Slides Carnival

Google Slides is a great tool for creating, sharing, and collaborating presentations. The presentation is stored in your Google Drive so it can be access anywhere, anytime. Google Slides does have a few templates for users to work from, but not many.

That is where sites like Slides Carnival come in. This site has many templates you can download to use with your Slides presentation.

Just download the slide deck, open the presentation in your google Slide account, go to the File menu and select make a Copy. You now have a copy to the document in your google drive and you will be able to edit, add, or delete slides as needed. The second slide in the template has a good explanation on how to use the template.

http://www.slidescarnival.com

Photos For Class

Photos for Class allows users to search and download properly attributed, Creative Commons photos for school. One of the issues with using photos from the web in a school project is copyright. Photos for Class searches Flickr for images licensed for a creative commons school use. According to their site they meet the needs for images by providing:

• Safe G Rated Images - All images are appropriate for school setting thanks to Flickr safe Search and our proprietary filters
• Automatic Citation - Downloaded images automatically cite the author and the image license terms 
• Creative Commons - All photos shown are to the best of our (and Flickr's) knowledge Creative Commons licensed for school use

http://photosforclass.com

With each picture download the citation is automatically added to the photo at the bottom in the black area as seen in the example below.

As with any picture search, the teacher should first search for terms the students would search for their project to determine the "Safe G Rated Images" the website boasts. But this site should help with the question, "Where did this photo come from?"

The Ultimate Pi Day

On March 14th, 2015, the Ultimate Pi day will be celebrated. Why the Ultimate? Because the date and time will line up to match the first 10 numbers of Pi. 3.141592653. So March 14, 2015 at 9:26 and 53 seconds.
This is on a Saturday and on our Spring Break holiday, but many teachers will hopefully celebrate on Friday.

Several resources for good activities to do that help celebrate Pi Day.

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/celebrate-pi-day-in-classroom-noelle-and-alex-filippenko

http://www.edutopia.org/blog/pi-day-lesson-plans-matthew-davis

Handout for an Activity to find 3.14 by measuring the Circumference and the diameter.
Where does Pi come from Lesson Plan

Pi Lesson handout - the handout for the students

From Mathy Cathy

http://www.thinglink.com/scene/628271788383535106 her Thinklink for her students.

Sir Cumference and the Dragon of Pi

Using Google Slides to Organize Research

One of the hardest things to get students to do is to cite their research. Where did that picture or article come from.

The following video from Richard Byrne, from Free Technology for Teachers, is a great example of using Google Slides and the research tool to help search for and cite their findings.





http://youtu.be/unU150lirO4

Force Google Users to Make a Copy of the File You Share

Often, people will share a Google file, like a document, spreadsheet, drawing..., and for one reason or another it may not be shared correctly and everyone actually edits the original document and basically makes a mess of it. What the person really intended was for the user to go to the File menu and make a copy of the document for their own editing.

Well with this tip you can force the users to make a copy of the document.
Get the Sharable link for the document you are trying to share. At the very end is probably the word "edit". Before you share the link, replace the word edit with the word copy. When the user opens the link they will be prompted to make a copy of the file to their Google Drive. The really nice feature of this is your sharing setting will still apply

For more Amazing shortcuts for sharing a Google file, please check out these tips from Shake Up Learning. 

How to Preview

http://www.shakeuplearning.com/blog/amazing-shortcut-for-sharing-google-docs

Turn into a Web Page
http://www.shakeuplearning.com/blog/google-tricks-and-tips-turn-your-google-doc-into-a-web-page 

Google Drawings and Graphic Organizers

As our district dives further into GAFE this year, one of the more overlooked applications is Google Drawings. Under the NEW button in your Google Drive, past Docs, Sheets, and Slides, is the ability for students and teachers to create their own drawing. Drawings gives the user a blank canvas to add to, similar like a desktop publishing application. Users can add text, shapes, lines,images, word art...
Users then can save their work as a PDF or an image file and then add those images into their own docs, blog posts, slides or spreadsheets.

One way teachers can use the Drawings app is to create graphic organizers to share with students through the share feature or through Google Classroom. Students can then fill it out online and share back or turn in through Classroom.

I came across this site that has posted several graphic organizers including Venn, KWL, Timeline, Word Web and more.
http://ditchthattextbook.com/2015/02/19/15-free-google-drawings-graphic-organizers-and-how-to-make-your-own/ 

Teachers and students can open the document that is there, click on the File menu, and select Make a Copy to move the document to their own Drive account. All of the drawings would then be editable so you can adjust it to your lesson.

I am also sharing a Google Drawings Cheat Sheet from Kasey Bell at Shakeup Learning. Take a look a the PDF she created.
https://www.scribd.com/doc/255567384/Google-Drawings-Cheat-Sheet

Google Drawings Cheat Sheet

Take a look at Google Drawings and see what you can create.

Google Listens

 

So it looks like those feedback forms and surveys actually do work. Google has changed the name of the "Incoming" folder back to the descriptive "Shared with Me". To me it did not really matter, just as long as I knew where my documents were, but it was a big deal to many. Enough so Google changed to a past wording.

Also on the Google news today, Google may be doing away with their Google+ product as it is now. Google+ is the Google answer to Facebook. It looks like they may be changing it in place of Google Photos and Streams. Not sure how that will affect Hangouts either. I have a G+ page that I rarely use except as a newsreader, but I am sure there are people out there that may not like this announcement. I still haven't gotten over their shutdown of Google Reader!

Share Events on The Cube

YouTube for Kids

YouTube for Kids is a new service from Google that is "Made for curious little minds." There is both and iOS version and an Android version of the app for phones and tablets.

At first glance it looks very simplistic. The app will display a selection of kid-friendly shows with is represented by a large tile that is easy for little hands to tap on.
There is also a search feature for students that can read and write, plus a microphone to search with the child's own voice. Of course this app is heavily filtered to keep inappropriate content out of sight.

There is also a parent's security feature to set a timer for viewing as well as turn off sound effects. The pass code is interesting as it gives you the code to enter. The numbers are written out. So I guess once you child can read they can set their own settings?!?

All of this seems to be a step in the right direction to help parents in this digital world show their child content and keep them from the inappropriate videos, comments, and advertisements.

Looks like Vine is doing the same type thing with their new app Vine for Kids. It is showing age appropriate six second videos with cute little characters and animations.