Read&Write for Google part two

The following was originally written for my school's staff newsletter (Bear Essentials), but was never published there.

Previously, I wrote about using Texthelp as a marking/feedback tool. You can refer to it here.

This time I’d like to share with you how to use Texthelp as a tool to annotate .pdf files.

If you have a .pdf in your Drive (you can save .pdf files in your Drive without converting them to google), right click on the document, choose “Open With”, then select “Read&Write for Google.”  This will open your document with Read&Write capabilities.  

By selecting text, you have access to highlighting tools (4 different colours), dictionary, fact finder, translation, and picture dictionary.  If highlighting is used, you can collect all highlights as a separate google doc if you want. Selecting text only works if the text in your .pdf is recognized as text, and your .pdf doesn’t act like an image.

There are 2 different ways of creating notes on your .pdf as well.  You can choose the T at the top of the screen and it will allow you to choose a place within the .pdf to type your own note.  That note will stay there, on the .pdf (you can relocate it or delete it, but it’s right on the document). If you print your document from Read&Write, your notes will appear on the printed page. Or you can choose the thumbtack with the comment looking box beside it and place a thumbtack on your document.  You can then type your annotation in a box that will disappear from the document, unless you click the thumbtack to open it. These will not appear if you print your document.

I was a little concerned that I didn’t see a save button.  I didn’t know if I had permanently changed my .pdfs or not.  (Since I was randomly playing, and I didn’t know if I wanted them permanently changed or not, I was kind of scared.)  I discovered if I close the .pdf and reopen it not in “Read&Write for Google” I still have my originals with no notes.  If I re-open the .pdf with “Read&Write for Google” all my notes, highlights and thumbtacks are still there. You can also share the document in Read&Write for Google with someone else and they will be able to see your comments/notes.

I just started playing with this.  It was relatively easy.  I’d be glad to help you play if you want.  I’d also be interested in feedback if you use it.  How can you or your students use this?  If you share .pdfs with students for notetaking purposes, can this help them take notes on line? Can you see this being useful as a research tool?

Read&Write for Google part one.

The following was first written for my school's staff newsletter (Bear Essentials) May 30, 2014. Bracketed and italics have been added after publication in Bear Essentials.

Have you enabled Texthelp in your ugcloud account?  If you have, you see a gold and green pull down tab at the top of your documents.  Or maybe it is already pulled down and covering your document title - you can click the little up arrows and make it almost disappear.  But don’t do that, because I want to talk to you about how useful it can be.

(If you are not part of UGDSB, Texthelp, also known as Read&Write for Google is a Google app you can add to your account through the chrome store.)

If you are familiar with it, chances are you are in special ed and are using it as a text reader with some of our students.  It is a replacement for kurzweil in some cases.  It works for text documents, webpages and .pdfs if they are opened through Drive.

But it can do so much more.  There are 4 highlighters that you can use, much faster and simpler than using the highlight tool in the menu bar across the top of your document page.  There is also a button that will collect your highlights and collate them in another document.  There are a number of reasons both teachers and students might find this useful. The following ideas come from Rebecca Grimes (@glblcanuck), a fellow teacher in UGDSB.  

Ideas for Teacher Use in the Classroom

• Teachers could use the highlight tool to provide visual feedback --> provide students with a legend of what the colours mean, then just highlight the common errors without having to write the same comment over and over again (ie: verb tense = pink, sentence structure = yellow, missing citation = green)  If you make the legend consistent in your class or department it will be easy for you and your students.

• You could then use the "Collect" option to create a list of sample errors you could use with the class quickly and easily.

Ideas for Student Use in the Classroom:

• In Language classes, students could use the different colour to identify required language components in assignments.

• Students could use a colour to identify the facts that they've included in their assignment.
• Similarly, based on the business department’s self-evalution, they could use the different colours to demonstrate where they’ve met the requirement for the assignment.

• In English, students could identify quotations used in their essays.  (Use a different colour for each book if doing a comparative essay or, one colour for quotations from the novel and another colour for quotations from secondary sources.)

• Students could use the "Collect Highlights" feature to collate the highlighted information into an overview document that they could then share with their teacher.  

• For study purposes in any subject, students could highlight their notes and then export their highlights to create a page of key facts / ideas / etc to study.

Rebecca’s original blog post can be found at http://mllegrimes.blogspot.ca/2014/04/improving-feedback-and-student-self.html

Read & Write

This was originally written for my school's staff weekly newsletter "Bear Essentials" October 11, 2013

You may have seen this app on your chromebooks. It often pops up as an add on app, and students randomly click on install or not without a reason.  Then they complain that there is a bothersome tool bar at the top of their screen that looks like this:

You can hide the bar when it shows up by clicking on the green and yellow square.  The pull down menu will stay and you can click on it again to bring it back.  So why would anyone want this or use this?

It is a text to speech app.  It will read what is on your document within google docs.  I think it’s a great tool for students to edit their work.  I often tell my students to read their work  aloud and listen for mistakes or awkward wording.  This does that out loud reading for them.  It is a simple replacement for kurzweil that doesn’t require extra software downloads.  It will work for pdfs that are saved within your Drive as well.  Students can scan text, upload to google Drive and open with Read&Write for google (you can choose “open with” by right clicking on the document name in Drive).  You do have to highlight the text you want read.

I’m sure it will do lots of other stuff, but I haven’t played with it very much.  But if you or your students use kurzweil, or you know students who have trouble reading or editing their work you may want to check it out.

GAFE Certification

Image from: http://memoirvita28.blogspot.ca/2013/05/college-life-exams-part-3.html

A few weeks ago I wrote the 6 google exams to become a Google Apps certified trainer.  Each of the 6 exams was made up of 60 multiple choice questions and there was a 90 minute time limit.  They were intense.  The good thing was that I didn't have to have every detail memorized in order to pass the test.  I had to know how to find the answer.  It's google, you are allowed/expected to search for the answer.  But it was still tough.

At least once, I found some piece of information to answer a question and thought "Oh, I didn't know I could do that."  But in the stress of completing the test I couldn't for the life of me remember what that was when I was done.  I just remember having the thought.  But I feel fairly certain that if/when I decide I want to try whatever that thing was I'll know I can go looking for the answer.

I really enjoy using Google Apps for Education (GAFE) in school.  And one of the things I like about it is the availability of helpful hints and tips available.  I don't have to know how to do everything, I just have to have the confidence to go and find the answers.  Google is good for this, as is youtube.  Many people have uploaded screen casts about how to do anything you could possibly want to do.

Because I appreciate GAFE so much I spend quite a bit of time talking to others about its merits and how they can use it.  One of the toughest things I have to get them to believe is that they can play with it without knowing everything about it.  They can also find answers to whatever questions they might have.  Many time people come to me with questions about how to do something.  If I don't know off the top of my head, I will go with them to a computer and look it up, or I will look it up and email them links to videos or help pages on whatever they want help with.  I hope that eventually people will gain the confidence to search for the answer themselves.

Back to the Google Certification...  I passed all 6 exams.  I am now a Google Certified Individual.  It is my intention to complete the certification process to become a Google Apps for Education Certified Trainer.  I believe that this process will be much more reflective and give a much more accurate picture of my ability to work with GAFE and pass on my knowledge to my colleagues and work with it in class.  On many levels I find this process at least as intimidating as the exams as it is much more personal.

I will continue to share my process in becoming certified here in this blog.  It is my goal to be done it this summer.  Wish me luck!

Reflection on April 20-21, Ontario GAFE

The following post was written for Bear Essentials (my school’s staff weekly newsletter).  I have a regular column “On-line with Lisa.”  I will cross post the columns to this blog.  This post was originally written for the newsletter the week of April 26, 2013. It has been slightly modified to reflect an online format.

Reflection on April 20-21, Ontario GAFE (google apps for education) Summit

Last weekend, I was one of 100 UGDSB participants out of 525 total participants at the Google Summit sponsored by ECOO and hosted by Eastwood Collegiate of WRDSB.  I’d like to share a few of the ideas that I found interesting from Sunday morning’s keynote by Molly Schroeder (@followmolly on twitter, Google certified teacher and Google Apps for Education certified trainer).

Google loves being in BETA.  Part of their philosophy is “launch early and iterate.”  The idea is that you don’t have to have something perfect before you try it out.  If something doesn’t work, or becomes obsolete it is not a failure, it is simply a part of a larger path to find something great.  Someone has actually created a graveyard for google products that google has killed (http://goo.gl/4XXfE).  You can leave flowers at the headstone for the google project you miss most.  I left a flower on iGoogle and Google Reader.

Kids are in beta.  It is part of our job to help them fine tune so they can launch.  It is important for students to be able to think about where they are in the journey, and not just be told “this is important for your future.”  

Interestingly enough, as I was thinking about writing this, and reflecting on the idea of “being in beta” from the google summit, I ran across a blog by Shelley Wright called “Beta: The Courage to Fail and Change.” (you can find it at http://goo.gl/QCUfN)  She writes: “I’ve decided to live my life in Beta. Always incomplete. Always failing. Always trying to get better.  ...  What if our kids learned that failure is a good thing, something to be embraced, instead of something to be avoided like the plague.  What if teachers were set free to teach messy, fail often & “fail fast”, as Seth Godin says. ... What if teaching & learning was a fluid process that was never finished?”  I love serendipity.

Another nugget from Molly’s keynote: speed date devices, apps or websites, but marry the transferable skills.  I really like this and think it’s tied to idea of being in beta.  Try something; use it while it works; let it go when it’s done (or when you are).  It is the ability to take the skills or knowledge you gain and apply them to another situation.  

The last big take away I’d like to share with you is that everyone has experienced something not working the way you wanted/expected.  The fact that it didn’t work isn’t what’s important.  It is what you do with that experience that is important.  Problem solve.  Hit ‘refresh.’ And keep trying.

GAFE and feedback

The following post was written for Bear Essentials (my school’s staff weekly newsletter).  I have a regular column “On-line with Lisa.” This was a guest post written by David Harvey, and English teacher at ODSS. This post was originally written for the newsletter the week of April 12, 2013.

I am a better teacher this semester than every semester before it.  This is not hyperbole, but a direct result of using ugcloud.  ugcloud is a board-supported cloud-based (no hard drive required) service where I create documents in an excellent, auto-saving word processor (google drive), share documents with students and colleagues, and where I receive and provide feedback on all of my students’ work through our ugcloud email addresses.  When I’m working with student writing, ugcloud becomes interactive and allows me to highlight everything from specific words to particular punctuation to entire paragraphs and make corresponding comments in the side margin.  The student sees both the highlights and the comments.  When the student clicks on either the highlighted section or the comment in the margin,  the corresponding information is highlighted.  There is a very concrete and clear link between their writing and my comments.  ugcloud also allows me to make an overall comment on a piece of writing which I often do when I’m done reading it.  

My teaching has become accelerated through ugcloud as it has allowed me to give students more precise, concrete, full-sentence feedback by the mid-term than I can usually manage in an entire semester.  The interim report, which often causes me great concern due to a lack of information, caused me no stress whatsoever this year, as at that point, I’d read and thoroughly commented on 6 pieces of formative writing in my 1D class and 9 in my 4U class.  The cloud makes things more efficient and effective, and while part of this is my ability to type faster than I write, another part of this is the closing of the feedback loop.  

We know that the shorter the time is between the work and the feedback the more likely the learning and, with the cloud, students no longer have to be in class (or even in the same country) to receive feedback, nor do they have to wait for me to mark 30 pieces of work before they get theirs back.  I mark them in the order in which they’re submitted and they can watch me work with their document in real-time.  As a result of the speed of things, I have never had a clearer understanding of my students’ abilities, nor taught them each so much on such an individual basis so early in a course.  I can open up their email folders and instantly see everything they’ve written, the order in which they submitted it, all of my feedback, and then each keystroke of editing the student has made while applying their new understanding.  

This is a game-changer.  While I’ve never accepted technology as the great saviour of education - and still don’t - I’ve never discovered and used a technology with such great benefits to both myself and my students.  I haven’t collected a single piece of paper from either class this semester - not one.  More importantly,  I’ve seen a level of improvement  in their work by midterm that I usually hope to see by the end of a course.  

I’ve witnessed what I consider three legitimate educational revolutions in my 14 year career, and this is the most recent and the most powerful one in terms of what works best for me and what works best for students.