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.
In addition to being able to use colours on folders to assist with organizing, there is another handy trick. You may have already discovered this, but if you haven’t tested this out yet, it’s how I replaced my desktop when I became a Google Educator. You can right click on anything in your Google Drive (folder or individual document) and you will see that one of the options in the fly-out menu is “Add to Starred”.
Anything that you add a star to will appear on the left side of your drive when you click the link that says “starred”. As a teacher, I always starred the unit I was currently teaching so it would be quickly available, then I would unstar it at the end of the unit and apply the star to the next topic. If you look at the following image, this is what my “Starred” drive presently looks like:
When I was teaching I always kept other frequently used documents in there (the Google doc with the ongoing staff meeting minutes, the list of classroom phone numbers, the detention room supervision schedule). Essentially it was the functional equivalent of my windows desktop.
And one last thing – don’t forget it you swipe upward from the lower portion of your touch screen chromebook you have shortcuts to a myriad of your Google resources – there are shortcuts to things like Drive, Kami, Read and Write and many other extensions, including extensions you’ve added yourself.
You will be glad to be reminded that this is an easy task.
If my description above isn’t clear, here’s a video – fast forward to the 5-minute mark for a demonstration of the above steps.
Recommendation 1 – Create a file called “uploaded” on the desktop of your windows computer and once you’ve uploaded a folder/file place it in that folder called “uploaded” so that you don’t get confused if you have a ton of files.
Recommendation 2 – Pick up a flash drive or hard drive (Western Digital makes a good drive that is about the size of a deck of cards) and put all your Windows teaching resources (Word, publisher, SMART notebook files) onto this drive. Store it in a safe place.
My reasons for suggesting this are twofold. Firstly, we can’t know if somewhere down the road someone may write an extension for Chrome that will allow Chrome to read a Smart Notebook file.
Secondly, that content is yours, and while your windows computer will be returned this spring, maintaining the original files is not likely something you’ll regret. Finally, all schools will have a Windows computer in the office for teachers to use. So, should you require the ability to access one of those files, you will be able to do so.returned this spring, maintaining the original files is not likely something you’ll regret. Finally, all schools will have a Windows computer in the office for teachers to use. So, should you require the ability to access one of those files, you will be able to do so.
Make an answer key, assign points & add automatic feedback
You can make an answer key on certain question types:
Note: You can assign points and add feedback on all question types.
You can choose if people can see missed questions, correct answers, and point values.
You can see automatic summaries for all quiz responses, including:
If you collect email addresses, you can assign points and leave feedback on individual responses. After you grade each response, save your changes.
You can import grades all at once from Forms directly into Classroom’s Student Work page if you attach a quiz to an assignment.
If you import grades, all grades are imported. You can’t select some grades to import. Extended instructions can be found in Google’s Teacher Centre.