Google Offline Editing

Great news for all of you Google Docs users. Offline editing is back after a several year absence. Now, if you don't have an Internet conncection, no problem. Make your updates and they will be automatically be updated when you do connect. Here is some info from Google.

Here is also video. WARNING: No sound! :(



Please be aware that to edit offline you will need the latest Chrome browser or OS. Also, offline editing is currently only available for docs. Google is hoping to extend this capability to spreadsheets and presentations in the future.

But for now, Google docs users should rejoice about this update!

Thanks.

Dropcanvas for collaboration

I am all about collaboration and sharing of files when it comes to student projects or teachers working together. Normally, groups can share documents with Google Docs, Dropbox, or a Wiki. Dropcanvas helps groups share multiple files by creating a canvas that you can quickly create, add files to, and then share by email, social media or embedding it. It was very easy to sign up (you actually don't even need to register) and easy to use.



I like dropcanvas because you can share multiple files in one place quickly. Pretty cool. Give it a try with your next collaborative project.

Google Drive

Just as I start my search for alternatives to Google Docs, they come out with Google Drive, their cloud-based storage system that is, of course free, and starts at 5 GB of storage space. Here is you video:



This is Google's answer to the very popular products Dropbox and SkyDrive that are already out there. Now, I have not been able to use Google Drive, because it is not running yet, but I am sure it will work seamlessly with all of the the other Google products that it is partnered up with. They always do. It will be interesting to see how they do stacked up against Dropbox which I like very much. (My account is up to 50GB of storage for free by the way.) But, as everyone in the world goes wireless and cloud computing takes over, cloud storage with its anytime, anywhere access has been wildly successful. Why shouldn't Google get a piece of the pie. It just makes sense.

When I have had a chance to try Google Drive, I will be back with an update. Thanks for stopping by!

SlideRocket

I am on a quest! A quest to find Web 2.0 tools that are better than those offered in Google Docs. If you remember from my last post, my students (and myself) were fairly disappointed with quality and usefulness of the productivity tools offered in Google Docs portion of Apps for Education. So, here we to with SlideRocket. Cue the informational video!



When student's do presentations today, they are robust. They are connected to sound or video on the Web. I really enjoy Prezi and the ease that it incorporated the Web into my presentations, but had trouble with it when it came to my iPad. SlideRocket offers an iPad App, but I have yet to try it. Another feature that looks promising is the feature where your viewers can rate your presentation. I like that feature in the classroom because it will add some feedback to students as they present. You can even see which slide is viewed the longest or most. Fun! My freshmen class has been working on their Hero Project for a few weeks, and I have given them the choice of using SlideRocket or Prezi
So far, the results have been good. About a third of my students have used SlideRocket and have liked it. It has a slight learning curve, but my students caught on quickly. One of the requirements was to include a video in the presentation and SlideRocket made that very easy. It was great for publishing and sharing online also. For those wondering about SlideRocket in an educational setting, wonder no longer. SlideRocket EDU. I will definitely be exploring this collaboration with SlideRocket and Google Apps for Education. It looks promising.

Thanks for reading!

Alternatives to Google Apps for Education

I have been pushing my school districts for the past few years to adopt Google Apps for Education as an alternative (not a replacement) to Microsoft Office. It is also a great way to give students space to store and share documents online. The Gmail package, calendar, and Google Sites are also impressive. Finally, around the holidays, our Sparta Area Schools was set up to use Google Apps for Education. I was pumped. My freshman classes were studying careers, so I set up a project utilizing Google Apps with career exploration. Here is what I found. Google Apps is not very good and my students hated it. There was a huge uproar as students begged to use their Office products. Be careful for what you ask for I guess.




However, this raised a question in my mind. I had heard so much about Google Apps for Education and districts adopting it and using it all over the nation. But, was there something out there in the cloud that was better? That has been my quest lately. To find alternatives to Google Apps for Education. I don't know that I can find the total package the Google offers of Email, calendar, productivity tools, Website builder, Forms, etc. But, I feel that I can find alternatives to some of these tools that are easy to use and offer more robust features.

Check back in the coming weeks to see what I can find. Thanks!

My Paperless Classroom

Several years ago, I made a concerted effort to go paperless with my computer classes. I would like to share some of my success and failures. I have to admit, as time goes by and technology gets better, going paperless is getting much easier. In the beginning, I was either screen-checking assignments or having students email them to me. Now days, with Google Docs or the Share Point Site our school uses, things are a little smoother. Every student in each of my classes has an online drop box and Wiki. All projects and assignments are posted as PDFs or converted to graphics (for my DTP classes) and linked to student Wikis where I can quickly find them.

All of my assignments are linked to my three class Websites. Students can access them from school or home. Many of my lectures are captured on screencasts using Camtasia. Students can view most of them from home also. (Some are still stuck on the school's shared network). Most of the documents I am working on are in a Dropbox account where I can access them from home, school, Web, iPad, or iPhone. I have a classroom blog with Blogger to keep parents updated. My classroom is 99.9% in the cloud.
Now, don't get me wrong. I don't hate paper. We did typed letters to former teachers that had made an impact on our lives a few months ago and we did print them. Some of the students didn't realize we have a laser printer in the back of the room because they had never used it up until that assignment. :)
What has going paperless done for me? First, I am more organized. My assignments are linked and available. No copies. I also don't carry papers back and forth to school and home. Assignments are in the cloud. I carried a briefcase for a few years, mainly out of habit or so I would have a spot to keep my school keys, but stopped earlier this year. My wife doesn't like it. She is a teacher also and does carry a lot of papers back and forth. But, it is working out well for me and my students. Once they are in the practice of uploading documents to their dropbox and linking to the Wiki, they do it without having to be told. It is great.

I enjoy being paperless!
If you are thinking about trying it, checkout such tools mentioned above as Google Docs, Google Sites, Weebly, Dropbox, Share Point, and others. Search my blog. I have talked about many of these tools as well. Start small and work into it. You will enjoy going paperless also.

Summer Tech Challenge

Yes, I know it is summer and I like to forget about school in the summer. But, summer is a great time to learn something new. So, here is my challenge. Learn some new type of new technology this summer. Here are some ideas: Google Docs, Google Sites, Weebly, Prezi, Wordle, Blogger, KeepVid, etc.

I am taking a vb.net class online (it is very different than Visual Basic 6.0) and reading a new blog I found called Teach Paperless.

Find something that can help you in the classroom next year and give it a try while you have time this summer. Remember that YouTube is a great place to look for tutorials.

Thanks and have a great summer!

Web 2.0 and Social Studies

Definition of Web 2.0:  The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design,[1] and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators (prosumers) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mashups and folksonomies. Definition from Wikipedia.

Great information
Social Studies Central
Tech Learning 2.0 - Social Studies
Favorite Web 2.0 Apps of Social Studies Educators
Social Studies « Web 2.0
A Day in the Life of Web 2.0
Monday Models
Web 2.0 Dashboard
Googlios
Top 1000 Web 2.0 Sites
21 Things for Teachers
Jenison Public Schools
Cool Tools for Schools
The Ultimate Web 2.0 Sites Listing
Blogs, Wikis, and Google Docs Oh My!
How to Teach with Tech Tools
Common Craft (Videos for those of us who don’t know anything about specific Web 2.0 tools)
Paul and Todd’s Excellent Ed Tech Adventure (Become a follower) (Lot’s of Google info)



Great Places to Begin

Get a Gmail account: It is your ticket to everything Google and there is a lot of good stuff!

Sign up for Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Sites, and Blogger. (With your Gmail account)

Get a SharePoint site at Sparta. Student drop boxes, Web space, Wikis, and more! (Todd or Paul can help)

Find class materials on YouTube. There is probably something you could use there right now.

Google Forms

Want to survey people? Want to gather some data? Do an online test or quiz? Google forms comes to the rescue. Forms are a part of Google Docs. Watch this great video now!



Pretty slick huh? But that's not all. Creative teachers around the world have used Google Forms to create online quizzes and tests. Some of them will even correct themselves. Here is an online form I created for my freshmen to use as a reflection tool and check-out at the end of one of our projects. Guess how I learned how to do this? I watched a few YouTube videos. Here is one of them.



Finally, in Google Docs you can search for templates of forms that other people have already made, and you can save them and reuse them. How perfect is that?

Give it a try!

Google Calendar

Welcome back! We are continuing our trip through the land of all things Google. If you haven't been following along, we have visited Gmail, Google Docs, and sharing documents on the Web with Google Docs. Today, we are talking about one of my favorite Google tools, Google Calendar. Here is a quick video introduction:



Pretty easy. I use Google Calendar for a couple of things. I am in charge of the Web site information for the football program. I have separate calendars for the high school teams and the middle school teams. I can easily embed them in the Web sites (blogs or wikis too) so parents and players can stay updated on events. I also have a personal calendar that is synced up to my iTouch. The beautiful thing is that you only have to have one Google calendar account, but you can make several calendars with it. A family with several children can actually have a calendar for each child, but have all of their events show up on a master calendar to keep track of everything. Google will even let you color code each calendar. Nice!

Your calendars can be private, you can share them with specific people, or they can be made public. The option is yours.

If you don't believe me, here are seven great reasons to use Google Calendar. It is easy to get started and easy to use. If you stumble along the way, they have a great calendar help section.

Give it a try!

Sharing Your Google Docs

Welcome back to our tour of awesome Google applications. So far we have signed up for a Gmail Account and learned about Google Docs. Today we are talking about how to share the documents in your Google Docs account. There are two main ways that you can share documents with other users. Inviting people to share and collaborate is one way, and creating a link to a document is the other. Luckily for you I have videos of each.

First up is inviting people to view and possibly edit or collaborate on a document.



The second way is by creating a link to a document. A lot of educators that I work with like to use this option to link documents in their classroom blogs so parents or students can access them.



If you are a blogger and want to share documents with your readers or simply want to collaborate on a document with another person, try Google Docs.

Have a good one!

Google Docs

I know, you are wondering, "Google Docs, what are they, how can I use them, and how can they benefit me?" Well, check out this quick video to find out.


So, Google Docs lets you create documents, spreadsheets and presentations online. If that isn't cool enough by itself, you can also share or collaborate with those same documents. Which mean you can choose who can access your documents, share them instantly, and edit and present with others in real time. Good stuff!

Some other benefits of using Google Docs include the ability to edit and access your documents from anywhere, safely store your work, easily save and export copies, and organize your documents into folders. A fantastic feature, if you are a blogger, is that Google Docs lets you easily share documents by hyperlink with your readers. (More on this in my next post!)

Impressed? I was the first time I tried it out. The great thing about Google Docs is you can use it for free with your Gmail address and password or by creating a Google Account.

Because I love YouTube, here is a pretty good overview of Google Docs from a teacher in California.


For more information and specifics visit the Google Docs Web site. Now, go try out Google Docs and see how easy it is to use!

Google Tools for Teachers

Everyone has heard about Google, the world's most popular place to search the Web. But, Google offers a lot of tools that many educators will want to explore and use in their classrooms. Each week for the next several weeks, I will explore a new tool for you to try out. Some of the items I will be test-driving for you are:

• Gmail
• Google Docs
• Google Calendars
• Google Sites
• Picasa
• Google Groups
• and much more

Did I mention that Google also owns YouTube and Blogger? We will have a lot to explore in the upcoming weeks. If you would like to join in and try out some of the cool features that these Google applications have to offer then get a Gmail account and follow along. Many of the tools I will be discussing require a Gmail account log in. Super easy directions to sign up for your account are below. Plus, it is always a good idea to have a back-up E-mail account to use.

If you don't have a Gmail account, get one! Why you ask? Here are 10 good reasons. Sounds good, huh? Click the "Create an Account" button, fill in some basic information. You will be in your very own Gmail account in minutes.

Good luck and I will talk to you soon!