Getting to grips with Google

The array of spaces and places where children’s work is created, published, stored and presented can be overwhelming for both parents and students. This blog post will explain the different places that children will be working in and give you some ways to support your children when working at home.

Google Chrome

Students are asked to use Google Chrome to access content from the internet. There are a few reasons for this. My favourite reason is that Chrome has the option to sign in and link bookmarks created on one computer to any other.

Installing Google Chrome on your home computer (it works on Mac and non Apple machines) will allow your child to work in the same environment as they do at school. If parents have another Chrome account set up on the home computer the students will need to log out of that and then log in with their own details for their school bookmarks to show up. More details on setting up a Chrome account are here. In the same article there is information about setting up a separate account on your home computer for your children to use as well as some useful troubleshooting tips care of Sean McHugh, Digital Literacy Coach, Dover campus.

In class the children have been shown how to create a bookmark in one of these ways:

Pushing the Command and D keys

Clicking the star at the end of the address bar

Clicking Bookmarks > Bookmark this page




Dragging the address onto the Bookmarks bar is a quick and simple alternative to the methods above.

The students have also been shown how to log in to Chrome using their school email address and password.

The UWCSEA portal

This website is one way in to UWCSEA online life for parents and students. Children are able to get to their email through here as well as see their timetable for the day and any notices aimed at them. To log in they type their username (e.g. smith1234) and Gmail password.

Parents can also log in and see information about their child and about the college.

Class sites

Students can find their class website by navigating through ‘Learning Programme Overview’ > ‘Junior School’ and choosing their grade and then their class teacher. Parents can see these sites by asking their child to log in. Most class sites have been shared in class already. Once they have found the site they should have it bookmarked for quick and easy future access. The main purpose of class sites are for teachers to push everyday information to students (upcoming events, timetable, class trip information, homework, etc) and for students to join in online class discussions in a safe and controlled environment. Learning how to post a comment that shares their thinking and then responding to the comments of others is a skill that is becoming increasingly useful.

‘Why not have a real life discussion in person, in the classroom?’ I hear you ask. We do I promise and these happen everyday. The added beauty of these online discussions is that they can take place anywhere and at any time, therefore extending the boundaries of the physical classroom. There are also many instances when those quieter children who don’t feel comfortable contributing in front of larger groups of people will share their thinking and views more readily in an online environment. It also gives some time for processing to occur. Mulling over someone's comment and allowing time before responding can make way for added ideas.

Learning Journals

Last year we moved from paper portfolios to an online Learning Journal using Google Sites as a platform. Much of the work that the children were doing in class prior to this wasn’t able to be reflected in their paper portfolio so this shift allowed students to choose from a wider array of work. We also shifted our thinking in terms of the pieces included. The term “learning journal” describes an ongoing process of documentation and reflection lead by the student and supported by the teacher. This process is supported by the UWCSEA Learning Principles.

We believe that students should understand the purpose of their learning, have ownership over it and have regular opportunities to actively process and reflect. The Learning Journal provides a medium for these aims. It houses a collection of student work that shows progression of learning over time. It provides students with ongoing opportunities to reflect on their learning and to notice the changes in their skills, knowledge and understanding across their academic programme. It travels with students throughout their time in Primary School and is shared with families regularly.

The essential elements of the Learning Journal include visual, oral or written samples of children engaged in learning. Examples include:
Rough drafts and final drafts
Reflections on learning
Photos, videos of learning process or products
Assessments
Teacher comments
A selection from each academic area (Maths, Literacy, UoI) and specialist area
UWC profile

We want to shift away from purely product and move more towards process so you should expect to see work that is in its beginning stages, work that may be unfinished, work that is in draft form with revisions and comments as well as finished work. You should also expect to see a range of media - videos, photos as well as handwritten and typed ‘work’. An important element of the Learning Journal process is reflection. Why have I included this piece in my Learning Journal? What does this piece of work demonstrate about me as a writer? How has my thinking changed over the course of this unit of study?

As John Dewey, American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer, states “We do not learn from experience...we learn from reflecting on experience.” The reflective piece is important in making sense of learning and can help to shape a child’s view of their development.

The Learning Journal will be shared in the early part of the academic year and you will be able to watch it grow as your child adds to it with support and guidance from their class teacher.

Children will be working on their Learning Journals in class, but from time to time they may be asked to finish a task at home. They will need to log into Chrome and then click on their Learning Journal bookmark.

Once their Learning Journal is on screen they will need to navigate to the correct subject page and click the ‘New Post’ button to create a post about their latest work. Sometime they will need to edit a post they have already created.

Google Documents

‘Google docs’ as they are affectionately known are part of the Google suite of tools that accompanies a Google email address. (If you have a personal Gmail address you’ll have access to these tools as well). On the face of it a Google doc looks very similar to a Word or Pages document. Students can type and format text as they would in any word processing program. They can insert images and tables and track their changes. Where Google docs comes into it’s own is the sharing feature. As soon as a doc has been created students can share this with their teacher or their Writing Partner, for example, using their school email address. This sharing allows collaborators to work inside the same document. It also has the ability for a person to leave a comment about a particular word or section, very helpful when a Writing Partner is helping to edit a piece of work. There are varying levels of permissions starting at ‘View only’ all the way up to ‘Can edit’.

Also within the Google suite there is Google sites (to create websites to host a range of content), Google Sheets (to create spreadsheets), Google Slides (for presentations similar to Keynote and PowerPoint), Google Drawings (to create charts and diagrams) and Google Forms (to create surveys and collect data from people). These other tools are used in different subject areas and to varying degrees in different grade levels.

Google Drive

This is the place where students file all of the work they do. It can be accessed from any computer, anywhere, by logging into Google Mail. There is a button that gives access to Google Drive in the top right hand side of the screen.

If the children are using a Google doc then they can work on it within the Chrome browser window. If they are working on a Pages, Keynote or similar non Google document they will need to download it, work on it and then re-upload it when they are done.

Google Drive is our go-to filing system as the storage is online. If a child’s laptop has to be wiped for some reason then all of their work is safely stored and can be reconnected when their laptop is returned to them. More information about Google Drive is available here

Super easy PDF commenting for better collaborative reading and comprehension

In recent years lots of teachers would have spotted students developing the habit and tendency to skim read online and the shallow comprehension skills that follow. We constantly give students resources to read over to supporting their thinking and their understanding of case studies, yet many students will read too quickly and superficially without processing the information.

A lesson I did last week really changed my perspective on this, using a super simple PDF commenting trick in Google Drive. A colleague Sean McHugh spotted a few weeks ago that Google had added a comment function into any PDF you have stored in Google Drive. With a couple of quick clicks you can print an article off any website and save as a PDF and then save this into your Google Drive. You can then choose to share the PDF ‘with a the link’ and thus give the viewer the ability to comment on the document. You can click and see the explore the example below.

You can set this up as follows;

• Find your article online or find your saved PDF
• If you have an online article click to print but change destination to – Save as PDF
• Drag PDF into your Google Drive
• Click in the top right to share and then choose – Share so ‘Anyone with link can comment‘
• Then share this with your students, they can comment on individual words or top right to drag an area to comment.

At our school you can link directly from our Online Learning Platform ‘Teamie’ can it will sort the permissions for you. To save the craziness of an entire class commenting on one PDF best top copy and duplicate your file a couple of times and have smaller reading groups.

As an assessment trick, I asked them very specifically to look for definitions or examples of the concept we were studying in the article and to add a comment where they found them. I could scan the documents and see how they were going or add a comment to nudge them along.

The Fundamental Four!

The Fundamental 4

The Essential Tech Slide Deck: bit.ly/uwctechdeck

There are lots of aspects to digital organisation, but the four that are most essential, and that also happen to be synergetic, ie all four are codependent, are:

1. Get Connected

Open up the Chrome Browser, then click in the little icon in the top right corner and sign in to Chrome. Sign in with your account details and agree to Link data when prompted. 

This means that everything you do with account is continually synchronised with your Google 'cloud' online, so if you lose your laptop, and have to either use a loaner or start with a new one, as soon as you sign in a sync—voila—everything in your Google life will reappear in seconds. Note, this just synchronises your browser content, files on your hard drive will not be backed up, to do this you'll need Backup & Sync*.

2. Organise your Drive

Open up the Chrome Browser, and go to your Google Drive online. Make sure you have folders created for all subject areas. You might want to add a folder for your own personal files, but remember, your drive is a school space, not your personal space.

There should only be folders in your drive, no loose files. If you have files from previous years that are making a mess, just create a folder called Archive (if you haven't already) and drop them in.

3. Desktop (almost) Zero: Drive it or Dump it. 

Your desktop is not a good place to keep your files—it makes them handy, but once they build up it comes very difficult to find anything. Worse, if you have any problems, none of those files are safe, so make sure any files you do have their a strictly temporary. Like the desk in your classroom, at the end of the lesson, make a decision; drive it (move it to your drive) or dump it (move it to the bin). Now you have your Drive synchronized this is as easy as a drag and drop, or within the Finder. 

4. Bookmarks on the Browser Bar, Trim your Tabs

All of the websites you rely on to function effectively from day to day should be organised along the bookmark bar. Make sure you are signed in so these are all synchronised to your cloud account. That means that those bookmarks, stored in folders, are backed up, and accessible on any other device that you sign in to.

Too many Tabs 

Too many open tabs is a symptom of poor bookmark organisation, if you know you can easily find any page you need in you bookmarks, you don't need to have 50 tabs open 'just in case'. If the site matters, then bookmark it, if not then close it if you don't need it now; an easy to do this is just use command+w to close any tab you have open.

To quickly close loads of tabs, just control click on a tab and choose one of the options, like Close Other Tabs!

Less than 10 tabs is ideal

This many tabs is unmanageable, and bad for you! 

(While you're there why not quit the apps you're not using and close any open windows as well?)

bit.ly/fundamental4

There are more than four?

Yes, but don't panic, one a week will see you reach organisational nirvana within a few months, with fabulous habits for life! 

What kinds of things? Well simple but powerful tips like this one for example:

Using the slide deck below, all you need to do is commit 10 minutes a week, until you have the fundamental four covered.

Here's the tech slide deck, open it, drop it on your (nice and tidy) bookmark bar and check it out once a week!

Google Photos

 

Google Photos

Why?

1. Unlimited storage (for GApps domains)
2. Support across all devices, mobile, laptop, desktop...
3. Mobile device/iPad friendly albums
4. Searchable photos, even without your naming them, Google can recognise the content in your photos, eg if you search for 'dog'. 
5. Media backup, using the desktop uploader you can now upload all (or as much as you want) of your media to Google Photos, and remove it from your hard drive to save space.

Google Photo Albums

You can easily find Google Photos, by using that link, or you can also find it by clicking on the app grid in GMail, then scroll down:

 

See this post for guidance on using Google Photo Albums, sharing them, adding collaborators to collate photos, creating animations, and collages, and even adding text ...

Hard Drive Full? Stressed about Storage?

Now we have switched to MacBook Airs with 'only' 250 Gigabytes of hard drive space (as opposed to the 500 Gigabytes in a MacBook Pro), some teachers are finding that they are running out of storage space, this post is to help you deal with it.

Before you do anything, do the easiest things first:

• delete the contents of the download folder
• empty the trash (including the trash in apps like iPhoto)
• in iMovie, delete the projects, and the related events from projects you have finished with, and don't let them build up...

First and foremost you need to understand that 250 Gigabytes is a LOT of space, the problem is that many, if not most teachers still fundamentally do not really understand how big a gig is.

How big is a Gig?

A kilobyte is about one page of text, a megabyte is a 1000 times bigger, about one digital photograph, and a gigabyte is a 1000 times bigger than that, like one high definition full length movie.

So a Gigabyte (Gb) is a 1000 times bigger than a Megabyte (Mb), and a 1000 times smaller than a Terabyte (Tb). What? I have explained this in more detail in another post, but maybe one of these analogies will help, trying to represent everyday sizes that are 1000 times bigger as you move up the scale:

How many rice sack sized files do you need? [Click to enlarge]

How many elephantine sized files do you need? [Click to enlarge]

How many suitcase sized files do you need? [Click to enlarge]

So with 250 sacks of rice/elephants/suitcases worth of storage (250 Gigabytes) on your MacBook Air to use, how can you be low on space? A few reasons:

• You transferred everything from your previous computer, chances are you need about 20% of that.
• You have loads of video hiding in your iPhoto library.
• You have load of video clogging up your iTunes Library.
• You have a load of video files languishing in folders on your Mac, maybe on your desktop, or somewhere else... 

By now you may have noticed a pattern forming, the main culprit is video. If you have a recent model of smartphone it is likely (whether you realise this or not) that you are recording in 'high def', tech speak for very high quality, and there is no easy way to change this. All you need to know is that just 1 minute of video can easily be 200 Megabytes, that's 200 bags of rice, or 200 cats, or 200 carry on cases of storage space. That's insane, and yes, this will eat up your hard drive capacity faster than a Panamanian termite mandible strike.

Solutions?

Get rid of most/all of your video, if you don't want to delete it, then move it to an external hard drive* how? Well it's most likely buried in the following locations:

There's probably loads of video in your iPhoto library, but how do you collate it all in one place? To view all of the video in iPhoto, create a 'smart album', instructions here, where you create an album which only shows 'photos' that are movies—yes, you're right, that does not make much sense, but it works. This will allow you to view all the video you have in iPhoto in one album, then you can either select the lot and drag it to a folder on an external hard drive, or delete it (hold down option + command, then hit the delete key).

If you're keen on buying/renting video via iTunes, or even importing video into iTunes so you can play it on an Apple TV*, get in the habit of removing it when you've watched it. My advice is not to use video in iTunes at all. Anther storage hog in iTunes are all apps stored in the iTunes folder if you sync an iOS device with your laptop, you can remove these as they're all stored in the App Store for you anyway.

Use your Time Machine back up drive (You do have one, right?) for extra storage, this can be used as a normal harddrive, just don't put anything in the database folder called 'backups.backupdb', the rest can be used as you like. In Time Machine preferences you should exclude non-essential folders from the backup process, such as Google Drive, Dropbox and the Downloads folder.

Search & Destroy

In the Finder (if you're confused by this just click on your desktop—assuming you can still see it), press Command and F to bring up a custom search, which you can tweak to focus only on file size, this is a great way to find massive files lurking in obscure parts of your hard drive:

Choose 'This Mac', change 'Kind' to 'Other', then pick File Size from the menu. Now tweak the parameters, I'd start with greater than 50 MB, right click the menu bar and choose Size from the list, click on this to sort all your files with the biggest at the top. Now start deleting. Command+delete keys are a easy way to quickly delete things, you'll still need to empty the bin when you're finished.

Use 'cloud' (online) storage instead... 

Now we have more cloud storage than you can throw a thumbstick at, you can store more online—but remember that one day you will leave UWC, and when that happens you're back to 'normal' cloud storage space—'unlimited storage is only for educational (gapps) domains, not private Google accounts.

If you are going to store loads of content in the cloud, eg Dropbox, Google Drive et al, you can easily find yourself with more content in the cloud than you have space for on your computer (Google Drive is 1 Terabyte now, that's a LOT of elephants) which means you won't be able to simply sync it all with your hard drive, instead you can use selective sync, to only sync the folders you choose, here's how it looks in Google Drive, similar options are available in Dropbox as well:

Files you don't have permission to edit will not be 'syncable'.

Choose what you use, and change these to reflect your changing priorities.

*Finally, if you're someone who absolutely NEEDS to have massive amounts of storage handy, all the time, everywhere, then maybe it's time for you to move into true nerd territory, and go for a Laptop Hard Drive Backback solution, yes, there is one, in fact there is more than one.

*Importing video into iTunes just so you can watch it on your Apple TV? No need, just download Beamer, and bypass iTunes completely,  just drag and drop from anywhere, including an external hard drive; even better it plays any video file, not just the video files iTunes likes.

Explain Everything (with Google Drive)

Using Explain Everything with Google Drive on the iPad is an incredible combination. It's not always a great idea to ask students to work from blank screens, it's often useful to give them all a head start by setting up a slide or two for them.

This way they focus on the learning intention, rather than wasting time faffing about with finding the right image, or typing in text that you've just written on the board.

Here's a short video to show you the process:

As you can see from the video the steps are as follows:

1. On your iPad in Explain Everything, set up the slides you want your class to start with.
2. When it's ready, export the project to your Google Drive as a project (not as a video), it will be an xpl file. 
3. You should be able to save it straight into any folder in your Google Drive, like a folder you've already shared with your class.*
4. Now you can just ask your students to open the file in their Google Drive app, when they do, they'll have the choice to open it with an app, they choose Explain Everything, 
5. That's it, now they have their own copy in Explain Everything, ready to learn.

Method #2

Unfortunately (at time of typing) an update from Google Drive has rendered the above steps redundant... :(

The good news is that the good folks at Explain Everything have provided an alternative workflow that is not very different:

1. On your iPad in Explain Everything, set up the slides you want your class to start with.
2. When it's ready, export the project to your Google Drive as a project (not as a video), it will be an xpl file. 
3. You should be able to save it straight into any folder in your Google Drive, like a folder you've already shared with your class.*
4. Go to the Explain Everything home screen and choose the 'document' icon from the top left corner. 
5. Select GDrive and they can find the project in the shared folder.
6. That's it, now they have their own copy in Explain Everything, ready to learn.

*It doesn't have to go in a folder, if you want you can just share the project file directly with the class, just as you would any other  file/Google doc.

Sharing Ownership of Files in Google Drive

So if you are about to depart UWCSEA, you will need to remember to leave your important Google Documents behind. Behind the scenes your school GMail account is eventually turned off and moved to an archive state in the months after you leave. When this occurs any document or resource that you have created, uploaded and therefore owned within your Google Drive will disappear.

If you have shared and uploaded resources into shared department account you will need to shift ownership of these before your leave... so that your legacy of documents will live on.

Step 1 - Search your Google Drive using the following command.

Use the search bar within Google Drive to filter for documents that you own, but have shared with another account or have uploaded into folders within another account.

From: your account
To: department account

Example: (be careful about the gaps)
from:anm@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg to:doverhsbusandecon@gapps.uwcsea.edu.sg

Step 2 - Select the files that you wish to change ownership

You can hold down the shift key and then select multiple files at once. The grey text next to the file name points to the folder where these files are currently located. These folders will be within the Google Drive account that you searched with above.

Step 3 - Click on the Sharing Button to change ownership

Now you can choose to make a different account the owner of the resources. As shown below, you will need to find the departmental account and then change this permissions from Can Edit to Is Owner. Once you press save the permissions will be alters.

(A word of Caution - be careful about selecting too many documents at once to change permissions. From experience 20-30 at once is ok, but after this the process slows down or even stops.)

Step 4 - Final Check

You can now do the same search as Step 1 and see a reduced list of documents. The resources you once owned will still be in the same folder location, but now owned by the departmental Google account. You can also use this process to shift ownership of files which are using up a lot of space in your personal account. Remember you have a 30GB personal limit for files that you own.

Conversation transforms learning in Google Docs and NON Google Docs, in Google Drive

Many educators have now discovered the phenomenal potential of Google Doc commenting to transform learning and teaching. If you don't know about Google Doc commenting, see some of the other posts on this, here, or here.

Used effectively Google Doc comments are another very effective illustration of what I believe are the 5 transformative elements of ICTs - SAMMS, they are:

Google Drive & Situated Learning

Situated - Comment anywhere, any space, any place that is suitable to you.

Access - link to references and resources anywhere on the wild wonderful web to support feedback, or to push/extend content further.

Multimodal - with Add-ons like Kaizena you can even add audio to your feedback, of course you can link to all sorts of rich web content, like online simulations to resolve a particular misconception, and students can easily create a screen recording to narrate their 'learning journey' through a beautifully busy comment thread. Revision history is great for this as well.

Mutable - Comments aren't locked they slip, slide and glide, anywhere they need to, but always tethered to the context that makes them meaningful, and of course comments can easily be edited/modified to clarify feedback, to better articulate reasoning, or maybe just to choose a more appropriate term.

Social - Commenting that is isolated is not much more than replacement tech, albeit without the need to squeeze your extended feedback into a scrawl that is so tightly packed into the margins of the page that it looks like a herd of spiders... No, to amplify or transform reflection and feedback, invite collaborators into the document, then stand back and watch in awe, as turning this document into a mini 'social network' radically redefines reflection, from 'me, me, me' to 'we, we, we'.

So what are you waiting for? You can view this album of screenshots for ways of how you can do this, or see an example below:

Image comments can refer to specific elements of the image, or be more holistic.

Hapara

Hapara is a cool tool for teachers to use to see 'inside' their students' Google Drives, Gmail and Learning Journals. Sounds great but how does it all fit together?

Here's the video from Hapara themselves to explain what it does.

But how does it work for us at UWC? Watch this presentation to see how the different elements fit together. 

 There are a few components: 

1) Gmail - this is how many Junior school teachers will communicate with their students (sharing homework, resources, etc). Using Hapara teachers will be able to see all emails in their students' inboxes. 

2) Google Drive - This is the main place for students to save their work. Saving work here allows students to access their files from anywhere (as long as they have the same programme on their computer e.g. Pages or Numbers). If the file was created within the Google suite (Google document, Google spreadsheet, Google presentation, etc) then no external software is needed. Saving a file here is the same as saving to anywhere else on your computer (click Save then choose the Google Drive folder). By creating folders for each individual unit of work files will be kept organised and easy to locate.

3) Learning Journals - this year we are moving to a digital portfolio of student work. This can be a mixture of final pieces, the process and steps along the way to achieving the final piece, photographs, videos and self reflections to name just a few. You will find many ways of capturing student work in your classes. Remember that you have many tools at your disposal (iPod touches, iPads, iSight cameras in the MacBooks). Folders have already been created for the students in their Google Drive so please encourage your students to create individual unit folders inside the relevant one. 

How this all fits together is like this. Work gets saved in folders in Google Drive. The folder then gets inserted into the students' Learning Journal. Three times per year the Learning Journal will be opened up to parents so they can view the work. As more work is added to the folders it becomes visible on their Learning Journal automatically. 

Cheryl has created this video to show you how to create folders and insert them into her Learning Journal. 

Folders tutorial from Alison on Vimeo.

The main takeaway from this post is to capture the work being created in your classes and save it in the correct folder. We'll help you with the next step when you are ready.

Any questions? Feel free to speak with Ali or Sean. 

Search (Your Google Drive) Smarter

Sort your Life Out - 3 Ways to Search Smarter

It's all well and good being a Google Ninja, but what good is that if after having been shared on your 6,457th doc, you can't find the specific one you want? 

First let's recap the basics:

Files vs Folders

True of any digital environment, less is More when it comes to folders. Create LESS folders, with MORE files in them, treat them more like storage bins than sleeves.

Stop treating folders like document sleeves...

Treat folders like storage crates - Less with More inside

File names are much more important than folders. Use file names that use useful keywords - so instead of calling that document 'Planning' how about ... 'Planning Zen Buddhism and Karaoke G5' now, when you do a search you have a far greater likelihood of actually finding what you want. Maybe use some 'conventions' like always including a 'G5' etc. (Info like the date [apart from maybe the year] is superflous and makes your files names ridiculously looooooooong - it's redundant as that is already stored by the computer - just sort your files by date.)

Sort out your Sorting

Much like in the Mac FInder, Google has some clever ways to make searching easier. 

Assuming you are in 'My Drive' (not 'Shared with me') you have a few ways to sort your results: TITLE, OWNER and LAST MODIFIED – I would suggest 'last modified' is the most useful. When you are in 'Shared with me', you'll find these options are cut down to ONLY Title, and Share Date - don't ask me why!

Star documents that you use frequently - this is a one click way of ensuring you find those straight away. Just click Starred - and BOOM there they are. Easy. Of course it doesn't help if you star a bazillion docs, so remember to UNstar some from time to time.

Last but definitely not least - Filter

So when you have a bunch of files on display in your Google Drive, make sure you take advantage of the buttons which let you 'filter' the results - much as you would when doing a Google Search - 

Then pick whatever option will make it easiest to drastically reduce the amount of files you are viewing - like 'Text Document' 'Not Owned By Me' – you can choose more than one.

For a more thorough break down and even more awesome advice for becoming a Google Drive Search Ninja click here.

So... now that you know how to search your Google Drive, make sure you can do the same on your Mac... 

PS
You can also view the contents of your Google Drive as thumbnails—especially useful for folders of images: