Chrome - Google Tone

I continue to be impressed by the options for access that are being developed for the Chrome Web Browser.  Google just released an experiment called Google Tone.  The concept is that it will play a short tone that other computers can hear, and they will open the URL you shared.  The extension must be installed on all the computers nearby (wish it worked on mobile devices!) and have access to the microphone.  Just click the link in the toolbar and it sends out the "tone".  You can install the extension here - g.co/tone and it works in Chrome for Mac, Windows and all Chromebook devices.  Happy Sharing!

Patrick

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Google Classroom for SPED

Google Classroom is a new offering for districts who use Google Apps for Education (GAFE).  Classroom is a combination of Edmodo and Doctupus; part social network and part document manager.  Once Classroom is enabled you are able to create classes and invite your students to join.  Google creates a folder in your Drive, a place for you to upload and/or create documents to share with those students.  From the main Classroom page you have options for posting Announcements or create assignments.  Assignments can be linked to a Drive Document, Youtube video, weblink or you can attach a file.  Students can then complete the work and turn it in via Classroom.  When using Google Docs you have the option to allow students to view the document, edit one document or it will create a separate document for each student.

For self-contained teachers this immediately solves issues with distributing and collecting Google Doc files.  It's also a place for students to communicate questions with their classmates or you.  While the interface is limited and the themes are pretty basic, I think the potential for this product is astounding.

From my new perspective of a push-in support teacher, I see this as a way to push out modified assignments to students.  Part of our new reading curriculum involves discussion guides and we, as a special education team, are considering modifying them so they are Google Docs.  This would give me a way to push out specific docs, to specific students easily.  I also think giving students a place they can post questions might be useful, especially students who may not want to speak up in class.  I can see it as a way for those students to contact me when we are not together in class.

I'm going to continue to give it a try, and see if there are other ways it can be utilized.  I'd love to hear some of your thoughts on using Google Classroom.  This week Google opened it all users with GAFE account, but there is one caveat.  You and your students must be on the same domain.  This is actually a problem in my district, my email ends in "d57.org" and our students are "students.d57.org" so I cannot create a Classroom unless I have a different login.  This is frustrating, but Google is aware and hopefully they will fix it in the near future.

Patrick

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Google Search App - iOS

Google released a major update to their search app for iOS (Google Search App|Free).  The most recent update adds real-time voice search to the app.  Having tried out the app I am impressed with the accuracy and speed of requests in the app.  The app has Siri like functionality, it will even read answers to you that it knows the answer to like what the weather is, or where the closest Starbuck's might be!  It's a pretty handy update to a great app!

Patrick

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Google Trick - Searching for Apps only

If you've ever searched for an app on Google, there can be some difficulty if you don't have the right name and such.  While listening to the latest episode of TWIG they mentioned that you can limit your searches in Google to just applications!  Head to Google and type in your search term, then look on the left hand menu and click more (see screenshot below).

After clicking more, you should see an link for "applications", click it and Google with search all the major App Stores for the app (iTunes, Android, CNET, etc...).  You can see an example below:

Happy Searching!

Patrick

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Google Map Skills

Google maps has a few great features that help in teaching map skills to students of all disabilities.  Google still is the best (in my opinion) for getting directions, but they have a great feature called My Maps, which you can use to create your own customized maps.

Head to http://maps.google.com and log into your Google account.  You'll see a link on the left side for "My Places", click and then select create new map.  You can then find the area you'd like to work in and start placing pins on the map.  A great feature is that you can change the look of any push pin after you place it.  Just click on the pin in the edit screen and you have a large assortment of map type symbols.  Many of these symbols are perfect for teaching how to read a map, and use a legend.  Once you've placed them all you can print the map and the legend will print too.

As you can see from the map above I customized mine to include places in our downtown, and we used the map to take a walking trip.  It was a great way to familiarize ourself with the area!  I even added a compass rose to the map after printing so that we could talk about directions while walking.  Really adds to the community experience.


- Patrick

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Googling for Communicating with Parents

So last year I started sharing daily communication with the parents in my room via a Google Docs spreadsheet. It was a huge success! The reason I bring this us is I've been asked by my district to teach a workshop on some of the ways I communicate with parents, i.e. - Googling for Communicating with Parents! So while I'm spending some time with colleagues, please enjoy a repost (slightly edited) of the thought that started this all off!

Patrick

Collaboration (slightly edited) - Originally posted 4/16/2009

One area that is something that I find myself struggling with from time to time is collaboration. Between IEP meetings, lesson planning, actual teaching, and whatever else teachers are required to do, collaboration can take a backseat. Since the team approach is the best way to help students with disabilities how do we make sure that we share as much information as possible? One possible solution is Google Docs.

Google Docs is a online word processor, spreadsheet and presentation creator. Using this tool I've created a spreadsheet that allows me to share with parents specific information about what activities their child does during the day, as well as the ability to share what related service providers are doing at the same time. You can actually check out the template here. Since access is global (as long as you can get to Google), and it is private (you choose who you want to share with), it is a great forum for sharing information. Not only does it allow you to share with parents, related services can see what the classroom teacher or other service providers are working on in the classroom. Collaboration on a massive scale.

Is anyone else using Google Docs in a unique way to connect with parents or professionals? Share your stories here!

You can find the original post here - Collaboration

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Google Squared

Google Squared is a web2.0 tool that's been out for a little while. I never really checked it out until reading this post at Web2.0 Classroom.

Google Squared is a simple concept. Take all the information on the internet about a specific topic, tease out the facts, and place it into a nice, neat, little chart. It's not perfect, but it does a pretty good job with simple searches. There are several examples on the Google Squared homepage.

I actually tried one for Dinosaurs. Here are my results: Dinosaur Square. Google put in names, pictures, descriptions, class, phylum, kingdom & genus. I added height, weight, how they walked, the list goes on. This could really be a powerful research tool for any classroom. I know it's not perfect, but Google Squared pulls together a lot of information into one place!

Patrick


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OCR on Google Docs

While not an official feature, Google Docs is busy adding great stuff to their offerings. Lifehacker share this morning that Google Docs is adding OCR (Optical Character Recognition) to their list of features. Again, this is not a an official offering, but still in the test stages. I tried two different photos (they have to be in .jpg, .png, or .gif) and one worked and one didn't. So it's still has some work, but this is exciting news for accessibility!!!! Having a free OCR option would open so many doors for out students. You can try out the demo here:

Google Doc OCR

Hopefully if it's gets a good response, it will become a feature much quicker!!

Patrick

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Google Docs Updates

Google has slowly been adding features to Google Docs. One of the best features is the integration of translation services. When I first read about it there were 42 languages, recently they've added up to 51 languages. It's really so easy to use, and adds a great amount of functionality to Google Docs. This feature would be really useful for classrooms where English is not the primary language language spoken at home.

They've also added a readability feature to Google Docs. If you go to tools and select word count you get a nice pop up. It includes a basic count of words, characters, etc... as well as Flesch Reading Ease, Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level, & Automated Readbility Index. While I've not used this feature, it does seem really useful. Here's an example of what the pop up looks like:


Thanks to Robert Byrne over at Freetech4teachers for these tips!

Patrick

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Blogs Worth Reading

Recently another poster on the QIAT forum asked for ideas of blogs that everyone thought was worth reading. I thought that I'd take that idea a step further. I have created a Google Spreadsheet of blogs I read, and think are helpful to those in education. I would like anyone else who reads or sees this to contribute also. You can submit a blog, podcast, or other resource using this Google Form. I would encourage you to send this out so we can get a really good list. Any topic related to teaching students, parental help, AT, education, etc... is welcome. Please help so we can create a resource to be used by many different people.

Patrick

Photo courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons: MichelleM_

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Google Documents

I've been a user of Google Documents for quite a while now and have always found it to be a great way to share ideas, as well as for Data Collection. You can import many types of Microsoft Word and Excel documents into Google Docs, but up until today none that ended in .docx. Today Google has added an option to import Word and Excel 2007 documents into Google Docs. Happy importing!

Patrick

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Google Docs - for data collection

So I recently shared some ideas on how to use Google Docs to Collaborate with parents and related service providers. After setting this up, one of my instructional assistants said "couldn't we use that for data collection?" Hmmmm, well maybe...

I've been provided with a couple of iPod Touches in my classroom. I got to thinking, what if I paired the Touch with a Google form? Google makes it very easy to set up a simple form for survey's and such, and they link it to a spreadsheet to collect your data. I knew how to set this up, but would it work with the Touch. After sending the link to the Touch (by snycing the Safari bookmarks), and placing a link on the front screen of the Touch, we were set to try it.

Here's a link to the form that I created - Behavior Chart Example Form

And here's the link to the data sheet where the data will be collected - Behavior Chart Example

So, other than just for fun, what would I want to do this. Personally, I'm all for keeping digital copies, and not using paper. If you like to chart things, you don't have to transfer it from paper to your computer to create the chart. It's portable, a Touch is small enough to fit in a pocket and as long as you have Wi-Fi, you have access to your form. And lastly, it goes back to collaboration, but keeping it on Google Docs allows everyone to see the data. So far it's working great, but feel free to try it out for yourself!

Patrick

Photo courtesy of Flick Creative Commons: nickwheeleroz

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Ways to Use Flip Cameras in the Classroom

Flip video cameras are cheap, easy to use, and taking education by storm. There are many great ways to use a Flip in the classroom. I myself have used them to create videos of the students doing simple tasks, and used as a video modeling tool. Take a look here at one persons ways to use Flip cameras in the classroom.

Patrick

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RSS Feed issues

This weekend I was forced to change my RSS feed over to Google. There is some indication that there might be issues with this change over. If you are currently subscribed and have not received new posts in a few days (I posted everyday this weekend) please let me know and I will see what we can do to fix it. Hopefully this will not be a big issue.

Patrick

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Why use a RSS reader?

Why not is my question. So you only read one blog (hopefully mine!) and don't really need to track multiple blogs, but that's not it's only use. Check out Louis Gray's post about the 30 different uses for RSS. This list has many great ideas for ways to use a RSS feed and a reader (like Google Reader) to make your life easier.

Again why not? Because it's easy - follow these simple steps:

1. Go to Google Reader - reader.google.com

2. sign up for a google account

3. Once signed up, click the "add subscription" link on the left side

4. type in - http://teachingall.blogspot.com

5. That's It! you are subscribed and will receive the posts each day in one place.

6. Need more blogs for your reader - check out the blogroll on the right side of my blog (you may need to scroll down)

7. Once you go to their blog, you can click their link that says Subscribe to this blog or look for a orange icon. Click and add to google reader.

Happy blog finding!

Patrick

Some of my favorite posts...

I know I've only been blogging for a few months, but I thought that maybe it would be a good time to look at some of the posts I've done. These are a few of my favorites, take a look at them:

Accessible Book Template
Boardmaker Activity Pad
Accessible Book Launcher
Upset and you can help me by...
Google Reader
Literacy for All

Happy re-reading!
Patrick

Google Reader

I would like to thank Paul Hamilton for the today's post.

As I have been starting to do this blog, I've become more interested in other blogs. If you look at the right hand side, of this page you will find at least 5 that I currently check out each day, and if I'm honest that's not even a full list. If you're like me you don't remember much by yourself, so that Means I have to bookmark each site, and remember to go to it each day. There's an easier way.

I was reminded of this by Paul, when I was reading his blog (so make sure to check his out), RSS Readers. RSS is like a ticker - every time something changes on a page, it updates the ticker and you see the result. You have to subscribe to the "feed", which will allow you to see the changes. To see the feed you need a "reader" which understands RSS, one like the Google Reader. Here's a photo of what it looks like:



Once you sign up for Google Reader (actually if you have a gmail account it is the same password), you can click the Add Subscriptions link on the left side of the screen and add a blog (like teachingall.blogspot.com), newspaper, or anything that has an RSS feed. To find these feeds go to a website, like Chicagotribune.com and look on the bottom of the page for the RSS link, once that page opens you can copy the address, then use the add subscriptions link to add it to your reader.

Once you've added some link you will see that they are listed, and all the "new" posts are listed. You can then read the new ones and ignore the old ones if you want. You can also see all the items you've subscribed to, so you can see if blogs have been updated, thus having all the information in one place.

The other nice feature of Google Reader is that you can save posts (by clicking the star), e-mail/share posts with friends, and you will never lose them, because just like Gmail, you have basically infinite storage. Hope this will help all, keep reading and please feel free to comment on any of my posts. I'd love to get some feedback!