tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-47917333366889915692024-03-12T23:35:17.790-07:00G-learninglearning and teaching with free google toolsahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comBlogger152125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-30616301455051253202018-11-07T02:15:00.003-08:002018-11-07T02:20:35.582-08:00Keeping attendance and other checklists in Google Sheets (2018 version, with template)<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">Keeping attendance and using checklists with Google tools hasn’t been very comfortable so far. If you Google you will still find exclusively links to using a Google Form. However this method is a bit cumbersome plus it requires an active internet connection. For the past two or three years I have used Google Keep Notes with checklists for my classes. Keep Notes works well, however it requires you to make a copy each time you start a new list. This makes it useless when you want to automatically count the number of checkmarks, like when tracking attendance. </span></div>
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Google Sheets introduced checkboxes in 2018 plus it allows you to do mathematical operations on them. This makes keeping attendance a breeze. Just insert tick boxes where you need them.<br />
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If you use the checkboxes for attendance you actually might want to tick it off (value true) and drag it wherever you might night them. When a student misses a class, you just uncheck them.<br />
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Of course, you don’t want to manually have to count the number of lessons. In order to do that you use the following formula:<br />
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=COUNTIF(C2:P2,False)<br />
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The value “False” stands for unchecked boxes and the formula therefore counts all the instances a student missed the class.<br />
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In most other cases you want to count checked instances. E.g. if students have handed in homework, returned books or exam papers, etc. In that case you would use<br />
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=COUNTIF(C2:P2,True)<br />
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And that’s all there is to it. If you don’t want to create the sheet yourself, you can copy this template.<br />
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If you need more instances of the sheet (e.g. per month/term/year) you can make a duplicate within your spreadsheet. </div>
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<br />ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-47155393236231134762018-08-28T23:58:00.004-07:002018-08-28T23:58:48.234-07:00Five minute quick quiz - turning multiple choice quizzes into online quizzes<h2 class="c41" id="h.qsio84ewn87q" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 1.15; padding-bottom: 4pt; padding-top: 18pt;">
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Turning a multiple choice quiz like this one into an online quiz only takes a few minutes.</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Teachers use multiple choice quizzes frequently, be it using the textbook, photocopies or pdf files. All of these quizzes have one drawback - even though these quizzes are comparatively quick to mark, they still require a lot of time to mark and/or discuss in class and they provide little information in terms of learning analytics, unless one is willing to type the results into a spreadsheet.</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">With Google Forms you can easily turn a multiple choice quiz from the textbook, like the one pictures above into an interactive quiz which the students fill in using their tablets or smartphones. The process only takes a few minutes and the advantage is that both teacher and students are provided with (optionally instant) feedback and learning analytics.</span></div>
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<span class="c18" style="font-weight: 700;">Instructions</span><span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">:</span></div>
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Create a new form at: <span class="c13" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none;"><a class="c0" href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://docs.google.com/forms/&sa=D&ust=1535529412416000" style="text-decoration: inherit;">https://docs.google.com/forms/</a></span> and make it a quiz in the settings</div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Give your quiz a title and make the first question the student’s name if you want to know individual results. Then you will only need one more question - a multiple choice grid in which you type (or copy and paste) the number of questions and the options (usually A B C D).</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Click on the “Answer Key” to tell Google Forms which answers are the correct ones.</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">And that is basically all you have to do. If you want you can fine-tune the settings of the quiz, e.g. if the students should get their feedback immediately or if you want to release the score later on (requires an email address).</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">The final step is to share the quiz with your students using the URL.</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Personally I prefer the cleaner shortened URL, but that is optional. You can share the link via whatever you use to share materials, including email, Moodle, Google Classroom, whatsapp.</span></div>
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<span class="c1" style="font-size: 11pt; font-weight: 700; vertical-align: baseline;">Discussion:</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Creating online quizzes is usually a time consuming tasks. I sometimes do create online quizzes on Kahoot, Quizizz or Quizlet, but many teachers would rather not create their own quizzes, when there are plenty of materials available in the first place (in the textbook, shared with other teachers, from the web, etc.).</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Google Forms provides a super quick way of turning those multiple choice quizzes into an interactive quiz with learning analytics within five minutes. Of course you also have the option of typing out the questions in the multiple choice grid question type, but then it would already take you at least twice as long to create the quiz.</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Of course it wouldn't make sense to turn all the multiple choice quizzes in a textbook into online quizzes. However, occasionally teachers might want to have some kind of feedback on their students’ competence or give them tasks for self-paced learning. Google Forms allow you to do that in a couple of minutes.</span></div>
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<span class="c2" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">From the students’ point of view it might seem slightly inconvenient and redundant to fill in the quiz first on paper and then online. However, the additional work shouldn’t take more than a minute and is more user friendly than a key to check in case of self-paced work.</span></div>
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ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-41121141516293759052018-07-21T10:55:00.002-07:002018-07-23T08:08:13.862-07:00Chrome OS tablets - the most versatile tablets for students and teachers<div class="c2" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; line-height: 1.15; padding-bottom: 0pt; padding-top: 0pt;">
<span class="c0" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">I don’t usually write about hardware as my main interests lie in digital learning and trying out new activities with digital devices. The issue of the ideal device in classrooms is still hotly debated. Less so in the United States where approximately 60% of all classroom devices are chromebooks, but much more so in Europe where chromebooks are virtually unknown.</span></div>
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The truth is, that every type of device has its trade-offs. I personally find iPads way too limited, Surface devices too expensive and cheaper Windows devices too underpowered. With the addition of Android apps (as well as Linux apps in the near future), Chromebooks are much less limited than they used to be and can be bought for as little as $249, e.g. for one of my favourite classroom devices, the <span class="c6" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration-line: underline; text-decoration-skip-ink: none;"><a class="c4" href="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.amazon.com/Chromebook-C101PA-DB02-Quad-Core-Lightweight-Touchscreen/dp/B075KFFMZS/ref%3Dsr_1_1_sspa?ie%3DUTF8%26qid%3D1532187800%26sr%3D8-1-spons%26keywords%3Dchromebook%2BC101%26psc%3D1%23customerReviews&sa=D&ust=1532199177983000" style="text-decoration: inherit;">Asus C101</a></span><span class="c0" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">, which is truly fantastic value for money.</span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">One of the problems with chromebooks in Europe is, that there aren’t many models available. So when Acer came out with the Chromebook Tab 10, I decided to buy it, despite having doubts about the usefulness of tablets in the classroom.</span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Specs-wise the Chromebook Tab 10 is in the same league as the Asus C101, with the same OP1 processor and 4GB of memory. It doesn’t come with a keyboard and is therefore much lighter than the C101. It does come with a better screen resolution and a stylus and is a bit higher priced.</span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">My first impression of the Chromebook Tab 10 was not overly positive: it often lagged and sometimes even crashed. So I uninstalled most of my Chrome extensions (which were synched from my other Chrome OS devices) and put the device into beta channel. That made it much more fun to use.</span><br />
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<span class="c0" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><span style="border: 0px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); display: inline-block; height: 332px; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); width: 250.38px;"><img alt="" height="400" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/pmjyhMFMs9Bz3FWO0jszD0VEFiugIhnrh24ObxliCUoXFUWW3D73y7qj7CcmYO0jGoDuKC0DrDdJdjRVP-2w0gh9YasBouToOSmGQ0CjSwcSwfTmGfRobPP-2rmGlrpEciQzOUoQ" style="margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px);" title="" width="300" /></span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Not having used a stylus a lot, that was one of my first interests. The stylus, while not as perfect as the the ones for the Surface or the iPad, is included in the price, is very easy to use, does a reasonably good job, fits nicely into the device and doesn’t need charging. The Tab 10 comes with inbuilt Google Keep note-taking functionality, which isn’t bad, but could use some more features. I tried several Android apps and my favourites turned out to be Xodo for PDF markup and Adobe Photoshop Sketch for drawing. While perhaps not the first choice for artists, the tablet works great for students who have to fill in worksheets and teachers who want to grade homework by hand.</span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">My biggest concern, however, was typing. Even though external keyboards might be a bit inconvenient to use, you can connect any USB or bluetooth keyboard you prefer using. You might need a USB-C adaptor for that. I bought a cheap dongle that provides three ports: USB-C (for charging, connecting other devices), USB-A (e.g. for flash drives) and an HDMI port (for connecting to a TV or external monitor).</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); display: inline-block; height: 167.21px; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); width: 223.5px;"><img alt="" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/ixal5w7S3KbvSwbQBaMISY6LMv3AR9aSVnipdx5NMyqEwA3_2IYMj5GWYpCW56cJiDylNebGkNynJ4Y1y2L9jOyR-CT8iLYvCEXLPTUSbZkJNZ3rnr37aE5VgKBHdLk6D_ypZPrh" style="height: 167.21px; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); width: 223.5px;" title="" /></span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">The dongle provides all necessary ports to turn the tablet quickly into a small laptop computer</span><br />
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<span class="c0" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">or even desktop computer if you use an external monitor and change the settings to primary device</span><br />
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<span class="c0" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">My takeaway: while not the fastest tablet and in a way still unfinished (Google is working to improve the tablet experience of Chrome OS by the end of the year), it is a great tablet for reading (the stylus is useful for highlighting passages), note-taking, drawing, working with PDF files. When connected to a USB keyboard/mouse the Chromebook Tab 10 works like a full-fledged chromebook and when connected to an external monitor like a chromebox, which make it ideal writing homework, preparing presentations, etc. It even doubles as a smart-TV when connected to a TV.</span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Teachers can use the device for grading homework by hand in the staffroom and as as primary display device in the classroom. It connects to projectors via HDMI cable or wirelessly via Chromecast (a cheap chromecast dongle might be necessary if the protocol is not supported by the projector). The stylus comes in handy as it does not only have markup tools, but also a laser pointer function which can be used in any app or any website.</span></div>
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<span class="c0" style="font-size: 11pt; vertical-align: baseline;">Currently is a bit hard to recommend the Tab 10 for use in schools though, as it does have a distinct beta feeling to it. It is, however definitely a device worth keeping an eye on.</span></div>
ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-28011417798056748592017-08-04T12:51:00.000-07:002017-08-04T12:51:11.075-07:00Switching from Kahoot to (mostly) Quizizz with Google Classroom<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have been an avid user of Kahoot in the classroom basically ever since this innovative tool has started. However, Kahoot does have its limitations. I have always considered it a tool for motivation rather than learning and despite its innovative character it hasn’t really evolved much ever since. </span>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, what does Quizizz offer that Kahoot doesn’t? First of all it is very similar to Kahoot with the difference that Quizizz is played individually rather than together and each student works at his or her own pace as both the questions and options are displayed on the students’ devices. You can still play in teams, of course. Students only need to share a device to do so. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Apart from individually paces quizzes Quizizz offers a variety of other useful features. To begin with Quizizz has a new feature that allows you to import questions via a csv template. I simply create the quizzes in a Google Spreadsheet, which I then download and import as a csv file. This allows me to create quizzes very fast and moreover to import questions from various sources, such as documents and Quizlet. I don’t like online quiz editing much and over the years I have used Kahoot I have really only created a handful of quizzes myself. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The killer feature for using Quizizz rather than Kahoot, however, is the way it integrates with Google Classroom. You do get</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sharing via Classroom (no code required for joining the quiz) </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Homework integration (homework is automatically marked as done when the quiz is completed)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google Calendar integration (showing homework deadline)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Students’ scores and learning analytics</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course there are obvious limitations to a multiple choice tool, but with these features Quizizz has such a high level of Classroom integration, you can’t even get with Google Forms quizzes. I personally hope that Google will do something similar with Google Forms in the future. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That said, I envision two scenarios where I will probably still prefer Kahoot over Quizizz: </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When it’s only about the fun factor</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When trying to actually teaching something new rather than revising</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In most other cases the ease of creating a quiz via import and seeing my students’ progress will most likely draw me towards Quizizz and I hope to see many more online tools integrated into Google Classroom in this way in the near future. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Sharing a quiz on Google Classroom</span><img height="320" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/oWWGEN96Gt4jKENyl9Qwk52SECLW43ozYXK8OqDnyBO5_BqGP05rwsi5gThjo2Iq5or4egwTHtZQn5bufKyJht6RgZExxc0ge_KJYOT2y94jc95ZK776QLY1h0Oje7a23tdgXxy6" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624" /></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Assignments and scores in Google Classroom</span></div>
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ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-68841025058350854902017-07-25T07:40:00.001-07:002017-07-26T11:01:20.251-07:00Transitioning from tablets to Android apps enabled Chromebooks<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Until a year ago or so I used two devices in the classroom: a classroom PC (connected to a projector) and a tablet (connected to the projector via a Chromecast dongle). I used the PC for mostly for writing (substituting the chalkboard), visuals, videos, etc. and the tablet mostly for casting Google Slide presentations, showing photos and demoing the use of educational apps like Quizlet. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">During the past school year I have made a transition to using my Chromebooks (Asus Flip and Asus C302) only even where I used to use a tablet. The switch took some time and trials as initially Chromebooks be had some drawbacks over tablets. You had to install a special plug-in to be able to chromecast and even then it often didn’t work well. Another drawback was that initially Android apps didn’t feel very native to chromebooks, often crashed or some didn’t work at all. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All of these flaws disappeared over the course of the last year and even though chromebooks are of course a bit clunkier than tablets, they have all but substituted my tablet and classroom PC (where I have access to a Chromecast). It does take a little bit of getting used to the weight of holding a small laptop instead of of a tablet, but the advantages easily make up for that minor inconvenience: </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One device for all needs</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Web apps and Android apps</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No compromise on the keyboard</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">No switching between the projector sources</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Portability and mobility</span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Both Chromebooks I use have their advantages and disadvantages: the Chromebook Flip (C100PA) is smaller (even though not lighter) and feels at 10 inches very much like a tablet and is cheaper (under $250), but also considerably slower. The Chromebook C302 costs twice as much, is 12.5 inches and feels high end (great backlit keyboard, good speakers, great build quality) and is very fast. The Asus C302 is currently considered the best chromebook of 2017 by many tech blogs, e.g. </span><a href="http://www.techradar.com/news/mobile-computing/laptops/best-chromebooks-top-5-chromebooks-in-the-us-1233696" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">techradar</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 11pt; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The best thing however is, that there are lots of similar devices coming out which are especially geared towards education (low price, rugged build). It might be a bit late for the coming school year, but for the next school year Chromebooks might the best choice for those schools that use tablets. </span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx317Lxo6vr52geyPrR1bzFv92ZhYZFEARFxvRudRBGJ7aP4CJvPuIkyl-U6RdGiWfCkrLxbt1B5FekvZJlEgia5D2ZOeCWIba7TDsbWPjm_cvwExh7WcMgQMnz0Yw0zkL4GpV0u5acGuV/s1600/Screenshot+2017-07-24+at+19.25.40.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="360" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgx317Lxo6vr52geyPrR1bzFv92ZhYZFEARFxvRudRBGJ7aP4CJvPuIkyl-U6RdGiWfCkrLxbt1B5FekvZJlEgia5D2ZOeCWIba7TDsbWPjm_cvwExh7WcMgQMnz0Yw0zkL4GpV0u5acGuV/s640/Screenshot+2017-07-24+at+19.25.40.png" width="640" /></a></div>
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Anatomy app Anatronica on a Chromebook Asus C302 works flawlessly.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyXpnRsVEpeskp46JDM2VIGA5BoPil_8WB09Ld5FNl6kwu9smJBo_tIefo3CkQm5nd4GDwJYX-eZ_xQ9oAndRS1mmqvn7nvV-mbPn-DtE38YKtODj8AGiIzGVvD3xUMII7KV3H1KX3N4uz/s1600/IMG_20170725_175604.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyXpnRsVEpeskp46JDM2VIGA5BoPil_8WB09Ld5FNl6kwu9smJBo_tIefo3CkQm5nd4GDwJYX-eZ_xQ9oAndRS1mmqvn7nvV-mbPn-DtE38YKtODj8AGiIzGVvD3xUMII7KV3H1KX3N4uz/s400/IMG_20170725_175604.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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The Asus C302 in laptop mode</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI-Jh6GuvPk07pK2WxVjUKiiRIMe20gqFU2cA4i8uc-2vcYwMo4EUXMAxCs2mo_d-n0QwOftXnvdbB53YiLieET-49IP5VV57Sjwlna11E2l3-u7A0qw91-CdrPbm84J2r5taTLws2B-A-/s1600/IMG_20170725_175327.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI-Jh6GuvPk07pK2WxVjUKiiRIMe20gqFU2cA4i8uc-2vcYwMo4EUXMAxCs2mo_d-n0QwOftXnvdbB53YiLieET-49IP5VV57Sjwlna11E2l3-u7A0qw91-CdrPbm84J2r5taTLws2B-A-/s400/IMG_20170725_175327.jpg" width="300" /></a></div>
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The Asus C302 in tablet mode</div>
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<br />ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-21685577679456958512016-06-26T11:08:00.000-07:002016-06-26T11:08:02.525-07:00The 2-in-1 PCs are coming (slowly) - Chromebooks and Android Apps<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
<img alt="Screenshot 2016-06-25 at 21.39.53.png" height="391" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/aW4jrb1PIx-CPZVPvMsCdPkMaJPXZVddXLQZgAUXqfux_U--9PmrXwIJn1x5Et54VYEzuir7-Wur421vFCKEoxnD76NScKlsb9j1IIg0lUPB5ioQ2dFbbJWxK-crFHB94m21J9jG" style="border: none; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.38; transform: rotate(0rad); white-space: pre-wrap;" width="624" /></h2>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A long time ago, at the dawn of the mobile revolution I believed that (laptop-tablet) hybrids were the future of education. After having worked with one of the first available devices, the Asus Transformer Prime, I was convinced that it would take many years before that future would arrive. Not that the Prime was a bad device, on the contrary it was a very advanced one at that time - but it was a tablet and only useful as a substitute for a laptop in a very limited way. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Ever since then I have gone with two devices: a Chromebook and a Nexus tablet, both combined being more affordable than most of the hybrid solutions that are out there. Even so, I have tried a number of devices that didn’t cut it for me in the end: </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">iPad plus BT keyboard: no way this could ever work as a laptop for me</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Microsoft Surface RT: that one was a complete failure to begin with (Microsoft gave them away to teachers for a very low price because they could sell it, doing probably more harm than good for its reputation by doing so). </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Microsoft Surface 3: even though very versatile, I use it neither as a tablet nor as a laptop as it provides inferior user experience for both uses. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">On paper the newer Surface models look very good. In practice I would say they can’t beat the experience (speed, battery life, ease of use) of much cheaper Chromebooks. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My initial expectations were therefore not too high when Google announced Android apps on Chromebooks. And even though the first reviews were quite ravishing, I’m still a bit underwhelmed after receiving the Playstore on my Asus Chromebook Flip. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The bad</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the time being you can only use Android apps in the dev channels (which still has lots of bugs itself) on a limited number of devices, </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A lot of Android apps don’t work or crash frequently (among them my favourite anatomy app Anatronica) </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A lot of apps have no responsive design and look plainly awful and are awkward to use on the Chromebook </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Trackpad - touchscreen confusion: the trackpad usually works quite well, whereas touch doesn’t always. With a drawing app I have installed drawing with the trackpad works fine, but drawing with your fingers isn’t possible </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With many tablet apps (e.g. ebooks) the experience is much worse on the Chromebook than on a tablet (resolution, clunkier device and touch issues). </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The good</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It’s now possible to do a lot more with a chromebook, including audio recording, drawing and playing virtual instruments. </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Tons of educational apps are available and you don’t have to pay for them again if you have already purchased them for your smartphone or tablet. </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Also a lot more content is available that is not available on the web (e.g. magazines, Google Newsstand, epub books, etc.) </span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google seems to be really working hard on making the experience a good one. In the past week I have not only got the Playstore on my chromebook but also two more updates that have brought some improvements, such as clearly marking which apps are Chrome or web apps and which apps are Android apps. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Screenshot 2016-06-26 at 16.31.51.png" height="391" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/1MyjCFpPNcXfHCxq_xfiJmuxzUteXT_fmfuWmX3ID1eW5qAZlPmLhNjBANJYBXJvVdnxxnb2XRzu8EtSDxkpsb04CmX-mng4tEEaMklt2-1_DLqLMceBMwHkP9QCIIZ_isQl2PcB" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624" /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Takeway: even though I’m happy about the addition of Android apps to Chromebook, I don’t think I will be using a lot of them in the near future, as the experience is often much better on a tablet or smartphone. Having said that I am excited about the additional potential of Chromebooks for classroom use. Personally I prefer a Chromebook Flip over a Microsoft Surface in the classroom. The chromebook costs less than half the price of a Surface and feels way more productive to me. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have never felt the need to install many applications on my chromebook in the first place as I work primarily in my browser and there is definitely no need to install apps like YouTube or Quizlet. However the addition of Android apps on Chromebooks should make the choice for schools easier: chromebooks, tablet or more expensive Windows hybrids. I suppose with literally thousands of educationals apps (way more than there are available for Windows) the choice shouldn’t be too hard. And even though the number of apps really need might turn out to be very low effectively, their availability will hopefully remove the psychological barrier that keep many schools from choosing chromebooks in the first place. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As Microsoft has also been putting a lot of effort into its hybrid models it will be interesting to see what the future brings. Microsoft has had a good head start and has made real progress compared to the first Surface model. However, the arrival of Android apps on the desktop, via Chrome OS and Android desktops (e.g. remix OS, possibly also raspberry pi in the near future) might pose a serious threat to Microsoft’s ecosystem which would become obsolete for many non-business users. </span></div>
<br />ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-7859786354866284322016-02-05T00:30:00.001-08:002016-02-08T15:14:37.005-08:00Google Cardboard - discovering a city by numbers<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
<span style="font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m preparing a lesson about a virtual trip to London as a part of an end of term project. The idea is that students use Google Cardboard to discover London (or any other place). Just looking through Google cardboard does create a “wow-effect”, but it doesn’t make the students learn anything new. In order to focus the students’ attention on specific points it only takes a few additional steps. The ideas is that students find out about some specific numbered points themselves using Google Search, Google Image Search and Google Maps to learn about these sites. Here is how to do it:</span></h2>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Make a photosphere using </span><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.GoogleCamera" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google Camera</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> (install from </span><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.GoogleCamera" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Playstore</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">; some smartphone are not compatible though). Alternatively download a photosphere from the web using Google Search or Google+ (there are tons of photospheres on Google+, just ask the owner's permission if you can use one of them in class)</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Upload the photosphere to Google Drive and edit with photo editing software like Pixlr. Alternatively copy to desktop and edit with Photoshop or Gimp. Number the sights you want your students to find out. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Download to phone again and use the </span><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.samples.apps.cardboarddemo" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Cardboard </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Demo app (available from </span><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.samples.apps.cardboarddemo" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Playstore</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) to display you numbered photosphere. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Have the students do research on the web, using Google Maps (to find the place), Google Image Search (to confirm their hunches) and Google Search (to find out more the sights). </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Get everyone together again and talk about the solutions and the additional information the students have found. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Screenshot_2016-02-04-18-44-44_com.google.samples.apps.cardboarddemo.png" height="351" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/lcnyeHj4hblH0weg8IWLBaSAtoOu0kf182GrUfvXrEXrXdUhk29iO0eTqldwMlnCtgZdSLTYTKyPCivbWrAJpFUazhPRYiOxBuh2QVUNgSyDXpG2SqbgUP0XMDpB7zZU1qVEaV0p" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624" /></span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Alternatively you can also share out a hardcopy of a Google Map for each group and the students have to mark the sights on the map. </span></div>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You can download the London Eye example </span><a href="https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMFaXp8C88gogM9Oe3Dy2-CKpZQtJAyNWFiTpbfPjjx1gBJuSmyW2sh9U5Yd4T2wQ/photo/AF1QipOjcT1cb6w0dy-NJqMB_GSkwI5M5eO73ndPLodd?key=NEcxWnVWOEd0c0NNMzV1OVRieEpWclE4a291U0NR" style="text-decoration: none;" target="_blank"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: "arial"; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-9338823571083467452015-08-18T07:05:00.000-07:002015-08-18T07:05:25.696-07:00Creating quick tests with Google Form grid questions<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6667px; font-weight: 400; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">One of the most popular methods for creating online quizzes and tests for teacher is using Google Forms with the Flubaroo add-on. I use the same combination for tests which I already have in paper or pdf form. As typing out all questions would be a bit cumbersome and redundant, I actually just use paper/pdf with a Google Forms “answer sheet”, which then will look something like this: </span></h2>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Screenshot 2015-08-18 at 16.21.04.png" height="423px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/4FVo7AOMw8I5QTS9GEuLZg3r4_bY2g6JaTZyhDs2xzL881zHKTHKSS2IQTAIp9iAhtEgu1m8qNjW74kQzbVXPf3fBrUE5SeBSrikrt2qDlj-EA8u14DqfShvVA34qgRL4c9Hsh8" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="612px;" /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">This works particularly well with standardized tests (like the Cambridge English certificates) which use mostly multiple choice, true/false questions. This is a huge time saver, as you don’t have to type the questions themselves and you can quickly create a lot of questions instantly. I do that by copying the number of questions and possible answers from a Google sheet. Say you need 12 questions with four options all you need to do is copy and paste them from the Google sheet.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Screenshot 2015-08-18 at 16.21.54.png" height="278px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-TOgyiYEcNq6cc4-lwR-WSK3N04fnc0g-8Oks9xNN8na_Jv244CWujg7sLo108g95D9vkLEzMos0M6hOOz4ek2XB_RzlOAPf86rMXKwQTD49Fd8xFKqdhJ9joXDwSLoj-72jfA8" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="245px;" /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The students then are sent two links: one to the pdf file containing the test (which can also be printed out) and one to the Google Form to enter their answers. As this kind test is mobile friendly, the students could also use their smartphones to to that. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Using the Flubaroo add-on (there are plenty of tutorial for that) the answers are automatically graded based on a model answer by the teacher. The score and the correct answers can also be sent back to the students. This way an existing test can be quickly turned into an both student and teachers can get immediate feedback.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: 400; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Screenshot 2015-08-18 at 16.49.09.png" height="276px;" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/jNuy01e2YjCu4-yy4OtvcRfE_kvYns1oJYXnUlSjv5mdFPTfAAwo7KGfXNXRkZKoD4gDriCbSaHOIkqHJp_jtxGx03oiouf1IoYRlOwdSMRctFMJHr7PUqqXG-SVhGfO8ialEAE" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624px;" /></span></div>
<br />ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-14993666328608950912015-06-21T02:01:00.001-07:002015-06-21T02:02:53.022-07:00Google Slides mobile with Chromecast support <h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google Slides has been my favourite presentation software in the classroom for years now, the main reasons being its ease of use, speed and Google Drive integration (e.g. inserting images, linking to other files). One thing I have missed though was the integration with Google’s own Chromecast, which now has finally arrived (together with AirPlay support) in its mobile apps. </span></h2>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="IMG_20150619_133321.jpg" height="231px;" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/bAXftfiSFMDRmlNU-oRrLjs62iX-4BBMN8Lyr2cxJM473QVos0QOU0QEzBmtvb2uGif9InLjIk2DAstkYsBHVpt2G8mPf5qVqkwfmVhuJx5eXY8Zorhb1tfsKHberQQv2OqYBdI" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="308px;" /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So far you could do Slides presentations on Chromecast only via mirroring, which has a number of drawbacks: </span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">only Android 4.4 and higher devices support mirroring</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">battery drain due to constant connection and screen on</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no speaker notes as those would be seen on the big screen</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All these drawbacks disappear in the Chromecast integrated version of Slides: you can view your speaker notes and even turn off your device’s screen during presentations. And even iOS devices are supported. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As you can expect with Google first versions Chromecast support is not perfect, but it is actually pretty good for a start. Here are the pros and cons: </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Pros: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You can remote control your presentation with the following features:</span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">shows previous and next slides</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">shows speaker notes </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">shows presentation timer</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">allows video playback and pause</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is what I still miss</span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">slides slider for skipping several slides at a time</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a video slider for fine grained video control and full screen mode</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a blackout button to temporarily turn off presentation</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">a pointer </span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.666666666666666px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some of these are only minor inconveniences, however, as there are easy workarounds for them. Skipping several slide: go back to main presentation screen and choose the slide you want to continue with (you also have to reconnect the Chromecast). Video: for full screen viewing all you need to do is enlarge the video to full slide size in design mode. If you need to work a lot inside a video (frequent replay, skipping, etc.), it would be best to Chromcast from the YouTube app and if you absolutely need a pointer you can use Chromecast mirroring. </span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 14.6666666666667px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All in all, the first version of Slides with Chromecast support is highly usable and I’m looking forward to seeing more useful features in future. </span>ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-16729996183254146772015-04-28T06:39:00.001-07:002015-04-28T06:39:41.610-07:00Using Google Cast for Audio in the classroom<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google Cast for Audio has just launched and being a foreign language teacher, I’m very excited about its potential in the classroom. So I ordered the first set of affordable speakers (LG Music Flow H3 for €127) which I consider more than suitable for a classroom. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In brief, Google Cast Audio is the audio version of Chromecast and is supported by all apps and devices that support Chromecast (LG Flow Player, Google Play Music, Pocketcast, etc.). Of course you can play any local mp3 file wirelessly over wifi, but it get’s really interesting when you play from the Cloud. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Screenshot_2015-04-28-12-47-05.png" height="270px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/DA4vybIL4iaI1gfJoEJjigYaSYbodhk3dhMlTTAOAIx8t80j0c41_5I4rrRhJjiY2xU7DWMHGnp-dF1CcjrADYCMLuhDppNMCMdveXBPYWZPz8DaJjw3bwPjDWQvwons0Xm3LEE" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="432px;" /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The advantage of Google Cast Audio over other wireless ways of delivering audio (e.g. Bluetooth) are: </span></div>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">faster and easier to connect</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">very reliable due to more bandwidth</span></div>
</li>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">better quality audio</span></div>
</li>
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<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">doesn’t require any resources on your mobile device as the audio is not streamed from the device but from the network</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As you can upload all your music and audio files to Google Play Music, you don’t need much more than that for your needs (music, podcasts, foreign language files, etc.). If you don’t want to use Google Play Music, there is a variety of other services available to choose from (Deezer, etc.) When it comes to using podcasts you might want to use an app like Pocketcasts for streaming a podcast rather than downloading it. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I also use Google Drive to store sound files. Of course you can also play audio files from Google Drive, but you have to download them first (best done before your class) and keep them on your device. </span></div>
<br /><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chromebooks currently don’t seem to support Cast Audio (the chromecast extension couldn’t find the audio device). However, it is still possible to connect the H3 speaker via Bluetooth. </span></span></h2>
ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-25773527807954016772015-03-23T07:17:00.000-07:002015-03-23T07:39:48.995-07:00How to download subtitles or captions from YouTube<div style="direction: ltr; font-family: Arial; font-size: 18pt; line-height: 1; padding-bottom: 4pt; padding-top: 18pt;">
<span style="font-size: 11pt;">YouTube is probably the most used digital tool in classrooms all over the world today and lends itself for a variety of purposes ranging from short listening comprehension during classes to flipped classroom activities.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 11pt;">Often it would be useful to have the subtitles (captions) available for preparation or follow up activities, particularly in foreign language classes. Unfortunately there is no option to download subs from YouTube directly. There are, however various workarounds. The fastest way is also the geekest one and it works like this.</span></div>
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<span style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); border: 0px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); display: inline-block; height: 390.67px; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); width: 624px;"><img alt="Screenshot 2015-03-23 at 14.35.48.png" height="400" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/G9V3PZU1Nw-ihmO45Ideo91izFQxdH5UsYGMf6L8qo_dQkT5PnkY68sQInBa2W6lSSaT2OClfLUKOQE-xfvtwJtVng2mL-MB_wDw3c6CDgBNgauNiBFSjwFUCPUyB7V4ysUlYWY" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); height: 390.67px; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); width: 624px;" title="" width="640" /></span></div>
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<ol class="c31 lst-kix_9uofhi8ydfyi-0 start" start="1" style="counter-reset: lst-ctn-kix_9uofhi8ydfyi-0 0; font-family: arial, sans, sans-serif; list-style-type: none; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">
<li class="c5 c0" style="counter-increment: lst-ctn-kix_9uofhi8ydfyi-0 1; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; margin-left: 36pt; padding-left: 0pt;">Open the video you want to extract the subtitles from in Google Chrome.</li>
<li class="c5 c0" style="counter-increment: lst-ctn-kix_9uofhi8ydfyi-0 1; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; margin-left: 36pt; padding-left: 0pt;">Turn on the subtitles in the bottom right menu (often only auto-generated subtitles are available, which you might still want to download, even though the transcription is not perfect). Turn on developer tools and filter for “timedtext” and you get the URL link to the chosen subtitles file in xml format (open by double clicking and a new broswer tab will open).</li>
<li class="c5 c0" style="counter-increment: lst-ctn-kix_9uofhi8ydfyi-0 1; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; margin-left: 36pt; padding-left: 0pt;">To extract the text from the xml file I save it to my Drive (using the “save to Drive” Chrome extension).</li>
<li class="c5 c0" style="counter-increment: lst-ctn-kix_9uofhi8ydfyi-0 1; direction: ltr; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; margin-left: 36pt; padding-left: 0pt;">Finally I open the XML file with the oXygen XML Webapp (you have to connect it with xml files once using the “connect more apps” option when opening it). And voilà. That’s all you need to do.</li>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaWckKopaddlNis54N0ENPQqhZ2w9U3jPW-A_F0pZMwoMPWIPSyeYfTBHlJTh5XVfGw42kdpQBFlCqBCrzOQAmgaWqF6pTXWgOerjLKPMz4rJA_OJUoSpYUiBxTbW32BIcC2eb21qS6b2j/s1600/xB1iBTvAMeMr6FBZklA8arCDNLjxAVkpSX7N8-almbyMp5njlnkN1NWoMGo3Ki-CEPz27A=s2048.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjaWckKopaddlNis54N0ENPQqhZ2w9U3jPW-A_F0pZMwoMPWIPSyeYfTBHlJTh5XVfGw42kdpQBFlCqBCrzOQAmgaWqF6pTXWgOerjLKPMz4rJA_OJUoSpYUiBxTbW32BIcC2eb21qS6b2j/s1600/xB1iBTvAMeMr6FBZklA8arCDNLjxAVkpSX7N8-almbyMp5njlnkN1NWoMGo3Ki-CEPz27A=s2048.png" /></a></div>
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<span style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); border: 0px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); display: inline-block; height: 390.67px; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); width: 624px;"><img alt="Screenshot 2015-03-23 at 14.41.07.png" height="400" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/cVWoKdpg6q2LTcLipnqdtxaWXpjhlCkX9yp4mrWIyCt4MXRt2ztUSk-e_9wv6qbiiNND_3RJlZzjKeSqUQ8zMosN_IFCL6x4p1URVMI4BMVlgRHBH0-KuprasHHQDgJ0Pllfk_0" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); height: 390.67px; margin-left: 0px; margin-top: 0px; transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); width: 624px;" title="" width="640" /></span></div>
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If you find that method too geeky, here is another one:</div>
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Use <span class="c9" style="color: #1155cc; text-decoration: underline;"><a class="c13" href="http://www.google.com/url?q=http%3A%2F%2Fkeepsubs.com%2F&sa=D&sntz=1&usg=AFQjCNHB58TxmCvMWZntg7m1_ufR7UZ7OQ" style="text-decoration: inherit;">http://keepsubs.com/</a></span> to donwload an .srt file. Rename the file to .txt and then you can manually copy the text from the file - however it takes much more time than the first method which really only takes a few seconds once you get the hang of it. </div>
ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-82552167865588373262015-03-19T13:14:00.001-07:002015-03-19T13:16:17.698-07:00Using quick links in Chrome to existing and new Google Drive files<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.2; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google Drive is great for quickly finding your documents. The search function will find almost anything in a matter of seconds (even if hidden deep inside documents, pdf and image files) and you can star frequently used documents. </span></h2>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Screenshot 2015-03-19 at 20.06.13.png" height="425" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/QnZ_L_eZrVzu2sARcHvCO7m5aBPjJVKbIz1g6sqr2XipVbI0_glTlxI0V8TsR7xmsCayfw9jpHtXwcWadYOfgf1XKginrVM4Yc6ulmIcQfIRlBzG8JmVK64cWXkpDRByA3Dvfxw" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="640" /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, there is even a faster way to your documents than staring them. By using Chrome bookmarks you can access your files without having to go into your Drive in the first place. I do this typically with files I use almost on a daily basis, like my lesson planner (a doc) and my gradebooks (Google spreadsheets). All I need to do is star the document in the omnibox and then I can use autocomplete to get to them quickly, e.g. “less..:” for lesson planner, or the grade for which I need the gradebook. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You can even create new documents this way. However you will need to create the link manually in your bookmarks: </span></div>
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<ol>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Go to chrome://bookmarks/</span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">create a new bookmark to </span></li>
<li><a href="https://docs.google.com/document/create" style="line-height: 1.38; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">https://docs.google.com/document/create</span></a></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">name it “new doc” (or anything you will remember, like “create document”) </span></li>
<li><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">and then you will be able to use the bookmark either from the omnibox, the bookmarks bar or the bookmarks page. </span></li>
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<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you want to create shortcuts for a new slide or sheet, you only need to substitute the “document” part of the link with “presentation” and “spreadsheets” respectively. </span>ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-78589436621298689432015-02-24T12:32:00.000-08:002015-02-24T12:32:05.801-08:00Prezi for Android review<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.2; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.38; white-space: pre-wrap;">Another notorious latecomer has finally made it onto the Android platform: Prezi. The app itself is only partially useful as it is only a viewer and won’t allow you to edit, still you can use it to view presentations and to rehearse them on the go.</span></h2>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Screenshot_2015-02-24-21-15-51.png" height="391px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/yO_1B8nxZ2FCm973L3mNMGIvo2curB1I_gbmoWjK9mDJWKHPpP6rFJ8WAHqXLrGh8c33hJ5-GgcyXyv1tRPwgrz3N3qQ0Esi6CmG1hcQFq7IpkqHdaZ5j7LmUV9gmubyFrg" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624px;" /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It would be nice to have Chromecast support, so that you can the use the app for live presentations as well. In the description it says “Chromcast for supported devices”. This, however, is misleading. There is no native Chromecast support in Prezi yet. You can only use Chromcast mirroring if your device supports it (Kitkat and Lollipop so far). </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Having said that, if you do have one of those supported devices, presenting with Prezi on Android is fun. Even so it takes some getting used to (double clicking instead of clicking for zoomin in, clicking/tapping instead of swiping for continuing the path).</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The good: </span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Clean and beautiful material design</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fast</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Great for presenting if you have a Nexus or brand new Android device</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The bad:</span></div>
<br />
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">no editing</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">misleading promise of Chromecast support</span></li>
</ul>
ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-9802383499429480212015-02-19T02:57:00.001-08:002015-02-19T03:23:20.254-08:00Creating narrated screencasts<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Screen recordings have been notoriously hard to do in Android. You had to tether your device to a PC or root it to do so.This, however, has changed since Android 5.0 Lollipop which supports screen recording natively and there is a number of great and easy to use apps to help you and your students create screencasts. The app that I use for recording is </span><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iwobanas.screenrecorder.noroot.free" style="line-height: 1.38; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">scr 5+ </span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">which come both in a </span><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iwobanas.screenrecorder.noroot.free" style="line-height: 1.38; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">free</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and a </span><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iwobanas.screenrecorder.noroot.pro" style="line-height: 1.38; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">paid version</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span><span id="docs-internal-guid-216d5b91-a17b-9167-7b53-ddd2b4de29ca"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-216d5b91-a17b-9167-7b53-ddd2b4de29ca">
</span>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-216d5b91-a17b-9167-7b53-ddd2b4de29ca"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Screenshot_2015-02-19-11-34-40.png" height="273px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/EWgu9fpDu2EwIsxOCJzqTvzck_hdkMgncxslsW-ZaECKvFuMpO050-UGUiTs3f9uwALnbja-6agLAU60RHAaZFst7YGs44NaYtdDN8w5kzKRh4mOX9LhxBg1Z1HPRrr5ftg" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="364px;" /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-216d5b91-a17b-9167-7b53-ddd2b4de29ca">
</span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-216d5b91-a17b-9167-7b53-ddd2b4de29ca"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Screencast can be used for a number of purposes in education: </span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-216d5b91-a17b-9167-7b53-ddd2b4de29ca">
</span>
<br />
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-216d5b91-a17b-9167-7b53-ddd2b4de29ca">
<li dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">creating app demos (e.g. how to study vocab on Quizlet)</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">narrated presentations using Google Slides or Powerpoint</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">guided tours with Streetview or photospheres created by yourself</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">recording a whiteboard explaination</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; list-style-type: disc; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">scribbling on a chart and explaining it and much more </span></div>
</li>
</span></ul>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-216d5b91-a17b-9167-7b53-ddd2b4de29ca">
</span>
<br />
<div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-216d5b91-a17b-9167-7b53-ddd2b4de29ca"><br /></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-216d5b91-a17b-9167-7b53-ddd2b4de29ca">
</span>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-216d5b91-a17b-9167-7b53-ddd2b4de29ca"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here are some tips on how to do screencasts: </span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-216d5b91-a17b-9167-7b53-ddd2b4de29ca">
</span><br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span id="docs-internal-guid-216d5b91-a17b-9167-7b53-ddd2b4de29ca"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Screencasts should be ideally short, somewhere between one to five minutes, as they get hard to listening to, particulary when not edited. </span></span></div>
<span id="docs-internal-guid-216d5b91-a17b-9167-7b53-ddd2b4de29ca">
<br /><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some light editing can be done with the YouTube editor. Often all you need to do is trim the beginning and the ending of a video, which can be done easily with the YouTube editor. Other functions of you the YouTube editor you might want to use are increasing the audio volume and using free music in case you don’t want to do a voice narration. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Scripting a screencast before recording it might be a good idea, particularly if you want to avoid </span></div>
slips. One of the avantages of creating a script is, that you can reuse it later for creating the captions. </span><div>
<br /><div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I use the YouTube editor also to add a podcast title sequence and closed captions. See also this </span><a href="http://glearningblog.blogspot.co.at/2014/12/multimedia-production-minus-desktop.html" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">previous post here</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="400" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/RhDBr5Y3SiA" width="654"></iframe></div>
</div>
ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-33338066838977243622015-01-31T06:18:00.001-08:002015-01-31T06:18:51.917-08:00Quick tip: inserting special characters in Google Docs<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
<div class="c12" style="direction: ltr; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
Sometimes old habits die hard. Usually whenever I need a special character I google it and copy and paste it into a document. I just found out there is an easier way to do that: you can search for special characters right inside the “Insert” <span style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); border: 0px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); display: inline-block; height: 20px; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); width: 113px;"><img alt="Screenshot 2015-01-31 at 15.00.57.png" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/L7dpGkr5zlIgWG-kB7kyW64tHxDNwfaUkBZH0yDxqalzfat663GYICnnCjrLbk2LH22716a6RdfXI9rOdHGG3bC3-nOc3pMeTYOcaAIrUFOihOUy3A5dLjbHJ4USb4AjZQ" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); height: 391px; margin-left: -89px; margin-top: -180px; transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); width: 624px;" title="" /></span>menu. </div>
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</div>
<div class="c12" style="direction: ltr; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
Then you can search for a symbol like “female” or for character sets like “cyrillic”, “notes”, “logic”, etc. The same thing works if you need images like “cat” or “tree”.</div>
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</div>
<div class="c12" style="direction: ltr; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
There are a variety of uses for this function, starting form creating picture/text stories with little kids to phonetic transcrition and mathematical or logical formulae. </div>
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<div class="c12" style="direction: ltr; font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-weight: normal; line-height: normal;">
<span style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); border: 0px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); display: inline-block; height: 272.98px; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); width: 542.5px;"><img alt="Untitled GIF.gif" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/3iXPmiQ7eTbwFNQFOw7PUoMD2CXMLyuJXrCUFhFFlJhPfKzz4yxq9aIY2C0PJx_69OYapWCE6Dzvmrwcsx9FjJHV7G1QQIHkYVvYH1rcujLxx4cpwGetMi6hf25Zfs9tnA" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); height: 478.82px; margin-left: -134.52px; margin-top: -123.95px; transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); width: 922.4px;" title="" /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); border: 0px solid rgb(0, 0, 0); display: inline-block; height: 272.98px; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; transform: rotate(0rad) translateZ(0px); width: 542.5px;"><br /></span></div>
</h2>
ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-62773544619072970202015-01-18T02:31:00.001-08:002015-01-18T02:31:45.403-08:00Viewing any Streetview image in virtual reality/Google Cardboard<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google Cardboard is a very cheap ($20) way of enjoying virtual reality applications. Even though applications for education are still in their infancy, there are a couple of interesting apps for schools, like the guide of Versailles palace or Streetviews included in the Cardboard demo app. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="aurora Screenshot_2015-01-18-10-13-01.png" height="361px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/oNc6DfM-Q_aHli8euNiaoXOsD970gzDZTWSfuQbv7Y-unxudE7ReacpNyBdAjSbWYmmOIDi--3WWIh9BHYLgow-eL2iotZGAuEwR4199E_EM56T-DyAJWwYGLSEq9t7f1Q" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="602px;" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">If you have already tried out Google Cardboard app you might have wondered how you can view any Streetview image, and not just the ones shown in the demo app. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-9074acdd-fc92-9212-a5c1-74c2c439b99f" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Here is the trick: you need the latest version of the Google Maps app. In the lower right corner there is an icon that lets you view the streetview in a look around mode. If you double tap that icon you get a spilt VR image. That’s all. Now you can enjoy the streetview in your Google Cardboard. </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/flxoy_PdXhE" width="560"></iframe>ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-25077720480045726542014-12-21T02:08:00.001-08:002014-12-22T06:18:30.265-08:00Multimedia production minus desktop applications<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even though I’m a big fan of the cloud and cloud applications (I’ve been using Google Drive and Docs for a couple of years now instead of desktop), multimedia has always been a kind of watershed for me demarcating the limits of online applications. Things, are beginning to change, however. Photoshop has been recently made available for </span><a href="http://www.cnet.com/news/checking-out-photoshop-for-chromebooks-network-computing-revived/" style="line-height: 1.15; text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">chromebooks</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and there have been many other applications before. What has been missing (not counting professional features not really required in education) is speed and integration. </span></h2>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With some new features in Android Lollipop (screen recording without rooting the device), I have been motivated to give it a try and create a video podcast without any desktop application, just using a smartphone and a chromebook. </span></div>
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="410" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/H1LbbQLkbF4" width="654"></iframe></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The project involved the following steps:</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>part one: android smartphone</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">recording the screen and voice on a smartphone using the (free) <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.iwobanas.screenrecorder.noroot.free" target="_blank">scr 5+ Android app</a></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">recording video using the photo app</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">uploading the footage from the smartphone to YouTube</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>part two: chromebook</b></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">starting the YouTube creator to edit</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">assembling and trimming the clips</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">levelling audio</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">using YouTube creative commons music for the jingle</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">writing the closed captions in Google Docs</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">downloading the captions as a .txt file and uploading to YouTube for automatic caption processing</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> saving and publishing the video</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">The only thing I have done with a desktop application was creating the animation in Adobe After Effects. If you don’t mind static titles, you could also use the YouTube editor to create the titles. </span><br />
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">All in all the result comes across less professionally than if you use a desktop application. But the workflow definitely beats the desktop if your expectations aren’t too high, plus it would make collaborative projects (e.g. a video of a field trip with footage from many students) much easier to handle. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img height="400" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/NY6xB1_3bvU4Fi0oob5y1gJB3By2lnj4C3gV8OMeuBpCjG0-x4doykflMRel1sQpPDFW9BtK0oD2QcKBlCEyc27SiAMREfbfZ9oqBUs_-7bp0rH0EpfszVuQs-PXWMcbWQ" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="640" /></span>ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-52835426565388385442014-12-20T15:33:00.003-08:002014-12-20T16:14:57.166-08:00Will smart watches ever be relevant in education? <h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">This may indeed seem a strange question when neither the majority of schools nor most students have figured out how to use their smartphones for learning yet. What’s more, a quick search on the web will bring up hundreds of articles about how useless and geeky smart watches are and that they are doomed to fail. Until recently I thought the only use for smart watches in school settings ever would be for cheating. Yet, having only worn an android wear watch for a week has changed my mind and here is why. </span></h2>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="screen.png" height="153px;" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_941gjWv3F_DWw_hvb_7Vzr2bokVTvKgXVm2EHTtqtPqyc2Q3VX5hA5izDDJE88zF2YfsxGDPAwOPKsTnJHt6yAjoPYVOXnohxdonfw5PyImcZzWrsyvr6qjBhpy2yP7Gg" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="153px;" /></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The education category for android wear so far isn't really filled with a lot of shiny apps yet. One notable exception being the much lauded “Duolingo” (see screenshot), which lets you learn vocabulary in language and level you specify and invites you to do some casual learning on the go. The app isn't perfect though. It would be nicer if you could decide which sets of items to study yourself like in Quizlet. Even if it were perfect, it wouldn’t ignite much optimism for the use of any kind of systematic studying on watches - most people would prefer a phone or, even better, a tablet. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, what could possibly be the use of a watch in learning? It will be most likely in more contextual and spontaneous situations. An app that excites me much more than the current version of Duolingo is musiXmatch. It shows the lyrics to any song playing on your connected device. Let’s assume I’m learning Spanish and listening to “Feliz Navidad”. I could simply read along while listening. But I don’t have to do that. Just listening to the song and occasionally glancing at the watch when I don’t catch a word would be helpful enough to use the watch as a learning tool. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="screen.png" height="164px;" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_fmtipgqjFT1XeSQWSNMTD3bvHd0nZix6kzRivrp2IlJPaxU3u-FnWzmtrL5UoHnhInaD6GIOM2hA3SsGw6LaIIgWwhRxnTP0WNAqdhjgXMCpd-xGXipDoRkQYTs6e1kxA" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="164px;" /></span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Voice commands will probably turn out to be even more useful than apps. You can do quick research on the web and get instant results (like “What is the capital of Belgium”). What will be even more interesting is getting results from your personal notes and materials (Google Drive, Evernote, textbooks, etc.). While this isn’t possible yet, I suppose it won’t be far away either. I already get personalized search results now, e.g. when I ask to show me my pictures of London (I get a series of my own photos and I can swipe between them). </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Like there are a lot of situations now in which students don’t really need a PC for learning, because they can be done equally well or even better on a smartphone (studying vocab being one of them), there will be situations in which students will rather use their watches than phones. Here are some obvious and perhaps less obvious ones: </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">translations (you can get instant translations already now by saying e.g. “translate book into Japanese”)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">quickly checking results of exercises (e.g. math problems done with paper and pencil)</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">feedback and student response systems (while not available yet, do you really need a smartphone to click yes or no?)</span></div>
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<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">getting quick information via audio (e.g. “Who was Benjamin Franklin?”)</span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">remote-controlling presentations, videos, etc. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">quickly taking notes and accessing them </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Last but not least, smart watches will be an important organizational tool. I have my Google Calendar connected to all my lessons from my school’s online system. My watch tells me which lessons come up next and which ones have been cancelled. If I care to enter the data I even get more useful information like what I have planned for each lesson, which of my students has got a presentation, etc. So, my brief answer to the above question is: “Yes, of course”. </span><br />
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ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-61771389347727974192014-12-08T02:41:00.002-08:002014-12-08T02:47:06.012-08:00Marking students’ work - transitioning from Word to Google Docs<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1; white-space: pre-wrap;">I use Google Docs for most of my needs as a teacher: notetaking, lesson plans, worksheets, blogging, etc. However, so far I have used desktop software when it comes to one of my most frequent tasks: marking homework. Most students still use desktop software to write their homework and send it to my via email. With the recently added feature “Edit with Google Docs” it has become fun to edit the files in Google Drive.</span></h2>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even though it has been possible to edit Word documents for a while now in Google Drive, this was a bit cumbersome as the file had to be saved to Drive, located in drive and then converted to a Google Document. The new feature does it all in one click, which has made Google Docs a better workflow option than downloading the file, launching a desktop application and then uploading again as an attachment. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Screenshot 2014-12-08 at 09.55.37.png" height="195px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/FVvdNT4a8zPHg69daccJ6wR-HFp1V4Sz2x_5r7eau2WcNTgKKmn1aX-w_3uMwNg2T3GUyzK9b3HJ2jubSxLARe2x39xz1N_A0plb2svFG8YcOyhCvD7foNNXdwTgF7O64g" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="276px;" /></span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Instead of using Word’s “track changes” feature you use “suggested edits” in Google Docs to mark the homework. There are then two options to send it back to your student: either via sharing, or emailing it as an attachment. As only few of my students use Google Drive I prefer the latter option. The default option for the attachment format is “PDF”, which is not useful in this case as the suggested edits are not shown. Changing it to “Microsoft Word” sends it back in the same format the students have sent it to me, plus all suggested edits look exactly like they would have been done using “track changes” in Word. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I find this workflow faster and more convenient than using Word. You can save time as you don’t have to wait for Word to launch and for the file to be uploaded again. And this can make a big difference when you have to edit some 20-30 documents. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 24px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Screenshot 2014-12-08 at 09.58.42.png" height="347px;" src="https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/tcADOTzhZVy5h9OyU7BasdTnsEIvFz_G0EMSTZ3KOCdrg-8qKfqu0d1GxRL-07MWSCZkzRDuGLVEH2IVoovljo5qTkRBeuKbZS5Q8qwT1bRL0JVFxXgznDtkcl9kn8ijRg" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624px;" /></span></h2>
<br />ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-34897410934516802022014-11-29T04:57:00.002-08:002014-11-29T15:11:50.066-08:00Google Translate: making artificial intelligence visible<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google Translate has been mocked and banned by teachers for the most part of its history. However, many are not aware that Google Translate has evovled tremendously since launched in 2006 and that is serves 200 million users each day. </span></h2>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Of course, Google translate is far from producing error free tanslations. Yet, it is time for teachers to explore the strengths and pitfalls of the service with their students (who, despite warnings by their teachers are among the most avid users). </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="google translate.gif" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/IPea93XliHSFmVwvNRY6axZptrNPufNyTeuMwa-cS43XVNVn7JgsxMaCjJ_bBRtHDGdcCtLdNKvWePYXsPQBrG0QZJCPRX0FrUv9KFRJsLG8DCt57L2LErxdh1ucacw1mQ" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" /></span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One nice feature of translate is that it produces results as you type along and changes them according to the context (this is also what humans brains have to do when parsing real language). In the following example you can see how Google Translate deals with grammar and vocabulary by disambiguation using the context. The first German word in the example could be the personal pronoun for the third person female or for the third person plural. The German word “Bank” can refer to a bank (financial institution) or to a bench. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Language and IT teachers can use such example to demonstrate to their students how AI and neural networks work as well as how natural languages work and how people process them. </span></div>
<br />ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-61373973959286198232014-11-24T14:49:00.002-08:002014-11-24T14:49:46.327-08:00How to use an Android device with Chromecast and Google Drive/local media at school<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have been a big fan of the inexpensive and easy to use Chromecast dongle for a year now. Even though it is great for home entertainment (YouTube, Netflix, etc.), it has been less than ideal in a school setting for a long time. </span></h2>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">With the recent addition to screen mirroring things have changed considerably. Now it is possilbe to show virtually any kind of content via screencasting:</span></div>
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">multimedia (video, audio, photos)</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">presentations</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">mindmaps</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">live app demos for your students</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">web conferencing via a smartphone or tablet</span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">and much more</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, only a limited number of devices is supported currently (Android Kitkat and Lollipop). Of course, it is still possible to show photos from Google+ photos and videos from YouTube as well as a number of other options. One glaring omission, however, is still Google Drive and Google Slides support. I keep most of my media for my classes in Google Drive and I also would like to be able to show presentations, so I find it a bit dissappointing that Google hasn’t provided it yet. What’s more, if you want your students to show their local photos or videos via Chromecast it can also turn out to be tricky without screen mirroring. </span></div>
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<img alt="Screenshot_2014-11-24-23-04-37.png" height="391px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/UPVlZQTt93QVfz5WvFJYNIcsiyXH-W3c9uLxSf1-bZOy3HRWBul2nkd66xsKuNAPT8Vg8bzTmjcODzY2MuGHSn_yPbw61vRoyTWL3i8G-hODGeMtmjQxq2DXdcQI1GTV3Q" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; font-family: Arial; line-height: 1; transform: rotate(0rad); white-space: pre-wrap;" width="624px;" /></h2>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">One app that seems to have it all is the free </span><a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=de.stefanpledl.localcast" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Localcast </span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">(with an additional free cloud plug-in). You and your students can show both local media as well as access media (photos, audio, video, pdf files) stored on Google Drive. In addition you can show presentations using a little trick. As the app can show pdf files, all you need to do is to download a Google slides presentation from the Drive app and it is saved as a pdf file. Localcast then creates images on the fly (no animations, etc. supported!). The app is a bit quirky at times, but works great in general and there is an add-supported free version, so that the students won’t have any costs when downloading the app onto their devices. </span></div>
<br />ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-17593701345652289512014-11-17T13:03:00.000-08:002014-11-17T13:03:22.386-08:00Google Keep now allows sharing notes<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google Keep has just received a very useful feature: sharing notes. What makes this feature particularly efficient is how fast and easy it can be used. The sender’s gmail contacts are used to make finding the recipient a matter of seconds and the recipient gets a notification and can start to read/edit the note with a single tap. What’s more, the edits are updated live as in Google Docs. </span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-14c8d342-bf90-5302-08f2-50fe4a24bc21" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Using Google Keep in an educational context is probably still not very meaningful, as the creation of notebooks is still absent and for most purposes Google Docs are more efficient. It may still turn out to be a useful tool to use among a group of students or two teachers working together. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="Unnamed image (2).png" height="268px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/AhvvUm1AVNr06Zw6l367lDD3k4fGFKMDjboVw05L4iX9uKyju4Exe9PXgRds2jOTv-ciyXHiFssP6dA_56FQ--v4yDCnr6dnP-VZzaKZwCOSiPyrxF23eZQmCHmnmHCSLA" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="602px;" /></span></div>
<br />ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-21119961232596468002014-11-10T23:40:00.000-08:002014-11-11T03:44:04.800-08:00Screen recording finally made easy in Android Lollipop<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.15; white-space: pre-wrap;">So far screen recording on an Android device has been only possible either by rooting it or by connecting your device to a PC and record the screen there. With Lollipop this unfortunate situation has changed and it has become really easy to record the screen. </span></h2>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve downloaded and tested two free apps: Mirror and SCR 5+ free and both work fine even though the former is still in beta and the latter has a three minute limit in the free version. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In an educational setting this functionality can be used for a variety of purposes. </span></div>
<ol style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">You can create a demo of a useful app for your students. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Students can record a voceover for a presentation. </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">They can do the same thing with a book, to create a multimedia book or simply as reading practise </span></div>
</li>
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: decimal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Annotation of PDF files for peer teaching</span></div>
</li>
</ol>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<br />
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Personally I am very excited about this functionality, because it makes it very easy and quick for students to create their own video projects. Editing in an educational setting often is too time consuming (particularly audio, which would require different effects such as normalizing and noise reduction, which require professional desktop software). So, uploading to YouTube or Google Drive straight away is often the best option. </span></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some editing can be done in YouTube as well. You might want to trim the video and add closed captions for example. I have recorded the following video on a Nexus devices and uploaded it to YouTube. The editing (trimming and closed captioning) was done on a Chromebook inside YouTube (YouTube Creator). </span><br />
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<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="410" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/WSbVWKS5zBE" width="654"></iframe>ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-61626343415322853042014-09-20T13:33:00.000-07:002014-09-21T01:19:25.748-07:00Creating an online library catalogue with Google Drive<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
</h2>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-998d7929-94c3-eb60-9cb6-cf59fe6b6aa5" style="font-weight: normal;"><span id="docs-internal-guid-df9bde0d-9748-d70b-f5e4-62c8102a57e9"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 24px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="2014-09-21_10-12-28.png" height="493px;" src="https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/2_lhupaZyKscKwcr-ZQlN21CBjUCMz1CcnAe1DqDcINFG8iFvuzS1gtqO1LKfricmCCDUAMf7chfVNvVvUXPqb4kCTSZ5c_mfzta0zjfpvfL0ep1jfN61jcOdUBKw42oXg" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0rad);" width="624px;" /></span></span></b>
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<b style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 24px; font-weight: bold; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">At the beginning of this school year I was faced with a novel task: putting the school’s library catalogue online for our students. My first thought was simply to use Google Docs or Sheets and publishing the catalogue online (you could use the browsers search ctrl-f to find titles). </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">However, after having tried out these options I found them quite cumbersome for users and tried to come up with something more database like, using Google Fusion Tables (you might have to add them to your Drive: New>connect more apps > fusion tables) and was quite satisfied with the result. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<a href="https://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?docid=1Iq_pgnCMmhZqd7sLO1E6net6YHbQViPhy67oJm_9" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Example catalogue here</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Basic catalogue:</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Create a new fusion table and import a sheet with your catalogue either via file (csv, xls, etc.) or from Google Sheets. I got my data by exporting the titles from our library database explication. The first row of the file has to contain the database headers (author, title, etc.). </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Once the data have been imported all you need to do is create new views (layouts) for the search options. I have created one tab for search by title/author/year and then enabled the respective filter. Interestingly the pre-chosen filter only shows up for the users if it contains a value (I opted for a simple blank character). The final step is to publish the table to the web (I chose “anyone with the link can view”) and to share or publish the link. And that’s all there is to it. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Advanced options: </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To make the catalogue look more professional you can add a couple of features, like a logo, a description and a link to a reservation page. All these features can be added via the menu File > About this Table > Edit table information. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">For the reservation page a simple </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1TIeTjtUt4-le1UHK__Pm0XznMSnNsbbjFDVpimssBak/viewform" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Google form</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> will do the trick. You can even get email notifications when users submit reservations by setting up the notifications in the corresponding Google Sheet. </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><img alt="2014-09-20_21-48-55.png" height="323px;" src="https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/7b0UwORLOC-Hk-TWCAi3uN6yXsvs0dSpG6FUPUKcdXsm8liXJTqb6_tOq7hJujJ5Pxj_DUHfWeceav7wSygpl1xF8qOuBZRg6HgBVqBSZA7Gi9Sz2Mi6A7Se3uMttFEx4A" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0.00rad); border: none; transform: rotate(0.00rad);" width="624px;" /></span><br />
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NB: Of course the online catalogue won't synchronise with your database application. However, it is easy to update the online catalogue by importing new titles (import new rows). </div>
<br />ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4791733336688991569.post-5961568115185157582014-09-01T15:03:00.000-07:002014-09-03T01:38:44.826-07:00Google Sheets: automated feedback with rubrics<h2 dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1; margin-bottom: 4pt; margin-top: 18pt;">
<img alt="2014-09-01_23-20-37.gif" height="373px;" src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/uDBJ9aQxXY-HxBuwZGl4O_ZHG4xyPOpKKbmfVuLdFTJE2iPh9uMSxuW5gs0XiwbWlgJPQtzK7DdR1wZjXC2pkpdg9e88qSj6SafnBjsGP-79l7ak4R-gxrzGKOiCfNlPkg" style="-webkit-transform: rotate(0rad); border: none; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-weight: normal; line-height: 1.15; transform: rotate(0rad); white-space: pre-wrap;" width="624px;" /></h2>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">A new school year has come upon us and it’s the first time I will have to give feedback to my students using rubrics. After having read and watched a couple of tutorials on the web I wasn’t really completely satisfied with any of them. Most tutorials suggest the use of Google Forms, which is a good idea, but not a perfect solution as you have to use two different tools. Furthermore, I only would advocate Google Forms for entering data if you want to do that on a mobile device as that would be more user friendly than using Sheets for that purpose. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">So, I had to come up with my own solution, which I demonstrate in the animated gif above. Basically, you need to create two sheets (or four if you want to email the results to your students). </span></div>
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<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">first sheet is the rubric description</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or template, pretty much as you would see any rubric. The </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: bold; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">second sheet (rubric grading)</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a list of your students, plus the categories (I use the transpose function with the data from the rubric sheet) plus the description. For the description I simply use data validation with dropdown lists (make a copy of the </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NhSGnQKl0U3mTccEFo9TTo4xmLRUAzYMDjvCOJtAobs/edit#gid=1138139913" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sample sheet</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> if you are not familiar with this feature). You can additionally use conditional formatting for highlighting the achieved skill level. </span></div>
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<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.15; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Some teachers would then print the sheet and cut it up to give the slips to their students. If you prefer to give feedback to your students via e-mail two more sheets are necessary. In the third sheet I concatenate the descriptors with the results (e.g. Organization: well organized) to prepare the data for mail merge. Then I use one last sheet to actually create a report for mail merge. I use the free autocrat add-on for mail merge, but there are also other options. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In case you are not familiar with one or several functions I suggest making a copy of the </span><a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NhSGnQKl0U3mTccEFo9TTo4xmLRUAzYMDjvCOJtAobs/edit#gid=1138139913" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="color: #1155cc; font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sample sheet</span></a><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in your own Google Drive and using it as a template. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><b>Update</b>: I have been asked about a rubric that would include also points for each single category. Here is the respective <a href="https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Wx2p8UqOpWszUdfOj8OLpRykRV_PNVbyS9Z87PuSsfU/edit?usp=sharing" target="_blank">template</a>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 15px; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span>ahlearninghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15628983786716281809noreply@blogger.com