Organizing Your Cloud

http://www.cloudwards.net/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/multcloud.jpg

As much as I love storing everything in the cloud, over the years I have developed a number of accounts through various services, and at times I have trouble remembering what is stored where.  Also, moving items from one storage service to another involves a lot of downloading and uploading of various files.  Multcloud is an online tool that allows you to manage multiple cloud drives all in one space.  This can serve a few different functions.  Not only does it make it easier to keep track of where all your files are because you can easily search multiple accounts in the same location, but you can easily transfer files from one cloud storage to another.  So I can take a file from my Dropbox account and easily move it into my Google Drive account, without all the hassle of downloading and uploading the file.

So far I have found the tool convenient and easy to use. This can also be incredibly helpful for your students who may use multiple online accounts, depending on the assignment and program.  There are a number of different types of accounts you can connect to create your dashboard for managing them all in one place. Additionally, you can add multiple accounts of the same type, so for instance if you have a personal and a work Dropbox account, you can manage them together. Overall, this is one of those tools that can be convenient and make life easier for those of us who utilize multiple cloud accounts, or can't remember where we stored our stuff.

Check out the video below for  quick tutorial on getting started.

Triventy: Formative Assessment and Review Quizzes

http://www.triventy.com/assets/logo-c10b50c4ab89b6c125d03ffff9fe1fce.png

Most teachers who do some kind of online review or formative assessment with students have heard of and possibly even used Kahoot.  It's a great tool for allowing for easy and fun review and gauging how well students understand the material or information.  However, using the same tool all the time can lessen the fun, so today I'm bringing up another great review tool that is easy to use and very similar to Kahoot called Triventy.

Triventy is an online tool that allows you to create easy to use formative assessments or reviews that you can do with students in class.  The biggest difference that Triventy has from other online review tools is that it allows for collaborative creation of games and reviews.  This can be great if you work in a team setting (middle school I'm thinking of you!) or if your department wants to work together on something that you all can use.  You could also have groups of students create reviews and work together that way.

A few other features I like about this tool is the ability to add hints to the questions so students who are struggling can get some extra help without being obvious, and the ability to add extra facts or feedback after each question.  You can also adjust some of the quiz settings itself so that it won't display student names with results as you are playing.

One of the biggest downsides of this tool for me is that right now it does not keep the results after the game is done, so you have to take a screenshot of the final results to keep those.  It's not a huge inconvenience, but I like having the results in a spreadsheet so I can look back later and see what topics I might need to revisit or where certain students had issues.  I hope this is a feature that we will see in the future, but for now that's the only real downside for me with this tool.

For more information on how to use Triventy and how to create quizzes, check out the video below from FreeTech4Teachers.com .  FreeTech4Teachers is a great blog and a great resource for all kinds of free tech tools!

Some Changes to Google Forms

Many teachers have discovered the benefits that Google Forms can bring to the classroom. It can be used for quizzes, exit tickets, and rubric assessments. Many of you may already use Google Forms, but may have noticed some changes to the forms since school started this fall.

The new Google Forms looks a lot like the Classroom Interface. Both the question and response page are available from the form, yet you can still get a separate response sheet. Let's look at the anatomy of the new form.

From the picture, you can see that the form looks a little different than it did in the past, but it functions the same way.

If you don't like the new form, click on the running guy picture in the lower left and it will revert to the old form version (in case you want to flee from this change!).

Besides looking a bit different, Google has renamed a few question types.

• SHORT ANSWER used to be called TEXT
• DROPDOWN used to be called CHOOSE FROM A LIST
• LINEAR SCALE used to be called SCALE
• MULTIPLE CHOICE GRID used to be called GRID

The response tab allows you to turn on and off accepting responses. Clicking the Green box also allows you to create a spreadsheet rather than just viewing responses in the Form.

Whether you are a veteran of using Google Forms or a newcomer, once you get used to the changes, you will enjoy these new features.

Check out this video tutorial for more information:

Another Rubric Tool - DocAppender

http://cloudlab.newvisions.org/_/rsrc/1445871114197/add-ons/docappender/docAppender_lg.png

Welcome back!  I hope you all had a restful and fun holiday! One of my earlier posts this fall discussed the tool Orange Slice, which is an add-on for Google that allows you to easily insert and use rubrics with Google docs.  Today I wanted to look at another rubric tool called DocAppender.  This tool is similar to Orange Slice in that it is a Google add-on, but this tool allows you use a Google Form that stamps a rubric into your document.

To use the tool, you basically create a Google Form, add the DocAppender add-on to the form (which you only need to do once).  Then you can choose a folder where the student documents are stored, and if you use Google Classroom, this works seamlessly to include your Classroom folders.  You then choose rubric items to use for that particular assignment, choose the score, and submit. The rubric is then stamped onto the assignment you are grading.  It can also work really well for peer editing.  See the links below for some tutorials and more information.

DocAppender Site
Youtube Tutorial on Using DocAppender

Step by step instructions and examples for DocAppender

Google Classroom and EDpuzzle Working Seamlessly Together!

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/iTQpvkQdQOw/maxresdefault.jpg

As my last post for this calendar year (Christmas break is coming up so I'm going to skip the next two weeks),this is going to be a short post, focusing on some new features in EDpuzzle that allow it to work seamlessly with Google Classroom.  For more information on EDpuzzle itself and how to use that tool, see my previous blog post here.  EDpuzzle has created some additions that now allow teachers to post videos directly to Google Classroom, as well as easily create students and add classes.

First, in EDpuzzle, you can now use the Share to Classroom button to add a new EDpuzzle video directly to your Google class for students to access.  They no longer have to go out to EDpuzzle itself to access the videos and you can still see all of the results and analytics that come with the video.

In addition, you can take existing classes of students from Google and import them into EDpuzzle.  This means that if you are a current Google Classroom user and want to try EDpuzzle, you do not have to have your student sign up for two separate classes in two different tools. They can sign up for just your Google Classroom and that's it!  This will also make beginning of the year set-up much easier.  When new students are added during the school year, one click in EDpuzzle lets you update those classes by pulling information from Google.

These new features have really taken EDpuzzle to a whole new level.  It is a great tool for a flipped classroom on its own, but with the new integration to Google Classroom, it makes assigning and managing video assignments much easier and more efficient for the teacher.  If you are an EDpuzzle user or are interested in trying it out, these features will make your life much easier!  Check out the video below for more information on how to use these features.

Have a Merry Christmas and I'll see you all in the New Year!

Getting More Out of Presentations and Posters with Smore

http://www.mackinvia-connext.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/shannon-smore.jpg

Yes, s'mores are a sweet treat around the campfire, but Smore.com is a simple way to create an online, beautiful flyer, brochure, or project. With so many design and content options and a finished professional product with multiple privacy options, it is perfect for educational use!

If you are looking for a quick poster tool that can be printed as a flyer or a PDF, or can be shared electronically, Smore may be for you. 

One of the things I love about Smore is the variety of options for items to add to a poster, like text, pictures, audio, video, links, and forms.

There is a free and a pro version, but I have found the free version is very robust. Once you have logged into Smore and click the new flyer link, a window opens with choices of the type of flyer you want to create. You can go from there using premade templates for creating your own from scratch.

If you share the flyer you create electronically, Smore gives you analytics regarding how many views your flyer has had. 

Here is a great example of a student project created with Smore.  

You can find more information about how to use the tool and ideas for using at this link. 

Interested in learning more? This is a great video tutorial on the tool.

Keeping it Organized with Google Keep

http://r3.whistleout.com/public/images/articles/2013/12/Google-Keep-feature.png

Well, it has been a few weeks.  Things got kind of crazy before Thanksgiving, so hopefully we can pick it up again in December and finish the year strong. I'm going to keep it simple this week and talk about a tool I learned about a couple of weeks ago from a colleague of mine at South that I absolutely love! While it has been around for quite a while, this is a new tool for me and has proved incredibly useful in just a few short weeks.

I am a list-maker.  I make lists for everything: groceries, things I have to do at work and home, Christmas cards to send, tech tool ideas for this blog, etc. Just about anything in my life that can have a list, does.  I have tried a number of tools to organize and track my lists.  I have used tools from the computer, online tools, and ones I can sync to my phone.  While most of them had benefits and I liked them, this new one is by far the best I have found and definitely a keeper.

Google Keep is not just a post-it note type list organizer.  It goes beyond just making my own lists.  One of my favorite features so far is the sharing feature.  I have lists that I have share with co-workers for things we need to get done, and lists I share with my husband so he knows what to get at the grocery store on his way home.  Just like with my Google documents, I can share separate lists and notes with different people.  This has been incredibly helpful and has helped streamline my organization.

Some other features I really enjoy include color-coding my lists.  For example, right now, my work lists are orange, my home lists are blue, my purchasing lists are green, and my Christmas lists are red.  This helps with visual organization.  I can also drag and drop my lists on my Google Keep page to organize them in any order I want, so I can keep work and home lists separate.  For individual lists, I can set reminders for myself if there is something urgent I need to get done, add a picture to my list (this has been really helpful for my Christmas buying list), archive lists I don't want immediately visible but still want to access, and other features like labeling, including checkboxes on my lists if I want, and deleting items I have checked off the list.  For a quick and easy tool, it really has a lot of features and options.

Overall, this is a simple tool and for many of us, a necessary one.  What I like most about it is the easy use while it includes a variety of features.  Most of all, I like the sharing options.  Check out Google Keep and add it to your Chrome on your PC from the Chrome Store, or add it to your phone, or both!  This is a great tool to help keep both teachers and students organized.  So if your New Year's resolution this year is going to be getting organized (again!), get a head start and try out Google Keep.

Google Keep Site