METC Google Extravaganza: Summer Fiesta

Over the past two days we attended the Google Extravaganza: Summer Fiesta through METC.  We learned a ton and wanted to share a few of our favorite takeaways.

What did Jess learn?

Geo Tools: As a newer elementary teacher I am getting use to teaching all subject areas.  @msedtechie did an amazing session on Geo Tools. I am excited to use Google Earth and Google Expeditions specifically in my classes. I am also going to try to do Google Tour Builder to implement in ELA class.

Be Funky: https://www.befunky.com/ - This website is a creation tool shared by Greg Lawrence.  When he was presenting I was thinking how I could have the kids make a collage of photos describing a character in a book, examples of pictures for history/social studies lessons, and pictures showing verbs, nouns, etc. when we are learning about grammar.

Classhook: www.classhook.com - This website you type in what you are teaching and it supplies you with short videos to use as hooks for lessons.  Genius!

Google keep: Yes, this has been around for a while.  Yes, tons of people use it. No, I never used it.  Yes, now I am. I am just going to leave it right there.

Doctopus & Goobric: I can’t wait to use these google sheets add-on to make digital rubrics to use with the students online work.  You can pull google assignments from classroom and have them all in one place to grade using the rubric you created.  You can also add comments, either written or spoken. These add-on’s will be so helpful and make a huge difference once school starts.

What did Steph learn?

Jess and I attended several sessions together, and a few apart. Beyond what she learned (several mentioned by her were also mentioned in my sessions), I was excited to learn new tools and gain a more solid understanding of other tools I already knew about.

A new way to setup digital breakouts!  I attended a session knowing it would be all about Google Sites and center around the use of Sites to create digital breakouts.  I created a few digital breakouts this past school year, but during this session I found a new way to create and manage the digital breakout. In the past, I created a digital breakout using a Google Site - I would put all of the pages together and place one Google Form (as the locks) on the first, or home, page of the Site. This meant that students would have to complete all of the locks (in any order) to complete the breakout.  If you’ve never created a Breakout utilizing Google Forms functions like response validation - look it up - game changer! During this session, however, we were tasked to complete a digital breakout. This one was different - it utilized several Google Forms, each with only one lock, on multiple Google Sites pages. We were taken to one homepage, once we completed the first lock the Google Forms directed us to a new URL (this URL was of a hidden page within the same Google Site).  This ensured that we worked in a specific order but I also noticed that it was easier for me to manage the clues and locks. I’m definitely going to be creating Breakouts like this next year!

Google Keep:  Although I have used Google Keep, I haven’t used it to its full potential!  My favorite trick in Google Keep is the “Grab Image Text” feature! Ever had a PDF that you wish you could have in a text file? Take a pic (or upload what you already have), load into Keep, go to the menu and choose “Grab Image Text”.  Magically, the image’s text will appear in your Keep note as text! This is why Google is the best!

YouTube in the Classroom:  So, I’ve been using YouTube in the classroom since… the beginning of YouTube. But, with my goal of moving closer toward personalized learning for students I was interested in learning new tools to utilize YouTube in a better way. A couple of my favs:

*TurboNote - this extension allows you (or your students) to add notes attached to any YouTube video.  Students can add this extension, open any YouTube video, click on the extension and a notepad will appear on the right hand side of their screen over YouTube.  As the video plays, they can type notes. It’s seamless - and anytime they open that same video URL again, the notes will be there for them! Cool, right!?

*Vynchronize - this site allows you to share a video with students - while controlling the video and includes a backchannel chat.  You select the video, create a room (similar to Backchannel Chat), share the room code with students and go! You can control the video (start, pause, etc) and it will control the video of anyone else in the ‘chat room’.  How cool could this be in class? First, students have no excuse - they can definitely see the video and students can be held accountable for watching the video and answering whatever prompt you ask.

Oh, did we mention we presented, too?  Here is our presentation:

bit.ly/BloggingMETC