your classes right away. Some of it will just be fun. For instance, we got to hear Daniel Pink, author of Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, give the Keynote address. He opened the tech conference by talking about how important devloping art skills is. And he challenged everyone in the audience. "You can't change everything in your school district at once, but you can one small thing you can change tomorrow and make things better."

We also got to meet Megan Smith, United States Chief Technology Officer, Assistant to the President focusing on how technology, policy, data and innovation can improve the future of our nation. She talked about the importance of offering creativity tools, maker spaces, and authentic coding experiences to reach even our most disenfranchised students.

Lisa and Joe Hobnobbing with Megan Smith

To follow the rest of the conversation and conference activities, all you have to do is get a FREE Twitter account and search for the hashtag #CoSN16. If you are new to Twitter, here's a short video from Dan Krutka, Ph.D..to help you get started:

Once you get logged in, try following some of these great educational resources:

• Edutopia - The George Lucas Foundation for Education
• NSBA - The National School Board Association
• David Pogue - Tech columnist, NY Times; PBS NOVA host; Missing Manuals creator, dad of 3!
• Common Sense Media - Organization for Research Based Digital Citizenship Curriculum
• Deerfield High School
• Deerfield High School Libraries

And that doesn't even scratch the surface. You can follow writers, other teachers, colleges, organizations, teams, politicians (ugh, I don't recommend following them).

Here are some great lists and resources you can use.

10 Educators On Twitter You Should Follow (But Probably Don't)

100 Terrific Twitter Feeds for Teaching Advice

All you need to do to get started is create an account on Twitter.com. HOWEVER, before you do, click here and check out "The Ultimate Twitter Guide for Teachers." Jeff Dunn (@edudemic) provides you with:

• A beginner's guide to Twitter (including video)
• Information on Twitter Etiquette
• Advice for Teachers New to Twitter
• 35 Interesting Ways to use Twitter in the Classroom

And much, much more.

Once you start using Twitter, you'll learn about "hashtags" (#). They are used in Tweets to denote important topics, and to make Twitter feeds more searchable and user friendly. The most important hashtag for educators is #edchat. Click here to get an idea of the myriad of topics discussed on Twitter labeled #edchat.

Find Twitter Here - And create your free account today.

By the way, there are two great HashTags (#) you should be following and contributing to if you are on Twitter:

#DHS__Pride = Tag the great staff, students, and accomplishments we have.
#D113PLN = Contribute to our online Professional Learning Network

MOST IMPORTANTLY, this week, follow #CoSN16.  Our session, "What NOT To Do With Technology In The Classroom" will be Tuesday, April 5, from 1:45 to 2:45 Central Time.

FTT - ThingLink

Sign up for a free ThingLink account to create interactive images

Creating Interactive Images Using ThingLink

@joe_edtech/@LisaBerghoff

Earlier this Fall I took my daughter and a friend of hers to the Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum in Springfield. Since I am a bit of a History nerd - specifically an American Civil War nerd - my daughter is not new to the topic. She's been dragged across the battlefield at Gettysburg, carried to Ford's Theater in DC, and even read a young adult version of the story of Lincoln's Assassination and the hunt for John Wilkes Booth. But there is something powerful in an image. As visitors walk through one of the exhibits at the museum, they turn a dark corner and enter a room flooded with uncomfortable red light bathing a slave auction. We hit that room and I felt her little hand grab mine and I looked at her. Her face was covered with shock, fear, sadness - she'd read all about this. But now she saw it. And it affected her.

When I taught history, I gradually came to believe I spent too much time focusing on words, and not enough time focusing on images. I'm not saying words aren't important - they really are what we have from most of history - but images engage the emotions. That's not a new or shocking discovery, researchers have been saying it for years.

With a "free-ish" Web 2.0 tool called ThingLink, it is easy to take any digital image and make it interactive - an image to explore instead of just take in. Below, I've taken a simple image of the State of Illinois and added a couple of Tags. The tags are interactive and can take your students to places where they can find more information. Take your mouse and hover over the image and you'll find there are two interactive tags. Click them, and they take you to an informational website and an overview video.

Creating an interactive image is easy. All you have to do is choose an image from the Web or upload one from your computer. In the "Text" box, type your tag. This can be a short description or a set of directions. In the "Link or image address" box, you can make your tag interactive. I've labeled "Alton, Illinois" on the map. When students click that tag, I want them to be taken to the official website of the City of Alton, so I pasted that URL in the "Link or image address" box. By the way, you can put the URL of information websites, videos, or link to your classroom website or LMS. The images you create can be saved publicly or privately.

ThingLink allows you to tag videos as well. In the following video, I've added two tags - both links to different websites that can provide students with a little more information on the video they have been assigned to watch. You'll notice the tags right away because they are blue text boxes stamped with an "i" icon for information.

I introduced ThingLink by calling it "free-ish." Everything that I've demonstrated in today's blog post can be done with a free account. However, there are several different levels of premium accounts that will give you access to more features. If you are sharing with students, a free account should get you all that you need.
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Want to take your image creation to the next level? Free Technology for Teachers published a piece on using Google Slides, ThingLink, and Snagit from Chrome to have students create interactive presentations to share with the class.

FTT - Vibby

Sharing Specific YouTube Video Content With Your Students

@joe_edtech / @LisaBerghoff

Warning, the beginning of this blog is a red herring - included because I simply couldn't believe a certain reality. Lisa and I both had an opportunity to attend a pretty remarkable professional development opportunity in the Houston school district. Instructional Technology professionals from across the country got together and visited some pretty innovative magnet schools in a very economically challenged part of the city. After the site visit, we all gathered and talked about some of the things we saw happening in the classes and somebody said something like, "I think it is great you can embed YouTube videos into your website, but what can we do? YouTube is blocked in our district." (I will return to the discussion of the innovative classrooms later, at the moment I am going to wallow in the righteous indignation of someone who can't believe there are school districts who still block YouTube!)

"Start at:" in YouTube

So, I get it. There is a lot of garbage on YouTube. But there is a lot of good stuff on YouTube, too. Blocking YouTube is something akin to slicing off not just your nose to spite your face, but your head to spite your face. Silly.

However, not only are there a lot of videos on YouTube I'd like to share with my students, there are a lot of PARTS of YouTube videos I'd like to share with my students. Here are two ways to better focus your lessons on the specific video content.

From YouTube itself, you can share a video with your students and have it start at a specific point. When you are on YouTube, queue the video to your preferred starting point. Then, rather than simply copying the URL and posting the link on your website or in an email, you can click the "Share" link found underneath the video, click the button to "Start at:" a certain moment in the video. Then copy the custom link that appears in the "Share" window with your students.

Alternatively, if you would like to share parts of a longer video with your students, you can use a tool called Vibby. After you create a free account, you can select any YouTube video and "Highlight" specific sections. You can choose 1 section, or several. After you title each section, or add a brief note, you can share a custom link with your students. They will only see the sections of the video you've highlighted. One of the things that makes Vibby a great tool for school is that your students don't need an account to watch you custom video. When they click the link you sent them, they see something like this:

While Vibby is a great tool for sharing videos with your students, if you want to use YouTube videos to "Flip" your lessons or embed questions in YouTube videos, check out these posts:

• Supporting Flipped, Blended, and Differentiated Learning with EDpuzzle.com
• Embed Interactive Video Into Your Classroom With eduCanon
• Making Sense Out of Flipped Lessons

FTT - Chrome Homework

My Homework App for Productivity and Organization.

@joe_edtech 

Now that we are beyond the first few days of school, chances are pretty good that teachers have already given assignments and some students have already missed turning them in. I'm not trying to be negative, I just know realistically that it can be a big shift for many of our kids to keep track of due dates and expectations for multiple classes throughout the day. In addition, for many students a lack of executive functioning is the one thing standing in the way of their success in the classroom.

 I believe it is our job as teachers to not just teach content, but to help teach students how to learn, which includes organization, time management, and study skills. Even at the high school level, we cannot assume our students are ready to independently manage everything that comes their way. 

That's why I'm excited to introduce you to MyHomework App.  This app is available for Chrome, iOS, GooglePlay, Android, Mac, Windows, KindleFire, and just about any other system your device could possibly use. The versatility of this app makes it possible to sync to multiple devices which gives students options and allows for them to take ownership of their management system. 

This app is designed to replace the traditional student planner to help students stay on top of their assignments on their device of choice.  It has several attractive features such as the ability to manage students' schedules by class period, by time, or by block.  Students can set the priority level (low, medium, high) and can even set reminders which will pop up and let the students know that they have an assignment due soon. 

Screenshot from Chrome Web Store

You can find MyHomework App in the Chrome Web Store. Once you have added it to your bank of Chrome apps, it will prompt you to create a log in. 

You can sign in with Google, which makes it one less password you need to remember.

Once students sign in, they will be prompted to add their classes and indicate how they want to organize their schedule and color code their classes. You can always go back and edit or customize these settings.   The plus sign in the corner allows you to create a new class.   Once students have their classes set up, they can add assignments.

In the example shown here, I added a physics quiz. I was able to set the priority level to high and I also set the device reminder to pop up the night before so I will remember to prepare for the quiz.  There is also a text box to add other info. that might help clarify the assignment. 

Students can mark when assignments are complete and are able to track their classes.  They can also earn "rewards" through a 3rd party advertising site called Kiip. MyHomework states that ads and rewards are family friendly and may include movie tickets, and snacks. You can purchase an upgraded account for $4.99 per year which will remove all ads and give a more robust tracker.

MyHomework App also works in concert with Teachers.io which allows teachers to input assignments if you have an entire class using the app.

There are many digital options out there to assist students with planning, scheduling, and organization. What are your favorites?  Go ahead and post your suggestions below.

FTT - Conceptboard

Logo From Conceptboard.com

 Annotate, Comment, and Collaborate with Conceptboard in Chrome

@joe_edtech

In my very first blog post for Deerfield High School, I introduced a Chrome Add-On called Notable PDF, an App designed to make scanned documents usable inside of Drive. While Notable PDF is still a pretty good tool, saving and sharing annotated PDFs isn't intuitive, and sometimes that serves as a barrier to good collaboration.

I recently started using a different app, called Conceptboard. Conceptboard is also available on the Chrome Web Store and also integrates nicely with Google Drive, however, Conceptboard is both more user friendly and more powerful than Notable PDF. With virtually no training, any user familiar with Drive can open a PDF using Conceptboard, insert comments, and share the "board" with other users.

After you've added the app to Chrome, open any PDF
or Picture file in Conceptboard to get started. 

However, Conceptboard is much more than just a way to annotate and share PDFs. The CEO of the company puts it this way, "Conceptboard is about visualization and task management: We've made it easier to communicate your ideas graphically and to get more precise feedback. Or the other way around: We enable you to create tasks more precisely, so your ideas are realized exactly as you imagined them!" This is their official video on getting started with Conceptboard:

While I have genuinely grown to like using this tool, I have to admit that I have an ulterior motive for selecting this as our Free Tech Tool this week. I didn't find Conceptboard. Our DHS Students did. Specifically, students in an English class who were working with PDFs that they needed to annotate. They went exploring, tried a few things, and ultimately landed on Conceptboard as a great place to work - with a lot of potential that we haven't even considered at this point.

The lesson is that we don't need to have all of the answers when it comes to technology. No teacher has the time necessary to fully explore all of the apps that are available for Chromebooks or iPads, but some students absolutely thrive on the opportunity to build...or find, as the case may be...a better mouse trap. It might be just the hook some of our students need to really engage with our assignments. When it comes to teaching in a 1:1 classroom, it is perfectly acceptable for us to learn from our students, too.

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Have your students introduced any good apps or tech tools to your classroom? If so, please tell us about the best ones below.

Flipped and Blended Follow Up

Are You Flippin’ Kidding Me?

Why Would I Flip?

@joe_edtech & @LisaBerghoff

This article is co-written and cross posted by Lisa & Joe. You can also find it on Lisa's Blog - rethinkteach.com

It isn’t about using technology because it is flashy, and it definitely isn’t about more industrial age efficiency. Integrating instructional technology is about being able to do something that you've never been able to do before. It is about re-imagining the classroom, and everything else about school.

Last Saturday, we had an opportunity to host a Google Education On Air Hangout on the “Flipped Classroom” during which we provided our participants with a description and history of the Flipped Classroom teaching model, clear reasons why each of us tried it with our students, and some evidence of it’s effectiveness. If you are interested in reading more about that as well as accessing some tools to help you get started, you are welcome to visit the “Flipped Classroom Resources” webpage we created.

However, we don’t want to take up our blog space and inundate our loyal readers (a.k.a. - Joe’s Mom) with a lot of information about what and how. We think it is really important to start with why. Why would you take the time to flip your class? Probably the best way to explain it is through the eyes of a few students. First, we want you to see class through the eyes of Lisa’s Special Ed US History students.

@LisaBerghoff

My US History students all have IEPs.  Reading and writing is challenging for them and US History is dense with written information. Our textbook, while adapted for reluctant readers, is very long and intimidating. I wanted my students to be able to access the information but then do something with that information. I wanted them to apply their learning, make connections and predictions for the future based on what they are learning about the past. I wanted them to participate in activities that require them to think critically, make a claim, and support it with evidence. However, most of our class time was being used to read the material, talk about the content, and reach for a basic level of understanding. I was assigning homework activities that required them to extend their learning but I quickly became frustrated because many of my students were not completing the homework. The students who were completing it often missed the mark and the quality was nowhere near what I thought they could do.  

I decided to take a risk and assign a video for homework. The students would watch the video to get the information and then we could use our class time to work in small groups to apply what they learned. I was amazed when all of my students watched the 5 minute video. I gave them a short survey and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.  Watching a video for homework was a low-stakes activity.  Everyone could access the video and it was much easier for them to get the information in this manner.  I was so encouraged I tried several other approaches.  For one assignment, I read the lesson from the text and recorded myself while highlighting the important information.  I then took it one step further and created a Zaption “tour” with this video by embedding questions. I could check the analytics to see who had watched the video and their answers were recorded and even graded for me! I could see how long the students spent on the videos.  One student clearly forwarded the video and just answered the questions.  Another student watched it more than once. This was exactly the kind of differentiation I was looking for.  The students had some control, everyone was able to get what they needed, and our class time was spent doing the kinds of activities that push their thinking and maintain the high standards that I have for my students.

@joe_edtech

That’s the success story. On the flip side - pun intended - my daughter spends hours and hours struggling with her math homework. It is no fun, and I fear that the constant frustration will lead her to dislike math, or worse, school. When she is in class, the teacher explains the concepts and the skills, and it all makes perfect sense. But by the time she gets home, she has forgotten much of the teacher’s instruction. It is just one of many classes and activities she participates in every day. More than once Katherine has said, “Ugh, I just wish I could see her work this problem again.” And that kind of thinking shouldn’t surprise us. She is used to looking up instruction on YouTube. When she wants to learn how to fix her hair a certain way, or create something new with her Rainbow Loom, or generate ideas for building in Mine Craft, she turns FIRST to YouTube and other digital resources available to her. Imagine how empowered she would feel if she could review her math, or science, or music lessons in the same way.

From a Technology Director’s perspective, I love the Flipped Classroom idea because it can act as a “Gateway Drug” to the integration of much more instructional technology, and can help facilitate the shift from teaching-centered classrooms to learning-centered classrooms. And as Lisa mentioned before, you don’t have to invest hundreds of hours to try it. All you have to do is “Flip” one lesson, one time.

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You can still be a part of the conversation. Our Google Hangout Webinar “Flipped & Blended Learning for the Chromebook Classroom” is embedded below. If you have any questions, please contact us via Twitter or leave a comment in the box below.