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

This was first posted October 4, in my school's staff weekly newsletter "Bear Essentials."

I have a few ideas bouncing around in my head right now that I think are related somehow.

The first is reflection on the staff meeting Monday.  I haven’t received much feedback, but what I have gotten has been positive. (might be selective sharing)  What I liked about it is that a) it was to some extent self directed PD, and b) it was based on things real teachers are actually doing in their classes.  I also think that having the ALPs as a shared document was a very practical way of giving staff practice at using ugcloud.  I’m not certain, but by the sounds of it, more people finished their ALP this year during the session than previous years.  Hopefully fewer people will be chased come November.

The second thing going around my head that I want to share is the title of a session I might go to at ECOO this year.  It’s called “It’s OK to be right where you are (it’s not OK to stay there).”  I love this idea.  It can be both affirming and a challenge.  I think it can speak to the life-long learner in all of us.  You are OK where you are, but how can you grow?  I think the ALPs ideally address this as well.  Think about what you’ve done to get where you are, set some new goals, and plan out how to get there.

The third related idea is the SAMR model.  It is a model of technology integration.  Like the ECOO session name, it’s OK to be at any stage at any given time, but you need to know there are other option for growth and change.  The challenge is thinking about how you most use technology for student learning, and thinking about how you can try new things.  Here’s the model: