Word Hippo is a cute thesaurus/dictionary/word rhyming for younger learners. It asks the question “What’s another word for” at the top of the screen and children can type their sought-after word into the search space. The search at the top of the screen changes based on the tab. When on the Antonyms tab, it will ask “What is an antonym for ___?”
This site could also be useful with older students working on rhyming and poetry in Language Arts class.
CoolMath – an old, familiar math website has recently launnched a set of virtual manipulatives including a nice interface for base-ten blocks. Becuase they are just rolling this content out now, the number of manipulatives is limited to the base ten blocks, a numberline, patterrn blocks and ten frames. However, CoolMath has been a resource for teachers for many years now, and we can likely expect the virtual manipulative resources to continue to grow!
Inking – writing on top of an image, otherwise known as annotating is possible using a Chromebook. Our amazing Lan-Tech, Bailey has put together this “How-to” slideshow to assist teachers who want to use it, or who have used it in the past but now can’t find it.
This is a pretty handy skill to have for teaching in GSuite.
These may not be the official terms for the software, but I’m going to choose to use these terms to try to help with the distinction between “cloud” software and installed software. To ensure our definitions are aligned, when I refer to static software I am speaking of software that you purchase and install to your hard drive (back in the day, on a disc or CD). By dynamic software I am speaking of applications we use that are updated automatically without incurring additional costs.
The technological revolution has occurred at an alarming rate. As a society, we’ve not had the internet in our homes for even 25 years yet. And if you recall that first internet we all had (it used your telephone cord – back when telephones plugged into the wall) and it made “that noise” when it connected you to the internet.
Once you were connected, you had to wait… for practically everything to download. Remember how images looked as they gradually loaded onto your screen? The internet, as it were, could barely handle one-way traffic – it sent data to you. Few websites offered any interactivity whatsoever. The Internet was still a baby.
Then along came cable internet! We could bring in the guys from Shaw to hook this modem thing into our cable jack and it would allow data to travel through those wires. And it was WAY faster. It was also the era of
Napster where people were beginning to use the web interactively. To share music illegally. (You’ve gotta love humans). Regardless of the ethics of sharing music, the capacity of the internet to handle traffic was improving! It’s around this time that Web 2.0 began to be a thing. And all “web 2.0” means is the internet with two way traffic. News stories that anyone and everyone can count on. YouTube videos that provoke discussions. Social Media. The Internet became a place where we could participate. We could collaborate. It ushered in a new era of computer usage. (For those who are curious, web 3.0 is where the internet will begin to move into 3D cyberworld.)
GSuite is a prime example of the evolution of web 2.0 – the dynamic web – making its way into productivity software. With GSuite we are never “three versions behind” in our software. It updates automatically as Google rolls out updates. Google Classroom is the same – when I began using Google classroom in 2014 when they first introduced it, there were some things that needed attention. It was obvious that the application was created by software engineers and coders, not by teachers. But the question mark in the bottom left of the screen allowed teachers to give feedback. The first feedback I ever offered was this:
I need my students to be sorted (or able to sort) alphabetically by last name.
That’s classroom 101 to a teacher. Not so obvious to a software developer. We don’t understand their job, they don’t understand ours. But with feedback, improvements come. Around the end of the first semester I came to work one day, and ALL MY CLASSES WERE IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER!
I didn’t have to install/update/patch anything to have this take place. When Google had the code ready to make this happen, it happened.
This process of updating software in real-time is the reality of web 2.0. Think of your smartphone – almost daily you likely have at least one app that updates itself (or depending on your settings, asks you to update it).
So, as we move to Google as our backbone, we now have software that is dynamic. It updates. It improves. Without requiring money, time or skills from us. It’s pretty awesome, to be candid.
I know in my classroom last year, kids were getting pretty sick of Kahoot. They loved the engagement, but it was the go-to app that EVERY teacher used. It wasn’t novel any more. It was common. I’d love some feedback on this newcomer to the domain of “Student response systems”. It was designed by a high school student, it’s free, and it has a gamified element where their accumulated points from in-class engagement allows them to make “in-game purchases” with the points – so they have more at stake than just having their names appear on the podium at the end of the quiz. In theory, it should reduce kids answering with silly responses because of the secondary game that their overall points afford them.
Many thanks to Steve at CP Blakely for his professional review after trying it out in his classroom: “Overall, loved the experience and engagement levels for students, just wish there was a bit more on the teacher’s end of things.”
PROS:
– Students review materials at their own pace (as opposed to a whole-class game of Kahoot) – You don’t have to wait for the class to go to the next question
– You can “do something” with your points (i.e., the shopping experience), which in turn motivates students even further to answer questions correctly
– Highly engaging
CONS:
– If you don’t have an even number of students, the teams will not have the same amount of people, giving larger teams the advantage when collecting cash.
– Some students reported some lagging/auto-tapping answers.
– As a teacher, the free version of GimKit does not allow me to edit “Kits” (or games) I’ve already created. I didn’t know this before I started one, and when I went back to edit it later, I realized I couldn’t. I could have made a new one, but we’ve only got 5 games with the free version as well.
– The data in the reports is not as manipulable or user friendly as Kahoot’s is (if we’re just comparing these two platforms), which is the sweet-sauce for me in using these sorts of games.
One of the most common challenges new users to Chrome face is finding a replacement for a desktop publishing program. While there are many such programs on the market, one of the more familiar ones is Publisher.
The cool thing about the replacement – it’s WAY better than Publisher. The designs are more modern, the fonts are cooler and the layouts are not from 1995. Take a look at Lucidpress. The website itself boasts a nice layout, simple interface, and direct connection to both Google Classroom and Google Drive.
Further, there is a Lucidpress extension for Chrome, putting the power of Lucid right at your fingertips!