Tis the Season For Google Hangouts....End Of Year Assessment Time

At this time of year as the school year draws to a close both at the High School I work at and the Community College I teach at I like to close with something new for the students. This semester I chose to use the collaborative Google Hangout for sharing of course materials,a good laugh at us on a web cam and also a new fluency in technology use and assessment. The sharing of these experiences online is beneficial from a variety of perspectives for both the students and myself.

For a long time I have found video to be a great way to share what a person learns and also how they learn. Google hangouts provide the perfect opportunity to get up to 10 students(others can watch) for a web based video collaboration which has enabled chat features and screen sharing capabilities.

For the final of my PHP programming course at Bunker Hill Community College in Charlestown,Massachusetts I asked students to go online and participate in the hangout and share their collective work for the semester. This was a small class so the format worked perfectly. Students received notification from me on their Google + page to join the hangout and shared their web pages from their chosen server and we also we able to discuss the approach we decided on for our group final project.

This students in this class really responded well to the hangout format and were anxious to share with the technology. When audio issues arrived we were able to utilize the built in messaging service inside the Hangout. This can help communicate between all participants.

I chose to do a hangout on air in which the video is live streamed to the internet and saved to Youtube. This is great for revisiting if you need at a later time.

I found Hangouts relatively easy to use except when some students I sent invites to did not receive the notice in their Google accounts. This can be a little annoying for inviting the members but usually a couple resends solves the problem. I have included the video from my PHP class if your interested in seeing one go down but it is much more fun to have your own!

In the Andover Innovation Lab which is a course at Andover High School for Independent Technology projects students have Google Hangouts as part of their final assessment. I ask that students present and their self driven projects and describe their experiences creating them. I want students to reveal their process and goals as well as the resources they used to get their product. In the video I embedded below, the student created an application using the iOS development tool Xcode and has described his experiences.

Overall the tool is powerful at creating collaboration and sharing with technology. It does take some time to get used to but in the end it can be a powerful web based assessment tool. Its great to be able to ask students to present in this way. It makes them think about their presentation in a real world construct.

Helping Teachers Place Their Materials Online: Phase 1-Instructional Strategies & Introduction To Tools

Most teachers when thinking about how to organize their existing content into a web based format play with a variety of tools and resources such Wiki's, Edmodo or other District Based Learning Management Systems. When stuck in between these resources and still looking to have a web based presence for the classroom that offers the look of a teacher website a great option is a blog which can present presentations, links, documents and even a variety of assessments. Many districts have their own policies for teacher websites and access so it is important to check with your district about their policies before beginning and committing to any projects.

This post will include some of the central considerations to consider from an instructional design perspective and also some of the central considerations when choosing to integrate the Google Blogger platform and the associated Google docs and tools. That said, a variety go blog platforms exist and some are extremely interactive (Wordpress, Weebly, Tumblr, Typepad).  I have chosen on this post to focus on Google Blogger due to my success with integrating the tools in the classroom and also the ease in which I can explain its immediate benefits.

Planning-Instructional Design Considerations

Before creating your blogger account and Gmail for the creation of a blogger blog it is important to collect all of the content you would like to have on each section of your blog. I often encourage teachers to organize their blogs as though it will be their website for their classroom in which each course they teach will have its own page and be the focus of that area of the blog. A site map should be developed which helps organize the thinking of the content. This site map can be done formally on paper or can be outlined and integrated immediately. In the example photos below the breakdown of an AP European History course is shown. 

This teacher(photo) has identified specific presentations (PowerPoint’s) and documents (Word) which she will link of this course homepage. I have worked with this teacher to turn these documents into Google Documents for the ease of backing them up on the Google Drive Cloud and linking and sharing opportunities with students. Teachers can also integrate existing PDF's teachers may have been printing in an online format or even turn documents into PDF's.

The process of aligning your course sequence of materials and preparing them to placed on a web based platform can be tedious but it can benefit teachers to back up their documents online and improve the fluency in which they deliver materials online. The process of creating links and sequencing material also enables teachers to reconsider the order in which they present materials and can also allow them to better introduce web-based assessments using tools like Google Form, Socrative or linking to Edmodo environments. Teachers can also begin to consider the integration of screencasts of video lectures for homework or students who have missed courses. The graphic on the left was created using http://www.gliffy.com. This site enables you to create sitemaps and organization graphics.

Discuss Teacher Strategies, Goals & Motivation

From an instructional technologists perspective it is important to have deep conversations with teachers about the intentions they have with their content online. Web platforms can quickly turn off teachers transitioning to creating more online resources. They often feel they do not deliver their materials in way their students or are used to.

Provide support as teachers delve into placing materials online. This support is critical to having teachers see the long-term benefits of web based resources and flipped classroom models. Integrating these tools consistently is a process and fluency with technology in the classroom only grows as it is being used regularly and fitting the environment intended. There will be setbacks in the process but assuring teachers that the time invested can save them time as the forward can help motivate and inspire them to create for the web.

Also assure teachers that providing web-based content does not mean they are replacing traditional instructional methods. In the beginning of this process the tools placed online should be tiered toward supporting instruction and can be used from once a week to daily depending on the comfort level with the tools and resources.

Key Tools & Tips To Consider In the Development of Blogger Blogs For Teachers

(I will be updating this page with new posts in the coming weeks with more specifics on each of these topics. I have included some sample links).

• Organize all content for each course in a folder and review the order of instruction and course assessments and goals.(Consider creating graphic like the one above. I used Gliffy.com)

• Set Up A Page For Each Course (This provides a separate space for each course and a way of differentiating for each class.)

• Create A Google Calendar To Share Course Information (The same calendar in your Google email can be embedded into your blog and used to post course updates)

• Use Of Google Drive for Storage (Using Drive can streamline linking of resources and also create an immediate backup)

• Use Google Groups For Collaboration (An easy method for communicating with specific groups based on email address)

• Use Google Hangouts For Offline meetings (live and recorded collaboration online with video, great for college students and adult professional development)

• Use YouTube for videos of lectures, videos and supplemental course videos and embed them into the areas of the blog pages with HTML (Screen casting is a powerful tool for sharing screen recordings with presentations or web based instruction).

Benefits Of Creating Video Lectures & Screencasts-Andover High School Instructional Technology

In the beginning of the school year I had a teacher who is not going to be able to attend parents night but really wanted to connect with parents who came. Our solution for this problem was to have the teacher create a video lecture which contained all the major components of what he spoke about on parents night. The video lecture also contained a link to a public Google document which contained all the necessary forms that he wanted to get out to parents to know about. We then uploaded the video to YouTube which enable to another user to a play the video for what his parents showed up over the course of the evening.

This parents night experience was an interesting way to introduce the power of video lectures to a teacher. By learning how to screen cast lectures teachers can actually increase the amount of time that they have to do other lesson planning or introduction of key concepts to students. Video lectures do need some planning and should contain all the details that you want to have included in a regular lesson lecture. It is also important to require students to take notes and be prepared for a discussion.

It makes a huge difference how much time you spend practicing and preparing for the video lecture. A video lecture which is well-prepared and timed appropriately should include all the components that they would in a regular lesson but can also include links to web based surveys,documents or videos. A video lecture can be loaded with links or assessments which students can prepare for classroom sharing and communication. Performing a few practice run throughs will also improve the quality of your voice and detail to which you can talk about things.

The best part of video lectures is that the tools to make them are free and readily available on the web. My favorite tool for creating video lectures and presentations is Screen Cast O-Matic. I started off with the free version of the software and was very impressed and allowed me to create presentations videos which were 15 minutes in length. I was able to share them and also upload them to YouTube so that I always had a place that I can link them from what I share with my students more quickly. There is also a pro version of screen cast O-Matic for $15 a year. I recommend this version if you are really into adding text, editing your videos more concisely or longer recording time. The pro version also removes of the watermark on the screen that says Screen Cast O-Matic.

If you use the iPad your courses you're definitely going to want to check out an app called Educreations. This application allows you to record on your iPad screen and import images create text and do a variety of speaking over what is projected onto your iPad screen. I recommend this application especially if you work on the elementary level and have some key lessons with you continually use over and over again. If you do a great job of planning out your lessons that you want to show on educreations they could be a great resource for you and also for other teachers you can find them available on the web.

With the development of online classrooms using the flip classroom model I think you going to see more and more teachers using screen cast or video based lectures. This type of sharing of your lectures is great to share your work as well as enable students to have access to your lessons anywhere they go. YouTube is very friendly to uploading these lectures along with allowing you to tag them and make them easily searchable on the web. This feature makes it easy to use YouTube as a homepage for all your video lectures. On Youtube you can then tag them and organize them into playlists.

At Andover high school I have had several teachers create video lectures for their classrooms. video lectures can help increase engagement for students in and out of the classroom. Just remember that isn't it is important to prepare accordingly for how long your presentations going to be what content you want to cover. Also, have a strategy for how you're going to share these with your students quickly and easily. Think about linking them to existing course management systems or even just having a YouTube page where you can find them all.

Personally I like using videos as a form of assessment for student work. I love having the ability to have students sit down and create a voiceover showing the work they've created on the web. This could be how students present a PowerPoint show a website design or even discuss a particular talk it topic using other web based presentation formats. I feel that with screencasts students can talk clearly and concisely about what they want to create and can also show their deep knowledge of what they've been working on. It's also a great opportunity to have students add their personal voice to what they've created. I have included two links to video lectures that teachers have made in my school. If you're more interested in using it as an assessment tool feel free to visit my YouTube page where I have samples of videos in which rubrics are included. There are also videos which show specific components of the rubrics and videos in which students describe the process of completing a project.

Science:

English: