Book Review - Learning First, Technology Second . The Educators Guide to Designing Authentic Lessons

As an Instructional Tech Director it is my job to bring current information to our staff and students.  Once such current book was "Learning First, Technology Second by Liz Kolb.  I was introduced to this book by the ISTE Ed Tech Coaches Network.   They were doing a slow Twitter chat with a question every day for a couple months as we read the book.  This was a great way to keep us engaged and collaborating about the book.

“Technology integration is more complex than simply using a technology tool; pedagogical and instructional strategies around the tool are essential for successful learning outcomes.”
Excerpt From: Liz Kolb. “Learning First, Technology Second.” iBooks.  

I am not a reviewer, but I feel that if something makes you really think then tell others about it.  This book was the first I have read in a while that did a great job of preaching to the choir in my case, but doing it in such a way that I can share the ideas with our teachers in an effective way.

The fundamental shift in teaching and learning will only take place if the pedagogy of our staff and the learning of students come first, and the technology tool comes second.  This book lays out a very good set of research-based ideas regarding the use of technology in the classroom and gets to the point pretty quickly as she gives practical examples for the classroom teacher.  I appreciated the chapters about the three frameworks for technology integration into the classroom and especially like the rubric with the Triple E framework that will be very practical with my staff as they create and share lessons.  We plan on using some of the lessons from the book and sharing the Triple E Framework with our staff.

The book is worth checking out if you are anyone who is interested in really impacting student learning with the use of technology.

You can purchase at ISTE, and while you are there, become a member and connect with like-minded future thinking educators.

Yellkey.com Quickly Share a URL #edtech #yellkey

Sometimes you're doing a training or teaching with kids and you have to share a link quickly to a lot of people. Or you have a link to share that's long and cumbersome or maybe has some weird characters in it that can easily be confused (I'm looking at you goo.gl URL shortener and Google Classroom).

That's where a service like yellkey.com comes in. Simply visit the site, enter your URL and yellkey.com spits out a URL with a common word at the end that's easy to share and remember.

The link lasts for five minutes to 24 hours, depending on what you choose, and then goes away.

I believe this service used to be called shoutkey.com because I was going to blog about it a few weeks back but couldn't access the URL. If you're in a pinch and need to get a URL out, yellkey.com just might do the trick.

Tall Tweets Turns your Google Slides into a Gif #edtech #gsuite #talltweets #googleslides

Tall Tweets is a neat site that has one purpose, to turn your Google Slide presentations into GIFs. Why would you want to do that? GIFs are an easy and lightweight way to share your presentations on websites and social media, like Twitter or Facebook. Since a GIF is a bunch of images strung together you can upload to most sites and it will play like a slideshow or a movie.

Tall Tweets is very easy to use. Go to the website, press the button to select your presentation from your Google Drive and Tall Tweets does the rest. You'll be presented with an intermediate screen that allows you to adjust the width, duration and sequence of your slides and that's it. If you choose nothing on that screen the slides will rotate every second. Download it to your computer then upload it wherever you want.

Here's an example from a random slideshow that was in my Google Drive and a tutorial:

Take Control of Google Forms - Control Accepting Responses #gafe #gsuite #googleforms

Today's blog post is about a great Google Forms add on called Control Accepting Responses that allows you to turn a form on/off based on a time frame or the number of responses to the form. For example, I had a book to give away the other day and so I created a form with the simple question, "Do I want the book?" with the only response being "Yes".

The first person to respond with "Yes" got the book and then the form didn't accept any responses after that. Another example might be if you have an event and you want only the first 15 people who sign up to be eligible to come or get information. You could set up the form to stop after those 15 people reply.

This add on is similar to others I've used in the past, like Choice Eliminator, but this one is simple and works. You could also use this to start accepting responses to a form at a certain date/time. Or potentially use it for a timed test, but the developer says it's not 100% precise with the timing.

Google Calendar Updates - Optional Invites #gsuite #googlecalendar #edtech

Google Calendar recently made some updates to the interface which I like. They're slowly transforming all of their products to a cleaner look that matches their mobile apps. One nice change that was recently unveiled is the option to make attendees to your events optional, which is a nice touch. That way people know your expectations ahead-of-time and it's a bit more graceful and puts less pressure on attendees.

When you create an event, click on More Options, then Add Guests. Choose a name and then click the little person next to their name to make their status Optional.

Forms, Sheets, Slides, and Certificates.. Oh My!

If you are a Googly geek like me then you are always trying to find new cool and efficient ways to use the tools you have at your fingertips. 

I have loved AutoCrat for years and now that you can use with Slides... it is a worthy blog post and YouTube video how-to for staff to use.  It is hard to put my smile into this post, I am grinning  😊.

So here goes.  AutoCrat combined with Google Forms and Google Slides gives you endless possibilities for auto-creating documents from a Google Form submission.

YouTube How-To - https://youtu.be/Ku8XFxE4Wzk (14min step by step)

Here are the steps in words:

• Create a Google Form with the information that will go onto your certificate, award, poster, etc.
• Create a "Slide" document to be your certificate, award, poster, etc.
• Create tags inside the slide document for the fields from the form by indicating them surrounded by <<FIELD NAME>>
• From the Google Sheet that the Form creates, get the add-on called AutoCrat, install and run
• Cruise through the AutoCrat wizard to connect your Sheet to your Slide document.  Make sure you set to Trigger on Form
• Get a short URL for your form to share with your staff so they can use from anywhere at anytime.
• Sit back and enjoy as the forms come in and the certificates get created instantly and shared with the staff.

A big thank you to CloudLab a part of New Visions Public Schools for their creation of AutoCrat

Use CheckMark by @EdTechTeam for Quick and Easy Feedback in Google Docs #edtech

CheckMark is a Chrome Extension that works with Google Docs to help teachers give quick feedback to students Google Docs. Nothing beats quality face-to-face feedback but sometimes in the rough draft phase of writing students need quick help with punctuation, grammar and spelling. That's where CheckMark comes in handy.

Simply click the extension in your Chrome toolbar to turn it green. Then double click on a word or phrase in a Google Docs and a contextual keyboard will appear when you hover over your selection. Clicking on one of the keys of this keyboard will automatically add a comment on the right side of the document with your selection.

Examples: capitalization, spelling, punctuation, sentence fragment, tense and many more.