Week 42: Tone

Google's latest experiment might be the coolest Chrome extension we've seen yet.

Tone, the company's newest homegrown browser add-on, uses sound to quickly share URLs with anyone nearby. The extension is available now in Chrome's web store and can be used by any Chrome user, regardless of what type of computer they have.

In order for the extension to work, it must be installed on at least two computers that are close enough to be "within earshot" of each other and each machine must have its volume turned on. Once the tab you want to share with your neighbors is open, click on the extension in your browser's toolbar, wait for the series of beeps, and the link will be shared to all nearby computers via a Chrome notification.

SEE ALSO: Magical Chrome extension puts tabs to sleep so they don't kill your browser

The browser add-on was created in a single afternoon, Google's Alex Kauffman and Boris Smus write on the company's research blog.

"Tone grew out of the idea that while digital communication methods like email and chat have made it infinitely easier, cheaper and faster to share things with people across the globe, they've actually made it more complicated to share things with the people standing right next to you," Kauffmann and Smus write. "Tone aims to make sharing digital things with nearby people as easy as talking to them."

In Mashable's testing, the extension worked surprisingly well — the extension was able to detect the beeps from a nearby laptop even when the sound was coming through headphones. The extension is also able to share to multiple computers at once, provided each one has the extension installed.

Behind the scenes, the browser too is meant to act much like actual speech, Kauffman and Smus say, noting that performance may vary based on other factors like distance volume levels.

Because it's audio based, Tone behaves like speech in interesting ways. The orientation of laptops relative to each other, the acoustic characteristics of the space, the particular speaker volume and mic sensitivity, and even where you're standing will all affect Tone's reliability. Not every nearby machine will always receive every broadcast, just like not everyone will always hear every word someone says. But resending is painless and debugging generally just requires raising the volume. Many groups at Google have found that the tradeoffs between ease and reliability worthwhile—it is our hope that small teams, students in classrooms and families with multiple computers will, too.

Organizing your Google Drive

4 Things You Can Do Right Now To Create A Perfectly Organized Google Drive

Everyone organizes their Google Drive differently. Shockingly, many Google Apps users don’t organize them at all. I have found that, by using a few best practices, there is a system for making Google Drive much more organized and easier to navigate.

Proper folder structure, naming conventions, color coding, and keeping track of what is shared with you can go a long way when used properly. These 4 tips show the best way to organize your Google Drive for faster navigation so you never lose track of a document again.

1. Folder Structure Comes First

The best starting point is creating a clean universal folder structure. An easy way to do this is to create a folder for each category of document and then make subfolders for each aspect of that category. An ‘uncategorized’ folder can house all the documents that don’t fit into any of the other folders yet. Scan through the ‘uncategorized’ folder regularly and sort its contents into the appropriate labeled folders if possible.

Within each subfolder, it is a good practice to create folders that are dated by week to keep track of the dates each document is created, that way no folder becomes too full and difficult to sort through.

To create a folder click the red NEW button and then select the option for folder.

2. Add Some Color

Google Drive has an awesome feature that allows you to color code your folders, this can be done in such a way that makes sifting through your drive much faster.

I made each folder in my drive a different color and then each subfolder a different shade of that same color. The dated weekly folders within each subfolder are the same shade as the subfolder it is contained within. This way, if I am looking at a folder titled “April 6-12” I can instantly tell what types of documents are contained in it simply by glancing at its hue.

To change the color of a folder click the arrow to the right of the folder name on the top bar then select the change color option.

3. Standardize Your Naming Conventions

Date created is a mysteriously absent field in Google Drive, instead you can only view when a document was last updated. Finding a document by it’s creation date is sometimes useful and more intuitive, which should be considered when designing your naming convention.

We think it is best to name every document in the following way “[DateCreated] DocumentName” and then let the folder structure and color coding do the rest. For example a student loan payment receipt created on the 19th of April would be titled “[4.19] Student Loan Payment Receipt” this will be easy to find whether you are searching for the date or the title of the document.

To rename a document, highlight the documents name in Drive and then click the three vertical dots on the right side of the top bar. Then select rename.

4. Shared with you, organized by you

When a document is shared with you, it can be hard to locate because it is not automatically added to your My Drive folder. Make sure to add the file to the appropriate folder in your My Drive. If it does not adhere to your naming conventions, create a folder that fits the naming convention and add the shared file to that folder.

To add a document that is shared with you to your My Drive, highlight the document in the Shared with Me folder and then click the three vertical dots on the right side of the top bar and select Add to My Drive from the dropdown menu.

Week 41: How to Search for Openly Licensed Ed Resources

28 New Google Add-Ons to help teachers now!

From Matt Miller at Ditch That Textbook
email

Google add-ons can add powerful features to standard documents and sheets. Here are the benefits, drawbacks and implementation ideas for several.

Add-ons are Google’s shiny new set of tools for Documents and Spreadsheets, and they’re full of potential for educators.

They’re additional functions that can be installed and become available across all of your documents and sheets.

As any feature still in its infancy, you’ll find that several add-ons are still buggy and a little slow. As developers get time to respond to problems, they’ll become more stable — and even more valuable.

There’s a lot that educators can do with many of the add-ons. Here’s a selection of several of them (not an exhaustive list) with benefits, drawbacks and things you can do with them. We’ll start with add-ons for Documents and then for Spreadsheets.

ADD-ONS FOR DOCUMENTS

Merge by MailChimp

Benefits: The set-up is simple. Add data (names, addresses, any info) in a spreadsheet. Create a document and show Merge where you want to add the data. It creates custom documents that you can e-mail.

Drawbacks: Setting all the data up can be time-consuming, but the product is worth it.

Idea 1: Customized grade reports. Student data can be typed or exported into a sheet and shared in a fancy document with all of the data merged.

Table of Contents

Benefits: Using the headings (next to font) in Documents, it creates a clickable table of contents in a little window next to your document. It makes document navigation simple.

Drawbacks: Some users report that navigation is slow with larger documents.

Idea 2: Reports/papers. When students write, they add a table of contents for easy navigation.

Idea 3: Student work in one document. If all students do an assignment in one document, they can add their names as a heading above their work. Click on the student name to see his/her work.

Idea 4: Easily navigable readings. If you provide students with long articles or readings in document form, finding each chapter is easy. Plus, you can add a new heading after each day’s reading to serve as a bookmark.

Charts

Benefits: It very simply pulls in data from a spreadsheet into a chart/graph that can be inserted into a document.

Drawbacks: Some types of charts, like scatterplots, are not available.

Idea 5: Lab reports. Students can take readings, data, etc. from science labs and easily incorporate them into reports.

Idea 6: Tabulating results or student data. Student council elections. Class votes. Standardized test data. If it can be added to a spreadsheet, it can come out as an attractive chart or graph.

Track Changes

Benefits: It incorporates the approve/reject changes function of Microsoft Office to Google Documents. It shows changes made to a document and includes a simple check button or X button to approve or reject.

Drawbacks: No permissions exist for who can and can’t approve/reject changes. Also, changes to tables are not supported.

Idea 7: Group projects/papers. Partners can propose changes and approve or reject them without adding them to the document. (Provides a little more control than just writing comments.)

Idea 8: Peer editing. If students suggest changes to each other through the editing process, the original author can have the final say on whether a change sticks.

Idea 9: Student newspaper/yearbook articles. Student editors and advisers can suggest changes to articles without actually changing the document.

Template Gallery

Benefits: It has many useful pre-created document templates that can be copied to users’ Google Drives. They include business letters, resumes, cover letters, calendars and budgeting tools.

Drawbacks: Many of the templates don’t pertain directly to education, but some will. The options are a little limited (but, hey … they’re free!).

Idea 10: Resumes and cover letters. Students — and educators! — can save precious designing time by using a template from the gallery.

Idea 11: Sports/club calendars. If a team or club requires a printed calendar of events (that doesn’t use Google Calendar!), there’s a simple calendar in the templates that can be modified.

Calculator

Benefits: Its simplicity. It’s a basic calendar that sits next to your document. No switching between programs. No pulling the calculator out of your backpack.

Drawbacks: It is just a simple four-function calculator. You’ll need something else for more complex calculations.

Idea 12: Budgets in personal finance class. It will likely save students time to have the calculator sitting there as they create budget reports.

Gliffy

Benefits: It creates beautiful diagrams. It has plenty of icons for several types of diagrams, such as flow charts, Venn diagrams, organizational charts and even floor plans. Diagrams can be easily inserted in documents.

Drawbacks: Free version includes creation of five diagrams.

Idea 13: Storyboarding/story charting. Creating videos is easier if students have a visual plan for the story. Students could also create a flow chart to show how a novel or an event from history plays out.

Idea 14: Infographics. Students can show steps to complete a skill or chart out important information about a topic instead of writing it in a report.

EasyBib

Benefits: EasyBib takes sources like books, Internet sites and articles and creates a bibliography according to MLA, APA or Chicago style. It inserts the bibliographies in the appropriate places in a report.

Drawbacks: It is limited to three style manuals. Lists of resources may be too limited for some users.

Idea 15: Research papers. Students can create papers with flawless bibliographies using EasyBib.

Idea 16: Annotated bibliographies. Students can focus on adding comments to their different sources instead of getting punctuation and other details in the perfect spot.

Thesaurus

Benefits: It displays synonyms and antonyms in a sidebar of a document. It’s another simple time saver.

Drawbacks: Results can be limited.

Idea 17: Writing essays. When students struggle to find words, this thesaurus can provide options.

Idea 18: Enhanced vocabulary lessons. Students can find additional synonyms and antonyms to the lesson’s vocabulary.

Texthelp Study Skills

Benefits: Texthelp Study Skills simplifies using the highlighter feature of Documents. The sidebar makes the highlighter easily accessible.

Drawbacks: Free version offers four colors for 30 days. After that, one color is available.

Idea 19: Group reading analysis. Use highlighters in conjunction with comments to allow students to mark-up an article or reading provided in a document. Students can share opinions and important passages in a reading.

Pro Writing Aid

Benefits: Pro Writing Aid analyzes your writing for spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, plagiarism and readability, among others. It provides a report after analyzing the document for easy correction. If your school doesn’t have access to tools like TurnItIn, this could be a good alternative.

Drawbacks: Free version allows for only four scans. Scans on lengthy documents can take a long time.

Idea 20: Analyzing great writers. Students can run other writers’ work (in literature, in news, etc.) through Pro Writing Aid to analyze strengths, weaknesses and peculiarities.

ADD-ONS FOR SHEETS

Doctopus

Benefits: Doctopus is arguably the most powerful add-on in education. It creates shared folders for students and teachers to access. It distributes files to students like a virtual photocopier. Files can be tweaked for each individual student or kept the same. Teachers can monitor progress on projects and grade using the Goobric feature.

Drawbacks: Not many. As kinks are worked out of the new add-on, Doctopus will continue to get stronger.

Idea 21: Group projects. Doctopus can distribute the necessary files and allow teachers to see how often students have worked on their projects.

Idea 22: Differentiated work. If teachers want to distributed different versions of the same document based on students’ individual needs, Doctopus can do that.

Autocrat

Benefits: It creates documents or PDFs for e-mailing with information pulled from a spreadsheet. Create a spreadsheet with names, addresses or any other pertinent information, and Autocrat will insert it in each unique document. Autocrat can create the grade reports suggested in idea 1 with Merge by MailChimp.

Drawbacks: There’s a bit of a learning curve at the beginning, but it’s powerful once you get the hang of it.

Idea 23: Personalized parent letters. Parent names, student names, addresses, student grades and other data can be merged into a letter to send home to parents.

Flubaroo

Benefits: Teachers can create assessments in Google Forms and Flubaroo will grade them. Once graded, Flubaroo creates a grading summary for the entire assessment (i.e. class average, number of low-scoring questions, etc.) as well as individual student grades and right/wrong answers for each student. It’s an easy system to learn and use.

Drawbacks: Flubaroo doesn’t grade some questions well (short answer and essay), but an automated grading system probably shouldn’t be grading those in the first place, should it?

Idea 24: Formative assessments. Quizzes can be graded quickly to provide students instant feedback while they’re still in the mindset of test-taking, strengthening the connection in their brains of what was missed.

Styles

Benefits: Styles makes formatting cells in a sheet easy. It provides several pre-chosen color and font schemes for quick use. It saves users the time of digging through menus to find the styles they want.

Drawbacks: Styles lacks complete flexibility to format cells with exactly the color and font scheme you want.

Idea 25: Analyzing data. Given a set of data on a spreadsheet, students can highlight certain findings (the lowest, the most common, etc.) with a certain style.

Mapping Sheets

Benefits: Mapping Sheets gathers addresses, location names and other data and plots it on a Google Map. It creates pins on Google Maps simply and creates a good visual representation of the locations of multiple places.

Drawbacks: Locations are tied to addresses and don’t provide for off-road coordinates.

Idea 26: Virtual city visits. Students can plot the locations they would visit if they toured a certain city, state or country.

Idea 27: Visual sports team schedule. Athletes can see where they will travel for competitions throughout the season.

Idea 28: Natural science comparisons. Students can gather data on weather, animals, minerals or anything else found in various locations and see a visual representation of it.

RAT as a alternative to SAMR

The RAT (or TAR if you prefer)

So, while I love and cherish SAM(r) I have a new friend, its name is RAT (Hughes et al, 2006), and it is remarkably non existent on the 'Interweb'—I'm not sure why, but when I couldn't find any graphics to illustrate it for some upcoming PD I'm prepping I realised that I would have to ... *takes deep breath, yes it's hard to admit* make my own—so, here they are (CC free, just help yourself),  mash - mend - make your own, but please lets put some life back into the RAT framework, it was published in 2006, and from what I can see, it has been sleeping in obscurity ever since.




I'd describe what RAT means, except that, well, there's no need—that's the beauty of it, it's obvious (if you speak English).

R :: replacement | redundant | retrograde
A :: augmented | average | acceptable
T :: transformed | terrific | tremendous

Now all we need to do is wrestle with the holy grail of tech integration—defining the nature of transformative tech, I like these attempts, from the RAT paper:

Technology as Transformation

The Technology as Transformation Category involves technology use that transforms the instructional method, the students' learning processes, and/or the actual subject matter.

1. The actual mental work is changed or expanded 
2. The number of variables involved in the mental processes are expanded
3. The tool changes the organisation in which it had been used 
4. New players become involved with the tool's use (or expanded use of the tool). 
5. New opportunities for different forms and types of learning through problem solving, unavailable in traditional approaches, are developed.

... it [transformative use of ICTs] improves the process of bringing thought into communicable expressions in such significant ways that, once the tool is understood and used regularly, the user feels wanting if it is not available because it has opened up new possibilities of thought and action without which one comes to feel at a disadvantage. It's become an indispensable instrument of mentality, and not merely a tool. (Pea, 1985, p 175)

… we will be best served by setting our imaginations free from seeing a computer as a machine that lacks the warmth and security of a book, seeing it instead as a technological alternative providing almost unlimited potential to operationalise the humanistic values that fuel our noblest conceptions... (Reinking, 1997, p 642)

The more important question (that the bucket load of people who blog about SAMR rarely seem to address in my experience) is how do you  move ICT use from one end to the other, from replacement to transformation (RAT), or from substitution, to redefinition (SAMR)?

There are few answers:

1. Maybe you don't need to, sometimes good old-fashioned traditional tools are more effective than using a screen, hard for me to admit that it is true… Sometimes. But not as often as Technophobes would have you believe… but if all you are doing is replacing with technology then there really is no point.
2. Maybe amplification (or augmentation/ modification in the SAMR model) is perfectly okay for the task at hand. Technology doesn't have to transform learning for it to be beneficial, I have often found that if we let the kids have the freedom, they can transform learning all by themselves. They can take amplified practice and transform it due to their greater confidence, or more effective use of technology, more effective than was maybe conceived by the teacher...
3. Focus on what it is about ICTs that make them unique—called 'unique affordances' or 'features'. Avril Loveless* listed these back in 2002 as
   
   "provisionality, interactivity, capacity, range, speed and automatic functions which enable users to do things that could not be done as effectively, or at all, using other tools." (Loveless, 2002)
   
   I found that list to be a little ... long, ie hard to recall/use, and a little out of date, in terms of the development of social media, and the internet in the past 10 years; so I took the liberty of coming up with my own. Actually I came up with this before I came across the 'Loveless List' as I call it. Mine is a framework for amplifying/transforming ICT use, called SAMMS: Situatedlearning that makes the most of access to an abundance of online resources, to work in ways that are multimodal, mutable and socially networked. Here's a link:
   
   http://doverdlc.blogspot.sg/2013/10/a-framework-for-transformational.html

9 Elements of Digital Citizenship Infographic

Digital access, commerce, communication, literacy and etiquette… What do these words have in common? Well, for starters, they are all components of digital citizenship. In fact, these concepts—and many more—are part of an online code of ethics students need to know about in order to develop and maintain a positive digital footprint and online presence.

As with any other type of education, we—as educators—can’t make assumptions that students have the necessary knowledge to make good decisions when surfing the web. And even if they do—they’re kids, so yeah, they constantly need to be reminded of what’s cool and what’s not.

With the wide variety of resources available for teachers, there’s no reason we shouldn’t be promoting the importance of behaving safely and responsibly in the digital world. Speaking of resources, check out the nifty infographic shown below, one that can be used to address various aspects of digital citizenship.



Props to Sylvia Duckworth for creating and sharing this very useful visual. Click here to view a full screen version of this sketch note.

Classroom Connection:

Use the infographic to teach students about how to be safe and respectful when utilizing digital networks and social media sites so they can create a positive online identity—one they can be proud of now and

in the future.

For more info about digital citizenship, check out the Teacher’s Guide to Digital Citizenship, a recently published article on Edudemic written by ByKristen Hicks.

Week 40: Help with YouTube

Magic Actions for YouTube 
Type: Productivity
Summary: This extension adds a tool bar under the YouTube video that allows you to control settings. It does Auto HD, ad block, cinema mode (which pulls the video up and takes away the distractions), screenshot, and more. With a 4.8 star rating from over 66,000 people, how could you not check this extension out.