Chromebooks Supporting a Culture of Learning

For those who have read this blog before, you know that I am a science teacher who now trains other teachers in technology and the effective implementation of technology in the classroom.  As I work with teachers, I notice that there is more than just resistance or acceptance of technology in the classroom.  To me, more than the idea of teacher resistance or acceptance is the idea of the culture of the class.  I know that all teachers want their students to learn, but what type of culture are they reinforcing?  Teachers can reinforce a culture of knowing by standing in front of a class and talking at students all day or they can reinforce a culture of learning by working with students at times to find and learn.

I know that not all would agree with me, I have had arguments with teachers who felt I was wrong in working with students rather than being the professional knower in the front of the room.  One argument was over the periodic table.  She told me that students at the school should be responsible for memorizing the periodic table, that students had done this for years in the school district.  I had to do that when I went to a neighboring school.  To this day, I cannot see the point in memorizing the periodic table, it is in every science book and there are millions of them on the internet.  Why do I need to memorize it when I can look it up in two seconds?  She claimed it was part of learning science.  I claim that by making students look it up and find it, I am teaching them that there are things that are out there and they should know how to find it.  They should learn to search for themselves.  This whole technology thing allows people to not memorize things, they just need to be proficient in finding things.  If nothing else, changing from a knowing culture to a learning culture is a transformative (the Modification and Redefinition in SAMR) use of technology in the classroom.

When the teacher with whom I fought asked me how I teach the periodic table, I told her this...

I tell the students to open a chromebook and look it up.  If they are really snazzy, they can look up interactive Periodic Table.

• I tell them to find two periodic tables based on looks and functionality.  
• Compare and contrast them.  Which one is more accurate?  Which one is more precise?  I even have students collect data on the average number of place values to the right of the decimal for average atomic mass and use this as evidence of which periodic table is better.  
• I lay out glassware that we will be using during the year around the room, how precise is the glassware?  Does the precision of the periodic table matter in a calculation of values if using measurements from the glassware?  
• I have students find enough evidence to support the use of one of their periodic tables.  Students then take this argument and work in groups to come up with the best periodic table in the group, then argue with other groups.  
• Its like March Madness for periodic tables, only one wins.  This takes about a week.

Though I could talk about the periodic table, this lesson asks students to look at the periodic table, delve into accuracy, precision, measurement, significant digits, lab equipment, supporting with evidence, argumentation.  In short, they are learning and there is no clear cut right answer, or there would only be one periodic table on the internet or published in books.

Videos of Analysis

Common Core requires students to read and analyze nonfictional text.  As they get older, students will need to analyze multiple documents and write a DBQ (document based question) response.  Here is a way to scaffold the informational text analysis.  Teach students to annotate pictures of text.

Tools

1. Some Text, picture, etc.
2. Awesome Screenshot Extension
3. Screencastify Extension

Use Awesome Screenshot to take a picture of the text.  

For those who have not used it, awesome screenshot allows anybody to take a picture of a webpage or a part of a webpage and then annotate it with arrows, shapes, text, etc.  Play with it.  It is how I made this picture.

But once you or your students find a document and take a picture... STOP.  We are going to use the annotation tools to create a video.  Get the picture and plan out the annotations.

Use Screencastify to create a video of the annotation.

Screencastify allows a user to record the action in a tab and the audio captured by a microphone.  Start the screencastify extension and begin recording.  During the recording, annotate the image and talk through the annotation.  This does not need to be long.  Just a quick analysis of the document.

Once the video is created, view screencasts.  Students can Share the screencasts and get a link to the video they created.  Turn that link into google classroom or however you accept assignments.

Uses

I have had teachers do this where they break the students up into groups and provide each group with a different primary source document.  The groups analyze the document then follow the procedure above. Groups turned in their video link via email.

The teacher then showed all videos and students had to choose 2 documents and analysis as evidence in their response to a DBQ as homework.  In a class of 8 groups, groups analyzed 8 informational text documents in 20 minutes and all students watched them, (8 x 1 minute videos).

Yes, there are other ways to do this and other applications.  Enjoy.

Screencast your Solutions

With a history as a chemistry teacher I found that I solved many of the same problems over and over again throughout the years.  I would give a homework assignment and offer to go over all the questions students were unable or not confident in solving.  I found that, although this was a helpful task, it quickly ate up time in class.  How could I streamline this process?  I began screencasting problems.

The Tools:
Screencastify (or screencast-o-matic if not on a chromebook)- Allow the recording of up to 10 minutes of either a tab in a browser or using a webcam.  I just made sure I downloaded the video to google drive and shared it to free up my 10 minutes.

Daum Equation Editor - This is a web based equation editor where I could type in the problem end explicitly work through how I solved the problem.

Webcam - Like a webcam, many document cameras can hook up to a computer with a USB cable.  This will turn the document camera into a high resolution camera.  I often used this to record my hand writing out the solution to a problem on a piece of paper, just like you would do it on the board.  While doing this, you can also project the image that you are recording.

WeVideo - If I wanted to get fancy.  I could edit the video.  As I tried to keep these to quick videos, I rarely used this tool.

Tell the Class to be Quiet and hold their Questions.
As I would go over the problems, I would always save one problem to screencast.  When I got to this problem, I would tell the students to be quiet and that I would be turning this into a video.  I would record the video and audio of me solving the problem, then post it online for students to see.  Upon completion I would turn off the recording and ask if there were more questions.

Get it Done Before Class.
Prior to class I would do the same thing and I would post them to my class webpage.  As students entered the room, I would check their homework and then tell them where to find the videos in case they had questions.

Google Slides

This last weekend I attended a conference and purposefully went to sessions that had nothing to do with chromebooks.  That has been my area of expertise and what I have supported the most.  But I still get asked a lot of questions about the things that iPads can do and what is the comparable app or extension on chromebooks.  After listening to how teachers are using iBooks author and screencasting with explain everything, a truly brilliant use of app smashing, I wanted to see if the same thing could be done on chromebooks.  There are many screencasting apps, I recommend screencastify.  The creation of the content was the challenge for me.  I came up with Google Slides.

Most people use google slides as a replacement for powerpoint presentations.  Yes, it is nice that you can create a presentation online with the ability to collaborate and quickly insert pictures and text.  It is the other facets of the program that I think are better.

Change it from a Slide to a Poster
Open up a Google Slide and select a theme (I like the blank theme).  Once open, select the file menu and choose page setup.  Here you can change the size of the slide to a custom size, for a poster, brochure, book, etc.

Format the Poster
The best part about slides is the lack of format rules.  In a Doc, there are limits to where text can be (left, right, center, and in a table).  In Google Slides, you add a text box where you want the text box, put a picture where you want that.  Move it around, design the space, super easy.

Displaying the Slides
Publish the Presentation - on the File menu, there is an option to publish the presentation to the internet.  Choose this and the presentation can be embedded or linked.

Make it a PDF - on the File menu, select Donwload as, and choose PDF.  Put that PDF in your google Drive and share the link with others.  Much like the publishing to the internet, but it is possible to zoom in on PDF files.

One Page is a Poster, More Pages are a Book
Just because it is thought of as a presentation tool does not mean that there are additional functionalities built into it.  I have seen teachers use them for students to creatively display book reports and character studies, political cartoon identification and analysis, propaganda poster creation, product presentation of engineered solutions, and calculation problem solving posters.  One thing that I know could be done, but have not yet seen, is the creation of a multipage poster that essentially turns the posters and presentations into a book.

Video Through Google Chrome

To create videos in Google chrome I have found that there are several tools you need, if you want to do this for free.  First, you need an extension for capturing the video.  Second, you need an app or a website for editing the video you have captured.

Capturing the video.  

There are 2 extensions I use to capture video, screencastify and skiblz cam.  Skiblz is limited in that is only captures video, no sound, but you can create as much video as you want.  Skiblz will record what you do in your browser, so you can be creative in the silent movie manner.  Screencastify allows you to capture video from your web browser tab, your webcam, or your desktop.  This will capture audio and video, but there is a 7 minute limit for free accounts.

Editing the Video

Up until recently, I had only used wevideo for the editing of videos.  The tools available in wevideo are comparable to some of the page software video editors.  you can add menus, background sounds, transitions between video segments, voice-over, etc.  Recently, youtube has altered their uploading of video content page and included an editor.  Prior to publishing videos it is possible to edit videos, capture videos, or even create a slideshow from images.  There is music available to use as background sound, transitions for video segments, subtitles, etc.  For a great synopsis on this, here are some places I read about before trying it out myself.  Youtube Teaching Resources.  Slide Shows with Audio on Youtube.

Now, to be perfectly honest, as much as I love Chromebooks there is no combination of app or extension I have found that rivals the video tools on the iPad.  Should you have one of those, I highly recommend iMotion HD for stop motion video creation, and Touchcast for creating professional videos (both free).  As my district has gone with a mass adoption of chromebooks, I can figure out ways to do everything I want to do with the free video creation and editing tools on the chromebooks.

Chrome Extensions

Though chrome extensions are not solely for the chromebooks, they are a large part of why I like Google chrome.  I can make by browser do other things for me rather than take me to websites and help me create and share on Google Drive.  As you read through my list of extensions, there are some that everybody lists as their favorite, so I will not describe them much.  The others, I will go into depth with, just to let you know what they do.

The Popular

• Awesome Screenshot take browser screenshots and annotate.  When used with an equation editor, students can take picture of math problems, step-by-step, and use the annotation tools to describe rationale.
• Tab Scissors - Use tab scissors to split your browser window into two different browsers for multitasking.  
• OneTab - open a set of pages that either you visit or that you would like your students to visit, onetab combines them all into onetab and allows you to create a webpage that you can share with students. Complete with link address and QR code.
• Clearly - Get rid of adds when reading articles.
• Diigo - annotate what you read, share your annotations, follow others.  Great research tool.
• Screencastify - create videos of your browser and the actions taken in a tab.  Great for making training videos.

The Not-So-Well-Known

• Google input tools - change the language of your keyboard to type in different languages.  Great for world language classes and simple access to accents, special characters, etc.
• QR code extension - Creates a QR code of the page you are on and scans QR codes using your webcam.  I like this for sharing Google drive folders or for sharing specific webpages or tools.
• Improvedtube and Herp Derp for youtube - customize the way youtube looks on your computer.  Get rid of suggested videos, set the default size for a video you wish to watch.  Change the content of all comments from actual comments to herp derp.  Kind of fun to read.
• Notable pdf - a pdf annotation tool that allows you to annotate pdfs, collaborate on the annotations, and export the document with or without the annotations.
• Citable - highlight content on a webpage and click on citable.  This extension will save the quote with all the citation information in a spreadsheet to access later when you are writing a paper and need actual quotes from reliable sources.
• Black Menu - my favorite extension.  This is a customizable window that gives quick access to many of google's services.  Shorten a URL, search youtube, search google, maps, literally everything.  There is a more button that lets you skim through each of the lesser known google services like public data explorer, flu trends, etc.

This list is, by no means, extensive.  These are simply the extensions I use in chrome and what they allow me to do.

Creative Uses for Google Slides and Drawings

1. Google Slides

One can quickly describe Slides as the Google version of Microsoft Powerpoint.  Create a slide show to deliver information, support a presentation, and collaborate through the process of creating that presentation.  That is rarely how I have used this in a class setting.

2. Google Drawing

A free space to add whatever you want to the space.  Oddly, I find it easier to insert and not as easy to draw in drawings.  Nevertheless, it is a nice functionality to have.

Slides and Drawings are both programs that have the same basic premise, free space for you to do what you want.  Set up a page and run with it.


There are still the research tools available in docs, but docs likes to format, Slides and Drawings are free format spaces.  Add what you want, move it where you want.

• Use an image as a background - Add an image and make it the size of the slide or drawing space.  Use the arrange option to send it back and format, image options to ,make it more transparent to use an image as a background or slide theme.

• Use hyperlinks to link multiple drawings or make create your own adventure stories.

• Citing images - click on an image, then click and drag the URL of the image to cite it quickly.

Through my training I have come across teachers who have found creative ways of using each of these tools.

• Using Google Drawings as a book report.  Students used the drawing tool to summarize books, provide relevant images and then presented from the single-slide drawing.

• Using Drawings for YOGA sequences - each student was individually responsible for creating a slide for a yoga pose.  Later, they worked with others to link together slides with four other members of the class to create a mini-yoga sequence to teach, present, and walk the class through.

• Pecha Kucha style presentations - presentations made with slides containing a picture or less than 3 words.  Follows a time and slide format I used 6 slides x 10 seconds.

• Newsletters and posters - due to the free flowing space, it is easy to create a newsletter or poster with either a single slide or a drawing, which is simply a single slide.

• Making a website out of a series of google drawings.  Publish a google drawing and it is a webpage.  Link that drawing to other google documents or webpages you make later and you have a series of webpages.  Pretty simple to do and allows students to create effective designs.  I have seen teachers use this for student portfolios if they do not wish to learn google sites and they want students to have an e-portfolio.