Mix Up Your PowerPoints with a Free Tool

Do you create PowerPoints to deliver your classroom lessons? If so, did you know you can make them even more interactive with Office Mix?

About Office Mix

Office Mix is a free add-in for PowerPoint. It is an easy way to take your PowerPoint presentations or lessons and bring them to life as interactive, online lessons. From recording audio or video of yourself giving a lecture to directly writing in the presentation as you would at your whiteboard to quizzing and sharing, it helps you create interactivity simply.

Getting Started

To install Office Mix:

1. Go to https://mix.office.com/.
2. Click on the red Get Office Mix tab located in the upper right hand corner.
3. Log in in with your Microsoft or your Office 365 account. If you do not have an account, you can easily create a free account.
4. Install Office Mix.

Please note, before you install Office Mix, make sure you are running a recent version of Office 2013, 2016 or O365.

After you install Office Mix, explore its new tab:

1. Open PowerPoint.
2. Explore the tools on the new Mix tab.

 

Things You Can Do Now You Couldn't Do Before

As you explore Office Mix, you’ll notice some of the things that you can now do:

• Insert web pages, videos, polls, and other interactive content into your presentation.
• Record your voice and draw on your slides while you present.
• Record your screen while explaining how to do something.
• Share your Mix online; it plays back on any device.
• Track how people use your Mix.

In addition, Office Mix is a great way to flip your classroom. Check out this video by Microsoft in Education on how you can create an interactive lesson that students can review at home. This will allow you to reserve limited class time for group discussions or for focusing on the more difficult material.

A Challenge

If you have never used Office Mix before, I challenge you to give it a try. If you want to see some examples first, there are quite a few on the Gallery.

Drawing to Learn on an iPad

In a recent workshop on integrating iPads into the classroom, I talked about the power of using drawings and illustrations to help students master both simple and complex concepts. When I think back to my time in school, I never took an art class, which is where most drawing activities would occur. However, today, drawing can be incorporated into any subject area. 

The Benefits of Incorporating Drawing into Your Classroom

There are so many benefits of incorporating drawing or sketching in your classroom. For example, it helps:

• Develop students’ visual literacy skills
• Develop students’ observation skills
• Encourage creativity
• Reveal student understandings and misconceptions
• Make connections between observations and ideas

iPad Drawing Activities

During the workshop, we used the free Doodle Buddy app in order to participate in some of the drawing activities. Any iPad drawing app can be used; however, the Doodle Buddy app is a favorite among the TCEA Professional Development department. (Peggy Reimers explains her love for Doodle Buddy in the Get Your Picasso On blog entry.)

One activity we did centered around drawing conclusions. The participants in the workshop were to gather all available information as I read to them, reflect on past experience or knowledge to see if there was a connection with the present information, make inferences, and use the sum of what they knew to make a judgment about the situation. They then drew their conclusions using the Doodle Buddy app.

I created “App-Tasktic” cards for each of our activities, which contained the teacher lesson, as well as the student activity. You can view the sample cards of the drawing conclusions activity here. I think these will spark other activity ideas for you.

iPad Drawing Apps

As I mentioned earlier, Doodle Buddy isn’t the only app you can use. There are several iOS apps that can be used to incorporate sketching or drawing in the classroom. Below are a few:

• Draw Free
• You Doodle – Draw on Photos
• Hello Crayons
• Draw for iPad
• Paper 53
• Bamboo Paper
• Sketch Book Express
• Kids Doodle
• Draw Your Stories
• Draw in 3D

What are some lesson ideas for your classroom that incorporate drawing apps? Please share in the comments below.

3-2-1 Action! Screencasting Tools

Screencasting is an easy way of making recordings in your classroom. Whether your students create screencasts for project-based learning or you create them for flipped learning, you'll love these ideas and tools for enhancing your teaching.

Ways Teachers Can Use Screencasting

There are many ways teachers can utilize screencasting in the classroom. Check out a few below:

• Flip your classroom - Create content videos for your students
• Demonstrate how to complete homework
• Create training videos for staff or students
• Explain to your sub what the students are to do for the day
• Introduce material if you are out; your sub can show it
• Make screencasts of your student’s presentations in order to showcase them
• Create screencasts for parents about a big upcoming student project

Ways Students Can Use Screencasting

Likewise, there are many ways students can utilize screencasting in the classroom. For example:

• Show understanding of taught material
• Teach others how to do something
• Show off work
• Illustrate concepts or solve problems
• Create voice-over images or screencasts that tell a story

 Ways Administrators Can Use Screencasting

Screencasting isn’t just for teachers and students. Administrators can utilize it too. This would be a great way to model technology use as well as show support of technology. Some ideas include:

• Share information with parents
• Flip faculty meetings
• Explain a concept to your staff
• Give school updates

 Screencasting Tools

There are many good screencasting tools available today. Below are just a few of my favorites:

• Jing - Jing is free, but you must download the software to your computer. It can record up to five minutes at a time. You have the option to either upload the finished screencast to screencast.com or download your video to your computer.  Jing captures still images and video.
• Screencast-O-Matic - This tool is free and you can either download the software or record directly from their website. You can record up to 15 minutes at a time and it allows a webcam picture in the recording. The videos are saved in either MP4, FLV, or AVI format or can be directly uploaded to YouTube.
• Snagit Chrome Extension - While the desktop version of the Snagit program is not free (unless you are a Google Certified Trainer), the Chrome extension is. The extension allows you to capture great-looking screencasts with just a few clicks.
• Screencastify Chrome Extension - Screencastify is a simple video screen capture extension for Chrome. Just press record and the content of your tab, webcam, or desktop is recorded.

Just Try It

Why not give screencasting a try? Your screencasts don’t have to be very long or perfect. It is actually recommended that you keep them as short as possible and only stick to one subject per screencast. So create one today!

Express Yourself with Office Sway

At the upcoming Tots and Technology conference, I will be presenting on Office Sway. Office Sway is a presentation program that allows users to combine text and media to create captivating presentations and was released by Microsoft in August 2015.

The purpose of Sway is to convey concepts quickly, easily, and clearly. It is primarily used for presenting ideas onscreen, such as tutorials, topic introductions, and interactive reports. Sways are stored on Microsoft's servers and are tied to the user's Microsoft account.

A Sway is composed of multiple cards that are combined into a storyline. Cards are containers that hold text, images, and videos. You can combine cards into groups. A collection of cards makes up the storyline.

Accessing Office Sway

To access Office Sway:

1. Go to Sway.com.
2. Login in with your Microsoft or Office 365 account. If you do not have an account, you can easily create a free account.

There is also an app for Office Sway for iPhones and iPads. The app can be found here.

When to Use Office Sway

There are many instances in which you might want to use Sway. Below are just a few:

• When creating media-rich content - After all, a picture is worth a thousand words.
• When you want your reader to interact with content - Sway has the ability to include live content, such as tweets and embedded sites from numerous sources that the user can interact with, including Google maps and numerous other sites. See a list here.
• When you want to focus on content rather than formatting - You can choose from numerous canned designs, fonts, and navigation patterns or you can have Sway remix layouts for you.
• When a document is not required - Sways can be shared, but not exported.
• When you want to create tutorials, newsletters, or interactive reports

Office Sway in the Classroom and Beyond

There are many ways in which you can use Office Sway in the classroom, as well as for personal productivity. Take a look at a few examples below:

• Reimagine class lessons
• Recap class projects
• Provide supplemental material for parents
• Provide new accessible storytelling tools to students
• School projects
• Class reports
• Personal portfolios

Give It a Try

If you have never used Office Sway before, I challenge you to give it a try. Many tutorials exist, from how to create a newsletter and a digital story to how to create tutorials and presentations.

The Flipped Side of Professional Development

I am very honored to be presenting at the upcoming ISTE conference in June. I will be presenting on ways in which you can flip your professional development. As we all know, there are many challenges to traditional professional development, such as large group instruction with a one-size-fits-all type of delivery. This is why many school districts are turning to the flipped model for their professional development.

Just like the flipped classroom model, flipped professional development involves teachers reviewing resources or watching videos ahead of the designated meeting time. This would then allow the PD time together to be spent in more meaningful ways. Meeting time could turn into a discussion about a topic or planning time with colleagues.

Benefits of Flipping PD

There are many benefits of flipping professional development, for both teachers as well as staff development facilitators. Below are a few:

• Teachers can learn at their own pace.
• Teachers have the opportunity to review the material over and over again, if they need or want to.
• Teachers are engaged and can take ownership of their own learning.
• Facilitators can spend more time supporting teachers with practice.
• Facilitators can be involved with teacher learning rather than lecture.

Some things I will be sharing in my presentation include:

• Steps for getting started with flipping your professional development
• Examples of how schools are flipping professional development
• Digital tools that can help you move your content online.

The ISTE conference will be held in Denver, Colorado on June 26-29, 2016. I hope to see you there!

Meet Tod Baker, IT/Technology Director Certified

At a recent Apple event, I ran into Tod Baker, a former participant in the TCEA Technology/IT Director Certification Program. While chatting, Tod mentioned how grateful he was for TCEA’s certification program and how it really helped advance his career. I had the opportunity to interview Tod, and I am excited to share it with you today.

Please tell us about yourself.
I currently work as a Technology Coordinator at The Magellan International School in Austin, Texas. The Magellan International School is an independent, not-for-profit, IB World School with 450+ students from preschool to eighth grade. I work closely with our Information and Digital Literacy department and Technology Committee to coordinate the instructional technology and the technology infrastructure that is needed for teaching and learning and school operations. I also enjoy teaching our MYP Design course.

I completed the Technology/IT Director Certification Program last April, and have since landed a job as a Technology Director in Bangkok, Thailand. I will be moving this summer and am very excited to start this new adventure.

Why did you choose to participate in the certification program? What were your goals?
I joined the certification program to boost my resume, fill some gaps in my education, and learn more about how Texas educators get things done and what concerns them.

What was your favorite part of the program? Why?
I was allowed to choose the sessions and workshops that fit my needs. My choices, as you can imagine, related closely to my current needs at work. In addition, the experiences and resources in many of those sessions turned out to be valuable right away.

As part of the certification program, you had to complete an online portfolio and final project. Briefly describe what your final project was and your thoughts about completing the online portfolio.
For my final project, I formed a professional learning community at my school and we delved into the ISTE Essential Conditions to understand how prepared we were to leverage our technologies for teaching, learning, and leading. We mapped out how well we met 13 of the 14 critical elements and then we highlighted our next steps. The report created many useful talking points and helped give direction to my school’s strategic planning.

The online portfolio pulled my learning experiences together and put them in one place for me to reference later. My portfolio continues to be useful. When putting it together, it forced me to find the significance of my learning experiences. Without the portfolio, I suspect I would have learned less. My portfolio can be found here.

Overall, how did the certification program impact you, your school, and ultimately, your students?
The certification program has helped me develop a more comprehensive perspective of technology in schools that stretches from hands-on usage to overall program development. The course work helped us at the school open conversations about technology planning, teaching, essential conditions, and more. I think that it is very valuable for anyone interested in not only advancing their career in the field of educational technology, but also for anyone who wants to broaden their skills.

Many thanks to Tod for taking the time to share about the TCEA Technology/IT Director Program. Shanghai will be lucky to have him. You can always find Tod on twitter at @todbaker.

If you would like to learn more about the Technology/IT Director Certification Program and the other certification programs we have available, be sure to check out our Certification offerings.

This blog post was originally published at TCEA TechNotes Blog, http://www.tcea.org/blog/.

Check Yes or No - Add Polls to Google Classroom

When I taught High School Spanish, I used to use exit tickets all the time. An exit ticket can be a great way to setup the next day’s learning. Before students left my class, they would answer a quick poll about the day’s lesson.

In the past, these exit tickets could be cumbersome and difficult to check, even when you took advantage of technologies like Google Forms. Google Classrooms makes that process of multiple choice form creation a lot easier and, if you haven’t heard the news, you can now create polls in Google Classroom. Teachers can choose to create a multiple choice or short answer poll to distribute to the classroom. They will be notified and will be able to quickly see the answers to the poll.

For example, consider this example from Google’s blog, illustrating the new feature:

Cindy Nordstrom, a teacher at Oak Ridge Elementary School in Minnesota, uses polling to make sure students understand the main points of a lesson. She explains, “We were studying poetry and talking about novels in verse. Since this was the first time that most students had encountered the format, I wanted to see if they knew what novels in verse were. I created this poll as an exit slip for the class. I could click on students’ answers and see their names associated with their response. This helped me get an at-a-glance view of who understood the concept and who didn't.” Source: Google for Education

Getting an at-a-glance view is powerful for teachers, especially secondary teachers working with 80+ students, because it provides quick, easy measure of student learning.

The Remarkable Research Tool

Do your students have an upcoming research project?  As we all know, it is very important to teach students how to effectively cite sources, conduct proper searches, evaluate websites, and more, all while focusing on their research. Sometime this can be a challenge but Google has some wonderful tools to help students with all of this.

As students work on research, consider taking advantage of the Research tool. Below are some highlights of the tool.

Features of the Research Tool
The Research tool is a very powerful feature in Google Drive. It allows students to conduct research simultaneously as they are writing. The Research tool is available in Google Docs, Google Slides, and Google Drawing, and it allows students to do several things:

• Easily Search and Preview Sites: Students can easily search Google services by applying filters, such as Google Scholar, Google Images, Dictionary, and Quotes. In addition, students can preview a website by using the “Preview” feature. This will allow students the opportunity to get a glimpse of the website in order to determine if they actually want to visit it.

• Cite Sources: Students can select which format they would like to cite their sources. Available formats include MLA, APA, or Chicago. This feature is very important because we don’t want our students for forget to cite their sources.
  

• Insert Images:  Students can search for images to add to their research by selecting the “Image” filter. Once students see an image they would like to use in their research, they can drag the image from the research pane directly into their document and the image will automatically be cited. Students can even limit their Image search to “free to use, share, or modify” by filtering the image usage rights. This will help with students violating copyright and is key if the research is going to be published online.

• Insert Links: Students can easily add links to their research by clicking “Insert Link” when they find a website they would like to include in their paper. In addition, students can click “Cite” to create a footnote citation for that link.

• Research Google Scholar: Students can use Google Scholar for research by filtering their search for “Scholar.” Google Scholar provides a simple way for students to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, they can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps students find relevant work across the world of scholarly research. If you aren’t familiar with Google Scholar, here is a good introductory video about it. 

 

• Insert Quotes: Students can search and include relevant quotes in their research. Just like images and links, the quotes can be cited.

All of these features work while sharing so, if you have a group of students working on a research project, you can see who added what and when.

Accessing the Research Tool
To access the Research tool, click on “Tools” –> “Research.” The Research pane will pop up on the right hand side so you can begin searching.


Checking for Plagiarism with the Research Tool
In addition to all the above features, the Research tool can be used to check for plagiarism. All you have to do is copy and paste a few sentences from the research directly into the search box of the research pane and the search will take you to any site from which the text was plagiarized. Let your students know you will be checking for plagiarism and have them try this feature before turning in their research project. This will deter students from plagiarizing in the first place.

The Research tool can save students a lot of time when writing their research. Allowing students to focus on their actual research will only improve the quality of their research projects.

Chrome Apps You Can't Live Without

If you are a fan of the Chrome browser and use it every day like I do, then you’ll definitely want to check out some of the Chrome apps listed below. They will help you be more productive in your day-to-day activities and can also be used in the classroom with your students.

Chrome Apps for Recording Audio

·         Voice Recorder – Voice Recorder is a free and simple app which records sound from your microphone. After recording you can trim the sound and save it to your computer.

·         MicNote - Mic Note is a great tool that allows you to both record audio and take notes in the same time. It is perfect for brainstorming ideas, taking quick notes, and planning meetings.

Chrome Apps for Notetaking

·         Google Keep – Google Keep is one of my favorite notetaking apps. It that allows me to quickly capture what is on my mind. The app also allows you to speak a voice memo on the go and have it automatically transcribed.

·         Scribble - With Scribble, you can take notes quickly and attach reminders to them. Notes are auto-saved and can be synced across multiple computers.

Chrome Apps for Screen Capture

·         Awesome Screenshot App – The Awesome Screenshot App allows you to capture visible parts of the screen or drag and drop images in the app in order to annotate them.

·         Clipboard Image – The Clipboard Image app allows you to save clipboard images or screen captures directly to Google Drive.

Chrome Apps for Generating QR Codes

·         QRCode Monkey – QRCode Monkey allows you create all kinds of QR Codes and personalize them with logo-images and color-options.

·         The QRCode Generator – The QRCode Generator app provides a dead simple way to generate QR-Codes from URLs, text messages, phone numbers, and more.

Chrome Apps for Drawing and Sketching

·         Google Drawing – Google Drawing is another one of my favorite apps. It allows you to create shapes, diagrams, or charts that you can easily insert into your documents or lessons.

·         Sketch Toy - This app lets you draw sketches right in your browser and share or download it. You can also rotate the canvas in 3D by using the keyboard left/right arrows.

These are just a few apps. What would you recommend?

Help Your Students Become Digital Literate

Do your students have the ability to find, evaluate, utilize, share, and create content using various technologies? Digital literacy is an important topic because technology is changing faster than society is. The same advances that make our work easier—those that make it possible for us to search online databases, text friends, and stream media—also present serious challenges, such as copyright violations and academic dishonesty.

As educators, don’t we all want to steer our instruction away from rote-memorization and, instead, promote higher-order thinking skills (analyzing, creating, etc.)? In addition, don’t we all want to have our students find their own learning resources and be able to analyze them in order to create a more personalized learning environment? And, aren’t our goals as educators geared towards ensuring our students have the tools and knowledge they need to be successful citizens after graduation? These are all reasons why it is important to promote digital literacy in your classroom.

Below are a few links to sites that contain activities and lesson plans designed to promote Digital Literacy in your classroom.

1.    The Go Digital – Digital Learning Day has compiled a set of digital tools, resources and lesson plans recommended by fellow educators from around the country. There’s no need to wait for Digital Learning Day, which is on February 17, 2016, to start using these resources.

2.    Google itself has a Digital Literacy and Citizenship Curriculum that has some excellent materials on topics like:  Evaluating Content Online, Managing your Digital Footprint, and Identifying Online Scams.

3.    Edutopia’s Digital Literacy and Citizenship Round Up has collection of articles, videos, and other resources on internet safety, cyberbullying, digital responsibility, and media and digital literacy.

4.    Toward the bottom of Classroom Aid’s Resources for Teaching Digital Literacy, you will find a variety of tips for helping your students search the web as well as resources for teaching and learning digital literacy.

5.    ReadWriteThink has a variety of lesson plans on digital literacy for grades K-12.  Each lesson plan contains an overview, standards covered, resources and preparation, instructional plan, and additional related resources.

6.    We can’t forget about Cybraryman’s list of awesome resources. His Digital Literacy website contains many activities, projects, and websites to use in your classroom.

What are some ways you are helping your students become digital literate?