Google Tips and Tricks - Part 1

Last week I was lucky enough to attend the GAFE (Google Apps for Education) New England Summit in Burlington.  Besides being able to visit the Cambridge Google office (see images below) and try on a pair of Google Glasses,  I was also able to learn a lot of in-depth information about the various google products.






Here were some interesting tidbits from my 4-day google-a-thon:

• Google Docs - When adding a comment to a paper, if you start your comment with +, this will send an email to the person with your comment. For example "+studentname@mail.medfield.k12.ma.us you need more clarity" will send that student a message with your comment.  Clicking on the + in your comment will bring up your contacts, so you can easily select a student name without typing it in.

• Google Drive - If you have a Word document in google drive and you want to convert it to a Google doc, you do NOT need to download and then re-upload and convert the doc.  Instead just 'open with Google Docs' (see below)

• Inserting Images -  Now when you go to insert an image and you click on search you have access to insert Stock Images and from Life Magazine.  All these images are labeled for commercial reuse.

• For fun- Go to google.com and type in 'Do a Barrell Roll'

Look out for part 2 coming next week ..

What's your favorite Google Tip?   Please share in the comments section below ..

Google Tips

Just when you thought you knew it all about Google ..  there comes along a great site with Google Tips.  This site tells you "a bunch of stuff you can do with Google".

You can get tips for the home, office or by Google product.  For example, did you know that:

• You can get your own personalized Google Doodle on your Birthday
• Get your laptop to give directions to your phone
• Add some interior design to your GMail inbox

All these great tips and more can be found at the Google Tips site.

Free Google PD

Our friends at Google in Education have created 5 new online courses to explain how Google Apps and other web tools can help you to meet your teaching and learning goals.  These are self-paced courses that you can work on when its convenient for you.  These courses include videos, toolkits and reflection questions.

The available courses are:

1. Internet 101 - Learn the basics of getting online and finding information, connecting, and sharing on the web. 
2. Google Apps for Education (GAFE) Overview - Understand how to implement and use Google Apps for Education in your schools and classrooms. 
3. Gmail for Educators -  Learn tips and tricks for managing Gmail to save you time and resources. 
4. Google Drive for Educators -  Improve your use of Google Drive to help facilitate creation and collaboration in your classroom. 
5. Chrome and Chromebooks for Education - Hone your browsing skills as you explore how to bring the power of the web to your school.

I know I can't wait to get started on these courses.  Who is with me?

Google Scholar and Alerts

Google Scholar is an excellent tool that can be used for research and writing papers.  Here is a brief description from the Google Scholar page:

"Google Scholar provides a simple way to broadly search for scholarly literature. From one place, you can search across many disciplines and sources: articles, theses, books, abstracts and court opinions, from academic publishers, professional societies, online repositories, universities and other web sites. Google Scholar helps you find relevant work across the world of scholarly research."

Anyway, there is a way that students can create 'alerts' in Google scholar to let them know when something new is added to a topic that they have been researching.  This is a good way to stay relevant with the latest information about a subject. These alerts can be created in 3 easy steps.  Instructions to create these alerts can be found in the Free Technology for Teachers blog post written by Richard Byrne.

Google Guide to Staying Safe and Secure Online

Google has released an easy-to-read and interactive guide to staying safe and secure online.

 

 This guide is broken down into 4 categories:

1. Stay Safe and Secure Online - In this section you will explore quick tips and how-to’s that explain what you can do to stay safe and secure on the web.
2. Keep your Family Safe Online - In this section you will get advice from parents at Google and family safety experts on how to help your family safely surf the web.
3. Learn How Google Helps Protect You - In this section, you will learn how Google works hard to protect you whenever you use the web.
4. Know Your Web - In this section you will become more familiar with the basics of the web and learns things such as .. What is a browser? How to chat online, search effectively and more.

This is a great reference for any parent, student or teacher.  I especially recommend it for those students/teachers who are participating in a 1:1 or BYOD learning environment.

Create a Custom Search Engine for your Students

Have you ever done a research project but only wanted your students to use reputable sites in their research?  You could use a Diigo list to provide them with this information, but there is still a better way.

You can actually create your own customized search engine in Google.  Check out my Bruins search engine. I limited the search to only browse through ESPN and Boston.com.  Try typing in 'Chara' or 'Lucic' or anything hockey related.

This took less than 3 minutes to create and I followed the excellent instructions provided by Teachthought.com.  You can make your search as broad (entire domains) or as narrow (limit to just a particular webpage) as you want.

How to use in Education

There are many possible uses for this customized search engine.

• When your students are doing research you may want to limit the number of sites they can get their data from
• You may want to only have them search on high quality sites that you have previously vetted out.  
• For younger students this would be a good way to ensure that they are only visiting sites that are age and content appropriate.  

What other ways can you think of to use a customized search engine?  Please share your thoughts in the comments area below.

Adding images to Google Forms

Well they finally did it.  You go Google!

For those of you that use Google Forms regularly you probably were frustrated by not being able to add an image to your forms.  Well our prayers were answered and Google has now added the option to insert images.  When adding an item, you simply need to select on 'image' and then you can uplaod an image from your computer or the web:

For further assistance, watch this video on how to add images to your forms.

How to use in Education:

Being able to insert images makes using forms for quizzes for math or geography or social studies classes much easier.  It will also allow you to create forms that are more esthetically pleasing.

Google Science Fair 2103

The Google Science Fair is an online science competition open to students age 13 - 18 from around the globe.  Google is looking for ideas that will change the world.  For more information, watch the video below and go to Google Science Fair 2013.

Doodle 4 Google

While most people visit Google to search for information, some people visit just to see the Google Doodle of the day (simply go to www.google.com to see today's doodle).  Here is a list of the 2012 Google Doodles.  (One of my alltime favorites is this one - make sure to hit play and have the sound up).  What is your favorite Doodle?  Please let us know in the comment area.

Anyway, Google has announced their 6th Annual U.S. Doodle 4 Google competition, inviting K-12 students around the country to create their own doodles.  This years theme is 'My Best Day Ever ... ".  The winning student will see their work on the Google Homepage for a day, win a $30,000 college scholarship and win a $50,000 technology grant for Medfield (I mean, for the winning school).  More information can be found at the Google Blog and at the Doodle4Google page.  Also check out the video below:

How to use in Education

Please share this information with your students and their parents in case they are interested in submitting their Doodle4Google.  The deadline is March 22nd.

Google - Zeitgeist 2012

Ever wonder what the top google searches were in 2012?  Are you curious to find out which of these 2012 searches was the most popular:  Gangnam Style, Hurricane Sandy or Kate Middleton (answer below)?

Well luckily our friends at google have compiled a list of the 2012 top search trends as part of their Zeitgeist 2012.  The list is broken down into images, athletes, events, people and a whole lot more.  All of this is based on over 1.2 trillion searches.  (If desired you can further break down these results by country).

I also recommend watching this 3-minute video Google put together on the year in review:

How to use in the Classroom:

I think your students would enjoy watching the above video while recounting the year that was.  How many of the events on here can they recognize?  You could also have students compare the search results in the U.S. to other countries, or to the world.  What does it say about the U.S. society?

You might also ask your students to look at the interactive map that plots where certain events were the most popular. Why are certain searches more frequent in some countries than in others?   Also how do the 2012 results compare to the 2011 results?  Part of creating global citizens is to make students aware of the wider world that we live in, and this is a creative way to do that.


Click here for Trivia Answer.

Follow up notes from Blake Faculty Meeting

Thanks for letting us drop some 'tech knowledge' on you at the Faculty meeting this morning.  Please see important follow up information below:

Today's Presentation

Here is the presentation from this morning.  There are active hyperlinks on slide 6 (links to teacher and student created tech presentations that we viewed) and on slide 8 (webtools used by your colleagues in their classes).  All this info is now just 1 click away!

Sign up for this blog now! 

Either put your email in the 'Follow by Email' box to the right and click 'Submit' (they will send you an email to validate your address) or (if you are familiar with RSS feeds) you can subscribe to the blog posts by adding the feed where it says 'Subscribe to this Blog' (if you don't know what that is, don't do it).

Other Websites featured at today's meeting

Socrative - Excellent tool to quickly assess students in the class

Tagxedo - Like Wordle, but with many more options to create images for your word clouds

Problem-Attic - Excellent test question bank (Math, English, Science, Social Studies) for making worksheets for your students.  See blog post below for more details.

 

Google Image Search

Sorry we didn't have a chance to show you the Google Image trick, but please try it on your own.  Send me an email if you can figure out the answer to the questions below:

• Who is this?

• When was this person born?
• How old was he when he died?
  
  
  If you need help, here is what to do:
  

  1. Open up a new tab and go to http://images.google.com/
  2. Come back here and drag the image (or copy/paste) into the Google Image site

Ever wonder how Google search works?

I thought you might enjoy this 3 minute video that explains (in simple terms) how the Google search engine works.  Watching this may help you refine your searches in Google.  Happy Searching!

Powersearching with Google Class

Just a reminder that Google's free Power Searching class begins today, September 24th.  If you have not registered, you can do so here.  I am not sure how much longer you can sign up, so if interested I would do it ASAP.

In case you do not have the time to take the course, Google has posted some excellent tips and tricks when it comes to searching.

A few things you may not have known when searching using Google:

1. You can drag an image into the Google search bar to help identify what is in a picture (so if you took a picture of a strange insect in your garden and then dragged the image into google you could identify the insect)
2. You can search within any specific website (from Google, for example I can search the contents of the entire CNN website)
3. You can get the definition of any word
4. You can calculate anything
5. You can locate earthquake activity

There is lots to learn for all of us, so please join me in this class.

Getting Techy with it

Welcome to the inaugural entry of the Medfield Technology Blog.  I am hoping that this will be a valuable resource to keep you updated on what is going on with all things technology related at Blake and at the High School.  Without further ado ..

Medfield Specific News

Voicethread and Glogster

Many of you have expressed interest in using these products this year.  We are in the process of getting school licenses for these products and I hope to have them up and running by next week.  Look for an update in next week's blog or via email.  If you have not done so already, please fill out this short web tools survey and earn a chance at winning an Amazon Gift Certificate.

Web 2.0 Tool of the Week

Each week I will share with you a Web 2.0 tool that is free, easy to learn and can easily be adapted into your classroom.  This week we will look at a newspaper clipping generator.  All you need to do is enter text and click on 'generate' to create your clipping.  Here is an example of what it looks like:

How can you use this in the classroom?

• You can create a newspaper clipping identifying students who did a great job on a quiz, or the class as a whole that did well.  Simply post it on your Epson when they come to class.
• Have students write a newspaper article based on historical events and then send them to this site to publish 

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General Technology News

• Did you ever want to be an expert on Google search?  Or at least improve your search skills?  Well you are in luck.  Google is offering a free online class in 'Powersearching'.  Here is the 411 from the Google Site: 

  I have already registered.  Who's with me?  You must register by September 24th.

• Are you a YouTube Guru?  Do you create awesome YouTube videos for your class?  If so, YouTube has launched a 'Star Search' for teachers with expertise in this area.  Find out more information by reading this blog post. 

How do you like the new blog?  What else do you want to see here?  This is a work in progress so all suggestions would be appreciated.  Simply add them in the comments section or email me.