Summer Learning - Happened so fast..

Now that the school year has ended and teachers are so excited to be on vacation, it is time to relax and rejuvenate, right? Right! But it is also a fantastic time to focus on your professional learning! I know many teachers who use summer as an opportunity to take classes, read professional books, and work collaboratively with their teammates. Here are a few other ideas for how you can take advantage of summer learning while also working on your tan!

1.) Develop a Professional Learning Network: Using social networking tools like Twitter, Google+, Feedly, and many others, you can connect with teachers around the globe who are doing amazing things. Read about what they are doing, participate in conversations with them, read articles recommended by colleagues, all from your mobile device on your back deck, poolside, or green lawn!  Check out Cybraryman’s list of Twitter Hashtags to follow.

2.)  View some amazing Google Hangouts On Air for free learning opportunities!  Here is a great resource to peruse through.  Connect to a Google + Community like Edudemic.

3.)  Attend a local Edcamp in your area.  Edcamps are usually held on weekends and are free of charge.  Edcamps let you choose the topics being covered and its a great place to network with other professionals.

4.)  Follow some amazing educational blogs.  This is the 2013 best edtech blogs honor roll, as well as some of our favorites:

http://technologytools4teaching.blogspot.com

http://digitaleyesblog.blogspot.com/

http://fluency21.com/blog/

http://comfortably20.blogspot.com/?m=1

http://edublogawards.com/2012awards/best-blog-on-educational-technology-2012/

5.)  Finally get that class website going for free at www.weebly.com!   This site gives you tons of great looking templates to work with. No HTML knowledge is required.  And best of all it is free for educators.

6.)  Find some great YouTube Channels to subscribe to. This is a great way to learn new skills on practically any topic.  Subscribing to a channel gives you instant notifications when a new video has been added.  Check out this #tt4t YouTube channel for a multitude of ed tech video tutorials.  Also click to see some amazing TED lessons for your students using the Flipped Classroom idea.

7.) Think of a place where you can read quietly, soak up the sun, and turn on that mobile device for some unique learning opportunities.

Return in the fall with some great new skills and feel invigorated by the fact that you cared enough to dig a little deeper with your knowledge even on your “time off”!  So if you choose to do any of the above suggestions this summer, congratulations!  You’re a leader, you inspire others with your knowledge, and your students will be better for it!  

Written by Jenny Krzystowczyk in Conjunction with Guest Blogger Dave Zukor

Google Plus Community Feature - Part 2

In a previous post found here:    I wrote about creating a Google Plus Community.

This post is about digging a little further into this Community feature within Google Plus.  Previously I wrote about how a Google Plus Community can be Public or Private.  If it is Public than of course anyone can join and if it is Private people would have to be invited by the owner.

Let's dig in to a couple of features that I am finding to be extremely helpful and I feel have tremendous power if utilized properly.
As an owner or moderator of the Community, under the Actions button pictured below you can do two key things that I think are important.

First, if you choose "Edit Community" you are able to add links, description, location, but most importantly in my opinion is the ability to add category to the discussion of the community as pictured below.  This can help narrow conversations going on in a community that may have many things to talk about.  For example, GAFE, iPads, Chromebooks, etc.  This will make for much easier searching for members of your community.

Furthermore, something else that I have found to be fairly fabulous is this:  personally I take lots of pictures of my kids.  So I am using my Private Catlett Family Community as a place we (my wife and I) can get to together and later on the kids once they are old enough.  Check this out though.  So I have an iPhone 4s and I now have the G+ app and I can add pictures from my phone straight into the Community very easily.  That is pretty sweet in itself, but let me go a little bit further.
Now my wife can access those photos from anywhere she is that has wifi and better yet she can download them to her machine for ordering at our local store (which she likes to do).

Below is a screenshot of my little man Charlie and a picture I uploaded from my phone to the Family Community.  I have clicked on this photo within the Community to view.

If we focus on the options button in the above picture and pictured below you can see there is a download option which is pretty awesome when sharing images with family, friends, or colleagues working on a project together.  So many times my colleagues and I need images taken by each other for a common project or newsletter that we are working on.  Now we can easily get to them.

Finally, another thing you may not have known that you can do within a Community is edit uploaded photos as pictured below.  This option is given in the view mode of the picture which is shown two images above in the upper left corner.  A new interface will open like the one pictured below.

Here is a closer look at the options given for editing photos below.  Lots of fun options right within my Google Community!

The further I dig in and use this product the more I like it.  One thing I love about Google is that I can do just about anything I need to do within one account.  Once again, I am able to add this to my growing list of things I can do within one FREE Google account.

Google Workflow for iPads in the Classroom

Google Apps for education allows for a whole new way to manage the classroom workflow and create a paperless environment.  This is especially powerful on the iPad where Google Drive is instrumental in creating an uncomplicated paperless system that eliminates the need for multiple apps to collect student work.  

Sharing material and collecting papers can all be done digitally by taking advantage of the shared folders feature in Google Apps for Education.  Shared folders creates a seamless workflow between student and teacher.  Not only can assignments be created, shared, and graded without a single exchange of paper, it can be done anywhere in the world that can access the web.  Have materials to share with students? With a click of the mouse and a simple drag into a shared class folder, the document is available to all students.

Let’s talk about the details.  Here is how to get started on the iPad.

Apps Needed: Google Drive

Initial Setup

Students:

1.  Students personalize the iPad with their gmail account and login with Google credential into the Drive app.
2.  Students drag the Mail and Drive apps to the doc for easy access.
3.  Students create a folder in Drive.  Students share the folder with the teacher so the teacher can view and edit all material in the folder.  Students will submit work to the teacher via this shared folder.


Teacher:
1.  Set up gmail and Drive on the iPad.
2.  Create a folder for the class.  Drag all the folders students have share with you from Share With Me to My Drive in the folder created for the class.  Then drag all student folders into one folder called, for example, Period 1.
3.  Create a folder in My Drive to share material with students. Set the share settings to View Only.  As you, the teacher, share information, student can view the material but do not have rights to edit or delete items.  Their workflow is to copy/paste content to drive.

Classroom Workflow now looks like this!

 

Written by Ann Feldmann
@annfeldmann1

Google Plus Community Feature

Google Plus recently just came out with a new feature.  "Communities"

You can see it in the above picture along the left hand side.  As you can tell from this Screenshot I am already in some new Communities that I was sent an invite to from a "moderator" and this moderator sends out the invites and potentially then folks join the community.  

Once I join, then I have the ability under "Actions" to share the community in my Google + feed or  I could invite people also.  Depending on how the moderator set it up, will depend on those who get in.  The moderator may have to approve first.  See this picture below:

You can also look through many communities that might be of interest to you and join them, it looks like from this small screenshot there are all kinds of areas and all kinds of fun to explore out there:

If you want to start your own community you have to go to the Communities button on the left hand side of your home Google + Page and click on it, then you will see a RED BUTTON that says CREATE A COMMUNITY.   See picture below:

You will then be prompted to choose between public and private as pictured below.

 If you click on Public you will get some options, what do you want to call it and do people need permission to join?  See picture below:

If you go the Private route it will look a little different and prompt you about whether or not you want to hide it from searches or if people can find it and ask to join, see below:

The picture below is after I chose Private and started a Catlett Family Community.  I could name it, add a tagline, add a description, add a category, and then save:

Once I had that initial set-up done and I said "Done Editing" then it prompted me to invite people, see picture below:

So now the SKY IS THE LIMIT with these Google + Communities in my opinion, as you could tell from the screenshots above I am already involved in some great local Nebraska Communities and the Google Certified Teacher Community.  I can see how setting up a Private Family one could be very fun too!  

I can see school districts running wild with this now that Google + is open in K-12 Domains for Google Apps for Education (GAFE).

You could have a district wide community, a high school building Community, a middle school building Community, etc.  Tons of potential in my opinion and once again Google continues to make such a collaborative, amazing product even better!  

Perhaps I will see you soon in a Google + Community!

Resolving Conflicted Google Accounts

If you were a previous Google user before our district went to our new Google BPSNE domain you may have named your first account with the @bpsne.net ending.  If so, you now have a conflicted account and it will have to be resolved before you can move any data between the accounts.  See how to’s for this here.

Google lays out how to rename your old account with a temporary username to help fix the situation.  The documents are a bit lengthy and it will take you a few minutes of your time to get it completed.  When you log into your new bpsne account from Google and you see “an update to your account is required”, you know you have a conflicting account.  Google will prompt you to enter in the require information in order to create a temporary name for your old account.  It will seem very lengthy, but it will have to be done.  So maybe before you sit down to tackle your conflicting accounts make yourself a cup of tea or coffee and settle in to follow lots of directions.  We wish it could be easier #Google!  

By the way, if you have been using Blogger or Twitter or Facebook to post information you might want to go in and change your email address associated with these accounts so you continue to receive your notifcations.  Just look under profile in most applications to change your account settings.  Good Luck!  

Written by Jenny Krzystowczyk

Exporting Your Old Google Calendar to Your New Google Account

If you’ve been a Google user for a while, chances are that you have one or more Google Calendars you have been using and sharing.  You can export your calendars from your Google account and import it to your new Google Apps account.  You could also just share your most important calendars to your new email address, but this is the unofficial way of having access to all of your events.  You might run into some issues doing it this way because you aren’t changing ownership you are just making that calendar appear on your new calendar.  

Google provides great step by step ways of getting complete control of your old calendars in your new account.  It does require some downloading and as usual with Google there is more than one way to do this.  I like the export and import options for all calendars unless you have some calendars you really don’t use or like.  Click here for step by step instructions for moving your calendar events.  You will be downloading a file and uploading a file to your new account.  It is very quick and easy!  Please note that any shared calendars will not be exported if you are not the owner of the calendar.  As we progress through our Google Apps training we will show you how to have people share with you and share within groups of our domain.

Written by Jenny Krzystowczyk

Get Your New Drive On

As our district moves from Gaggle to Google for our mail provider we will have many questions to answer as a G-Apps School district.  Many of our staff members were already using Google as their mail provider and digging into Docs as part of their daily work flow.  One major question that has come up is "How do I get my old Google Docs to my new BPSNE Google Drive account?".  Drive by the way it Google’s new word for your Docs list.  It operates basically the same with a few more view options.  It looks like this :

Old Docs View	New Drive View
*	*

Luckily, there is a quick and easy solution for all those previous Google users!  It’s called Google Takeout!   In less than five minutes you can move all your docs quickly and easily to your new account!  Follow these steps below to get your Drive on!

1.  Go to Google Takeout
2.  Click on Creat Archive
3.  Watch your files load into a zip file:

4.  Click download when it is complete.
5.  Go to your new .bpsne.net google account
6.  Click on “Drive”
7.  Click on the red upload button next to create:

8.  Find the zip file in your download folder

9.    Click “open” and watch your files upload to your new drive!

10.  Once the file has been uploaded you will need to open it.  You will see a list of all your docs.  Hover to the far right and when the hand appears click "save to google docs".  You will have to do one at a time.  

10.  Now all of your old docs are in your new Drive!  

Note:  It took me two times to upload the zip file.  The first time I get an error message, but didn't panic.  When working with web-based applications sometimes you just have to try again!

Troubles or questions tweet us at @jennykbps, @techiefeldie, @catlett1

Written by Jenny Krzystowczyk