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Transcript

I am so excited to be here speaking about a topic that I love. It's just a great topic especially now with COVID-19. It’s called motivation, let's do this. I want to thank brainstorm 20/20 for giving me the opportunity to speak and more specifically a good friend of mine who I connected with on Twitter, Pat Haussmmann. He is a great guy, and I really recommend that you connect with him and also I'd love for you to connect with me as well. I put my email address, Twitter, Facebook, linkedin, and Instagram in the opening slide. I am personally a huge fan of Twitter, so I hope you can check it out. So what I'm going to do is, I'll just run through the presentation, you'll get a copy of this and I hope you'll look at it again at some point. There's an introduction video and a piece right here that's something that I usually put on Twitter.

So the first thing is we have to realize that motivation is going to be lacking for students, families, and educators; it just is. I don't care how positive your motivation is going to be, in times like these, for many reasons students, even though they might say “oh my God I don't like going to school”, miss school. I can't tell you the number of kids that have said “ I really didn't realize how much I miss being at school.” So that's a great thing for you, if you were a teacher. For students, this has to do with many things. Even though we think that they're really good at technology, it's not this kind of technology they are used to. It’s totally thrown away their learning curve, how they learn and communicate.

For families, it's simple. I have two kids. I have a daughter, who's a freshman in college. She's home, and I have a son who is a junior in high school. He actually goes to my school, and now home as well. It's incredibly challenging for them, because they are constantly getting up at super late hours, and you know their motivation is causing our families motivation to drop. There is also, for many families, huge financial responsibilities while being at home, and lots of variables that are just making it hard for families to be motivated themselves.

Then, lastly, it's about educators. I'm a teacher. I've been a teacher for 30 years, and I love being at school. I mean that, I really do! And I am sure that you feel the same way, but right now we are being asked to teach in a completely different way. Even if you did technology before, you're not doing it like this. Everything we do now is email, learning management systems, Google Meets and Zoom. It's brand-new, and that is a surefire recipe for causing a lack of motivation, and that's just the tip of the iceberg. There's so many other things that go on; just one thing like assessing students can cause amazing amounts of stress. Especially if you are a structured teacher.

Okay, so now we're going to look at the challenges we all face. Number one for students, and just looking at the list, I don't want to cover everything in detail. Family support is huge. Also, a lot of kids don't understand the work, the directions there can be really hard. How many times kids will say to me, “Shap, I don't understand the directions.” Even though I thought the directions were very clear, I guess they didn’t. The lack of flexibility, and I'll talk about that later. What I mean by that, is we've got to be flexible with kids. We can't be stuck on only one way or one thing. I know from personal experiences with students that language barriers are huge. If you have English language Learners, and kids that don't grasp the language it is going to be so hard because now you can't see them face-to-face. We already talked about how kids are home, and maybe they're not motivated, especially if they weren't motivated before, it's going to be hard to be motivated now. Finally, busy work can be challenging even in the best of situations. Now, kids will be like, “why am I doing this, it is a total waste!” Again, the technology knowledge they have and the home challenges that they face make being motivated hard for most kids.

For educators, just being home is a cause of lacking motivation. The lack of structure is going to be challenging. I know plenty of teachers that have certain things they do all the time, over and over. They're comfortable with it at school, but now they've probably tried so many techniques to get that structure. I know I have, and I'm still trying to do that. We have the issues of assessment. Right now our school is using complete or incomplete. Without grades, it can be extremely challenging for educators because we're so used to grades. I won't get into a grading thing. Admin support, communicating with families can be hard, and the stress of what I do now, just means that after we are hopefully done with this, and we go back to normal, what does that look like? There are huge variables in learning for all kids, and even now more than ever, just the technology implementation can be a motivation killer. If you were somebody who didn't use a lot of technology, you are really going through some tough times and lacking motivation.

Lastly, for families, the challenges they face are the same kinds of things. That's part of the issue with three groups of students, teachers and families. We are all going through the same thing. For example, many parents don't have any idea how to use the technology that their kids are being asked to use. They have job and financial responsibilities that you're hearing about all the time. I don't need to rehash the economy piece, but that's a big problem. I keep coming back to technology and computer access. I'm lucky, my kids are lucky, we each have our own device. There are so many families that don't have that luxury. I just had a conversation with a mother,who told me that she and her husband are essential workers in the medical field and her daughter, who I teach cannot get access to a computer until 4:00 in the afternoon. I mean what is she doing until 4. Think about the pressure that puts on the kid and the family. Iif you are a graduating senior, which I teach plenty of. I feel so bad for them, and we know that's a huge stressor, and it causes a lack of motivation. Sleep habits are another big one. I know my kids are getting up super late. and it's challenging for me not to get upset, but I'm trying hard. There is this feeling of being hopeless. Like when is it going to come to an end. So now that we've covered all this. Let's really get to the good stuff and that's how we fix it. How do we get motivation back with families, students and educators?

Here we go for students. The first thing is we want to be positive. Of course that should be in the classroom as well, but we really need to be positive now, especially when it's easier not to be. It’s also necessary to demonstrate a certain degree of flexibility. Sure, it's easy to have deadlines and due dates, but right now if you want to motivate your students try showing a high level of flexibility, with the understanding of the things they are going through. I’m a huge believer in the “often praised principle!” If you have four assignments, and three of them don't get done, but one does, I know it's hard to give kudos to the one assignment when there are still three that are still missing. Do it! You'll be happy you did! We need to make sure that we are praising students for the good work they do, and making sure that it's more than just a “hey good!” We should tell them what you're really proud of. Be a great listener. It’s such an important skill in normal situations. Right now, with so much uncertainty listening can make a huge difference for kids. It’s a skill that we all need, especially now with the communication and technology piece.

So this presentation is about motivation. How do you get kids motivated? I always mention to them about trying things that relate to managing your time better, taking some time for you, exercise, be with your friends (socially not in person!) Along with this, is having pride in your work. Mentioning to them about doing their best work because they want to excel and not for a grade but for themselves can be tough, but with practice can really make a difference. Many kids are also afraid to take a risk, which leads to our last one. That’s challenging them to be better every single day. Students in large part want to be challenged especially if it's coming from your heart and you really mean it. Yes it has to be positive! No matter the grade level, kids want that and if you just keep the challenges manageable for them they won't get frustrated.

On to the family peace. Like I’ve mentioned previously, families are going through hard times. Whether it’s health issues, financial problems, or just coping with the daily life of uncertainty. Having two teens myself, I'm doing all I can to try to motivate my family. Here are some things that may be helpful: number one, be appreciative of what other families are going through. I know that other situations may be far worse than mine, so it helps me to be appreciative of what they're going through, and understanding that a non-judgmental attitude or positive approach to helping them will help create a motivated family situation. Be aware that some parents don't understand where we're coming from, and they might not always agree on how things are handled. But we really do need to be positive with them, if we expect the motivation to increase. I make a point to stress the importance of us working together. It really does take a team effort. When things are tough, don’t be the teacher who complains about their child. Instead, mention what their kids are doing well. Nothing is going to get a parent motivated like you calling up and saying, hey I love what your kids doing in class!” I’ve witnessed many situations where after contacting them with a positive message, they will go right back to their son or daughter and mention that their teacher called and said, you're doing a great job!” It also helps them to see the light at the end of a tunnel. As a teacher of many seniors, I am trying so hard to do this not always successfully. It’s the constant talk about how I'm going to help you get through it and that in the end you’ll be okay. Even though it sounds like a stretch, there are new skills that families are developing at home. Learning how to manage time, being creative with family time, and actually spending much more time together is a great motivator. One final important point. Many families may not ask for help. Give it anyway. Just by inquiring about their child will be a great motivational tool to provide that little push that can make a difference.

On to the final educator piece. I’ve been doing this for 30 years. This has been one of the greatest challenges staying motivated. There are strategies which will work though. The first thing I’d say is to be positive even when it's easy to look at all the negative stuff around us, it really does work. Next, is the same flexibility piece that we show with students. We have to be flexible with ourselves. I’ve done so many takes of this presentation and I know it’s not perfect because of the situation. We can’t beat ourselves up over these types of things. Instead, let’s learn from them, grow as people and educators. Taking these challenges is one of the greatest rewards of being a teacher. When we do challenge ourselves, we must stay on task if something doesn't work the first time. With our current situation, we are all learning on the fly. Trying to accomplish everything at one time will cause fatigue and a loss in confidence. Instead, a better, more effective approach is to think small first instead of trying to cover every single thing that you’d do in a regular class. Something simple like an announcement to your student may be a small sign that you haven't tried before. If you start small it's going to pay off big-time. Keep in mind that most educators are going through the same things we are. By being patient and surrounding yourself with positive people you’ll become more motivated. Before you know it, the people who are sharing your motivation and positivity will find somebody else. Lastly, allow yourself a pat on the back. You're worth it!

Anybody who knows me, knows I am always doing acronyms. So I did an acronym for the word motivate. Let’s quickly go through it. The M is for me, and what that means is that motivation no matter what starts with us, yes I'm going to mention having others around you but first we have to get ourselves motivated. The O is for being open for mistakes happening, because we're going to make them no matter what. The T even though I just mentioned the part is the team part. It’s just as important to make sure that you are surrounding yourself with other motivated people to help you. Whether it is your friends, family or fellow educators. They are there to support you.

As a health teacher, I talk a lot about intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. I like to think I am intrinsically motivated, but we all need that little I, which is incentive. Even a phrase or something that’s going to inspire you to do a little more. With that, we have to be willing to Venture out of your comfort zone and into uncharted waters. Yes, it can be challenging and sometimes scary, but if you do it enough they really pay off. Once you start to Achieve small steps and goals, you get to the point of building habits. You'll understand more when I talk about exercise. The biggest thing is if you start out small and you have that little achievement, before you know it you have developed a habit of being positive, working hard, and inspiring others. So whatever you plan on doing to get motivated, Take the challenge, it'll pay off and lastly, be Excited! I mean, get excited about being motivated. Get excited about helping others. If you do that it's going to have a long-lasting change and improve your positivity.

Everybody, I'm wrapping up! A huge thank-you! I hope you enjoyed the presentation, and more importantly, I hope that you were able to pick up one tip that inspired you, and made you smile. Even pass something on to your students and their families, and even to others that you know. Remember, building a motivated mindset starts with you. I have a short closing video. Hopefully you’ll check it out. Have a wonderful day! Stay safe, stay happy, get motivated!

Brainstorm 2020: What Do You Like?

May 1, 2020 by timstahmer

Presented by Phil Strunk, History Teacher, Clarke County Public Schools

In an unprecedented year we all need words of encouragement and reminders that even in the midst of hard times there are things we do well. Check out this video where Phil Strunk (@MrPStrunk) encourages educators to learn from others, but also recognize that they themselves have talents to bring to the table.

Transcript

Hello everyone,

It is my privilege to serve as one of the spotlight speakers for the virtual Brainstorm Conference. My name is Phil Strunk. I am a teacher from Clarke County, Virginia where I teach sixth and seventh grade United States History I and II.
Let me be the 10,000th person to say during this pandemic that these are unprecedented times we are living in. Our world was thrown for a loop and now we are trying to put the pieces back together. We are craving normalcy. Today, it is my hope to provide you with some encouragement as we continue this new journey in education.
I’d like to begin this spotlight video by making a bold claim. I am sure some of you may disagree with me. Some of you may raise your hands in the air and say, “Yes, Phil Yes!” Some of you may be disgusted by my opinion while others may praise it. My claim is simple, but it is one that I like to be upfront with when I talk to people, because I think it is absolutely essential in knowing me. You see… my big… bold… claim… is that I LOVE pizza!
I love pizza with pepperoni, I love pizza with different kinds of cheese, I love pizza with basil, I do not love pizza with pineapple because that simple does not belong on pizza. I love fresh, oven-baked pizza. I love fastfood pizza. One of my favorite places to get pizza from is a national chain called MOD pizza. I imagine that my first time in a MOD pizza was much like Charlie in Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. The incredible thing about MOD is that when you go in, you are met with a wide variety of cheeses and other toppings that you can put on your pizza. The staff takes you down the line and asks what YOU want on it. Sure they have some recipes on the wall, but I like to embark on my own pizza experience here. I get red sauce with basil and then some mozzarella cheese, but I don’t stop there. I ask for some asiago cheese and if I’m feeling particularly dangerous I ask for bleu cheese as well. When we get to toppings I am a simple man, just pepperoni, bacon, and onion. Then I ask for their pesto finishing sauce after the pizza come out of the oven.
As I take that first bite into this pizza I am so thankful that I got to choose how I wanted this pizza constructed. It is absolutely wonderful as I savor bite after bite.
That being said… my wife is not a big fan of my pizza. She puts garlic, arugala, mild sausage, bacon, and olive with mozzarella and asiago cheese. That pizza is fantastic for her, though it would certainly not be my preferred choice by any stretch of the imagination. And you know what… that is OKAY! We can both go and get our preferred pizzas and enjoy our own meals together!
As we address how this applies to education and as I considered what I wanted to speak about, I wanted to speak about something that people had not heard before in keynotes. However, considering the world we are living in, considering the amount of posts on facebook, twitter, instagram, tik tok, and pinterest I am realizing that maybe like me, you could use this reminder. You do not have to copy and become a teacher that you are not; what students need right now is for you to be YOU! You do not have to be the Pinterest-perfect teacher. You need to embrace what makes you uniquely you as an educator and what helps you reach support your students.
I’ve tried to replicate other teachers and copy paste what they do in their classes. I’ve tried using the same mannerisms, the same one liners. I’ve tried attempting to replicate their lessons. You know… it just doesn’t hit the same. Students do not respond as well, because they smell a phony a mile away. You don’t have to put anchovies on your pizza because the person in front of you did. Don’t be something you aren’t! Be authentic. Be yourself! It took me a while, but I like to think I am beginning to come into my own, and borrow things from others, but losing the pressure that I need to be that other teacher. You can do that too!
As you watch videos from other educators throughout this virtual conference or learning from educators in general, they are going to express ideas that work well for them in their classrooms, with their kids, and their circumstances. But… You are likely not experiencing those same realities. You have your own classroom, your own kids, and your own circumstances. Now what I am not saying is to totally discount what you are going to see, rather I am saying you do not have to control c and control v everything you watch. Find things that work for you. Take an idea and modify it to meet the needs of your students. Don’t watch these videos or learn from others with the mindset of “Ugh, why haven’t I done this before” or believing that you are not enough. For YOUR students… YOU… ARE… ENOUGH! Your students rely on you, not the teachers in the videos. They are subconsciously expecting you to be the gatekeeper of strategies to support their learning, to do what will make them most successful. The people who are presenting at this conference who are trying to provide support to others are sharing things, because they have been successful for them, and there are certainly universal theme and concepts that can be extrapolated across schools, grades, and content. They are going to provide you with resources they have implimented that have worked incredibly well for them. Don’t shame yourself for never having used them, use this time to explore those resources, to learn about strategies that may turn out to be highly effective as well.
Some of these ideas may work now for virtual learning, some may work great for when we get back into classrooms, some may be a healthy combination of the two. Approach this with a confident growth-mindset. Go into this learning with the understanding of your strengths, and celebrate those strengths. Recognize the areas where you are knocking it out of the park. Identify growth points, areas where you can improve in. But don’t wallow in those areas and dig yourself into a pit of despair. Use other educators who are in the trenches in the war against ignorance like you are and learn from their tactics to develop a battle plan in the pursuit of student success and knowledge. Do this with a drive and sense of purpose, not with a sense of defeat. I know that I am constantly learning from others. I moderate a chat on Twitter and participate in others where we all learn and grow together. The more minds we have working on cracking the problems in education, the more likely we are to make serious headway. And that means we also need your mind! So in the midst of these times where we are told to wear masks in public, where we are teaching virtually, where a trip to a restaurant for a sit-down meal seems like forever ago, do not lose sight of what you also bring to the table.
Remember what you like on your pizza! Make it your own. If you like that your buddy put bacon on it, but the broccoli was one step too far, then forget the broccoli. If you want some extra cheese on it, DO it! Eat the pizza that is good for you; be the teacher that is good for your students.
Now with all this being said, I’d like to leave you with a call to action. This is where we are going to go a bit more interactive. Some of you may have already started writing down or taking notes of things you have learned from this professional development experience. However what I’m about to ask you to do is good both now, during future conferences, or anytime you want to intentionally reflect on your craft. Take a piece of paper out and divide it into 3 columns. We are going to do what my wife calls a self-growth-inventory. An SGI! Similar to a KWL chart, I am hopeful this will impact us as educators preparing for a deeper dive and reflection into the columns. At the top of the first column write an S. The second colum write a G. The third column write an R.
Your first column I want you to write your strengths. Identify areas that you know you are strong in as an educator. I know that I am strong in my content knowledge. I know that I am strong in my use of certain edtech tools. I know that I am strong in direct instruction. I know I am strong in building relationships with students. Are any of these strengths your own? Or do you have other strengths? Are you a master at station learning? Do you manage student conflict well? Are your warm-ups unmatched by others? Do you provide incredibly robust performance assessments? Write down each strength you can think of and pause the video if you have to. We get so obsessed in our line of work with our perceived weaknesses that we never really sitback to recognize the skills and talents we are blessed with. We take those things for granted, but I assure you, there is nothing to be taken for granted here. Write these strengths down and put a smile on your face as you maybe for the first time since this whole pandemic started or for the first time ever, you realize that you have strengths and they are important!
The second column, the “G” column is where you are going to write down your growth points. None of us know “everything” and we all have areas we would like to improve in. The point in calling them “growth points” instead of weaknesses is to shift our mindset. Instead of looking at others and then considering ourselves inferior to each other, we recognize that in learning from others they are helpful checkpoints along our own journeys. I know I would like to grow more with eLearning instruction, I’d like to improve in how I give feedback, I’d like to learn about tools that other teachers have used to enhance student success and see if they can help my students. What are some areas you are trying to grow in? Are you trying to improve with indirect instruction strategies? Maybe looking for ideas for alternative assessments? Trying to figure out how to better connect with educators? Recognize those growth points and embrace learning about them with excitement instead of focusing on a perceived deficit. I have students who love to tell me everything they know and then at the first challenge they give up because they do not know how to do something. It is during that time that I remind them that believe it or not, the reason why we go to school is to learn new things not just to talk about everything we know. Use this time to explore and celebrate learning new things by targeting areas that will help you grow and improve as the educator your students need!
Then we move on to the third column. The “R” column. This is where I want you to keep track of resources. These conferences are worthless unless they spur us to action, and if we don’t have resources and foundation to act with we’ve got a problem. What good is a pizza without the crust? Write down, type down, track resources. Maybe they are links to presentations, specific ideas, people to reach out to, social media handles or emails. Keep track of these ideas so you don’t lose them. These things may be useful now, or they may be useful in the new year, but they are useful to no one if they are forgotten.
After you complete this chart at the end of your conference experience, I’d like to encourage you to share it with others. Maybe you have a friend who is attending the conference. If you’re on social media, take a picture and use the conference hashtag and tag me in it to @MrPStrunk. Because maybe your SGI is similar to others and you can collaborate and grow together!
What do you like on your pizza? How much sauce? What kind or kinds of cheese? Is your pizza for herbivores, carnivores, or omnivores? Do you like it thin and crispy or deep dish? Let me say it again.... What do YOU like on YOUR pizza?
What works for your students? What resources do you have at your disposal? What are some free things you can easily implement at your school? What are some universal truths and research about students that you apply to your room? How do you build relationships with students? What makes you the teacher that you are?
It can be tempting to go online and feel the need to keep up with the Jones’s, but you do not need to feel that pressure. You need to do what is right for your students. You can always learn more and apply more ideas into your room, but add your own personal twist on it so it works for you too. During this conference, identify what your strengths are, identify your growth points and add to your arsenal as your record resources. If I had not done that with pizza, I wouldn’t have known how much I like certain toppings on my pizza. I don’t copy the exact pizza of others, I make the pizza that is right for me. Sometimes you can and/or should copy things from others. I, like many others, enjoy pepperoni on my pizza, but sometimes while I’m ordering pizza and I may hear what someone is putting on their pizza I’ll think “hey that sounds good” and copy them. I, like many others, enjoy using TpT for resources and lesson ideas, and sometimes I certainly do copy those things resources because that works for my students, but I do not have an identical classroom to another teacher each day, I have found what works for me and sometimes added my own twist on it to do the best for my students.
I hope this conference is rewarding for you. Like all learning, it is a journey not a destination. We can always grow, we can always learn, but we can also offer ideas, we can also teach. As unique human beings, there are attributes in the essence of our souls that make us who we are. Please don’t lose sight of your value. You matter, you are important, you are enough. Learning is not like climbing out of a hole. It is like going down a pure, running river as opposed to a stagnant lake. It is like heating up the pizza, instead of just eating raw dough, sauce, cheese, and toppings. Let’s be honest though, sometimes we do feel down. We feel like we don’t measure up. We have a self-defeating feeling of woe. We feel like we aren’t enough. What I would like to ask you to do, if you ever feel down, if you ever find yourself counting your deficits compared to other teachers, please remember to ask yourself… what do you like on your pizza?

Brainstorm 2020: Rediscover Your Voice!

April 30, 2020 by timstahmer

Presented by Chey Cheney & Pav Wander, teachers, Beaumonde Heights Junior Middle School, Toronto District School Board

Improving our teaching practices through podcasting! Through this presentation, we'd like educators to come away with the idea that their voices can be heard and rediscovered through so many different mediums, including podcasting, as is the case in our experience.

Transcript

Welcome to this webinar end session on rediscovering your voice improving your teaching practice through by my name is Todd and I will be joined by Che for this presentation today a special thank you to the Virginia Society for technology and education for inviting us to be a part of brainstorm 20/20 Limitless learning and we are so excited that you are checking our webinar presentation on rediscovering your voice to podcasting what does critical learning goals of our presentation is freaking to Come Away with the idea that you can reinvigorate your voice find your voice discover your voice casting platform for you to energize your voice become more sound in your beliefs with your pedagogy presentation is a jicama way of knowing how you can re-energize your voice to re-energize your teaching practice call Jesse so part of what we really want to be able to stress during this presentation is that there is a lot of value that comes from podcasting for an educator there are lots of different conversations that people are able to have with each other and then it also allows for you to really create a very type first professional Learning Network so the podcast and get self allows for a lot of self-reflection as an educator and allows for you to really do a lot of research and felt very deeply into some of the trends that are happening with in education and then by creating a professional Learning Network allows you to connect to other teachers from around the world and talk about what's not working where does he need more and so this is an area where through a lot without perhaps even meaning to do so we really wanted to get together and talk about some of the things that we see happening in classrooms but we didn't realize that we were going to learn so much along the way we need to be able to rely on the things that we have stored you know if be able to pull them up as we need them quickly and so that we don't have to use up all of his working memory to be able to that's it so we have this long-term memory that we really want to make our explicit instruction Foundation solid so we go to the store open ended concept called into work all defensive learning so much knowledge is just trying to find these out of the box Solutions because we just solidified a foundation and someone you're trying to justify why do I want my explicit instruction this is why I want nothing cuz I don't want authentic learning because I do want and I want and I don't want to be letting my kids off and working and they can't maximize the time to work on the foundational information necessary I mean it it seems to make complete and I've heard this from a few people in the past few no looking back in retrospect after that principle is gone and so many amazing things came out of it sometimes I feel like I know what I've been in that experience I'm appreciative of that and I feel like you know what I probably wouldn't push myself that hard somebody was there to push me to get to that particular vision and looking back the school was spectacular achieved everything that the administrator Scott out to achieve and you were on a high the school was going places and it was doing but where it needs to be podcasting 101 headphones not essential and then we can use as a browsing platform that allows you to podcast on your own for free just need to self email you some started computer so what would we say are some of the biggest impact of podcasting for an educator we'd likely have to say that number one would be professional development we have grown a lot in terms of our professional growth over the past 9 months. We've been interested in a particular topic for an incident will now we need to help a little bit steeper so does that mean reading up on some articles that we find on this particular topic does it mean engaging into a building perhaps right ministrator has people who can give us a little bit more of an inside or perspective that we haven't already offered so the growth that we have experienced professionally secondly we really built on our professional learning of something that happened along the way it wasn't entirely intentional actually a lot of these were not intentional but they sort of just happen once you get connected on Twitter and start to try and get your podcast out there to listen to you start connecting with a lot of different from all over the world and we really been able to see this as an impactful thing because it is a given take relationship people are listening to what you have to offer as a podcast are there hearing your voice but in turn they are offering their perspectives and their thoughts and their feelings about a particular thing as well. Connecting with schools around the world we talked about this a little bit already of these connected through so many different different places School group was probably the first website is the organization that really helped us connect with Educators around the world but then through our professional Learning Network that we connect with so many different people from different countries and also you know when you are podcasting if you choose to use a software application like where you were most listened to and so you know we are listen to in over 50 countries probably more than right now around the world which is which is very significant because your voice although you feel like it might be very centralized has a global reach what's most interesting is that so many educators will come back and let you know that you know things that you have to say resonate with that which is so interesting when you were sitting on one part of the globe and you know you hearing this feedback from people on the other side as well future impacts that decided that so many additional doors have been open to us because of our vulnerability inability to open up our voices and allowed other hear what we have to say this has been huge for us and allowing our voices to be heard on different platforms such as written form for school group record growing and growing and there are no limits the end result from this explosion from the podcast professional growth in your PL in the connections you made with other people for self-reflection someone else a feedback on that and so the power of your voice to talk to your other people in their voices Rose educator podcast Twitter chats podcast experience that has exploded your voice Network same for others feel such a masquerade of other Educators that you can learn from Kingsborough from so what are some of the things that really opened up for us what are we up to and what have we been up to since we started podcasting we originally started with the staff room podcast recording one episode that was our original expectations just based on what we thought we could do how much time we supposed to go into editing Hour podcast and preparing to release an episode. Quickly became once a week and once in the middle of the week as well so we went from having potentially one episode full length episode 4 months to do in one full length episodes for we which it ranges from about 25 to 35 minutes and then we also have on top of that mini interludes which are about 5 to 10 Elaine stands are far more selfish self reflective and listeners a little bit more of our own personal perspective and not something that we do conversationally together from there our opportunities also have to doing a radio show which is very interesting so voi said radio is a Canadian online radio station that has a focus on education and they offer much more than radio there's a whole bunch of floss on the radio as well it is a website and a half and you don't see the Creator and founder of which type of radio Steven Hurley with somebody who which was after coming from thought that it would be great to have a teacher from their interest sort of rude into you know maybe we could start our own morning radio show so we currently hosts a morning educational radio show which mixes music into into our talk as well and and it's really blossomed to end a fit just offers us another opportunity for another medium to be able to explore voice and talk a little bit about things that we talked about in our place has so many as I would but in a much more casual or not and you know mixing it in with conversation with other people alive and also you know we're able to interact with a lot of people on Twitter at the same time during the broadcast show and so it is it is definitely a different five but again and opportunities in if we didn't start with just another door that was opened up to us along the way how do I fit in where do where do I know where can I step in what can I do what can I do to assist and you know we've talked about experience in the last week or so ways that supports that for now beginning to work their way back in to into the everyday learning environment and and not just to be helping the staff although that's a big part of it but also how are they now working their way into have more connection and more communication with the students that are are now more engaged with the remote learning experience as well so as we get more students into our learning environments were starting to see more opportunity and more places where the support staff can now start to fit in what else will be up to well education give does is what else were up to 30 3 questions and then a boxer group afterwards to discuss and expand on some of the issues and so his education Never Dies interact with each other what else is designed to connect International Educator connected and we are working on our education something that you really can't help when you start to feel a professional Learning Network on Twitter or any other social media platform has connections with these and this is definitely something that she and I have experienced so we can talk a little bit more about education Never Dies you know who started to feel this need to take the information gathered and sort of intermingle it with some of the perspectives that we see out there and and go one step further and try to help other Educators that that might need some more perspective from us and so teaming up with different Educators from different people who are administrators people who are a support staff people who are Consulting from the outside and using all of the knowledge and wealth of knowledge we have together as a team and putting that out there even further has been not only impact gold for us but also for people who engage in the conversation on social media and so on Twitter how we have created the education Never Dies which is made up of nine different Educators and one of the things that we have started is doing on Twitter and so you know he use that collaborative practice that we have built together to be able to help other teachers out there on Twitter who thrive on sort of that team effective learning we all learn together we all rise together so what's our story I want my class to always have different read podcast Studio any activity with a bathing suit or explain their passion and then we learn from our students we were motivated by learning opportunity didn't come Soulful Circle that we were very similar the ultimate remind me this much as we teach our students are students and Inspire us in our so inspired by our students on this podcast on the phone that's our motivation it is time for the swag bag what are your secrets we want your take me to be start podcast get your mic get started New Reflections of Reason always draw something you can always Forever by forever if you're always there always available in let's start reflecting and suffering our boys so continuing with our swag bag our takeaways from this presentation something that we really need to stress is that through podcasting we are really learning from there in the truest sense of the word we are building a professional Learning Network like none that we have ever experienced in our lives as teachers and we are exchanging information in many ways on a daily basis with people we've been participating and learn so much new information you know entering a child you have zero idea what anybody is talking about and walking away with a wealth of knowledge then go and you know embedded into our teaching practice the very next day and so it has really changed the way that we are teaching it has cheese perspectives and in many ways has changed the way we think as Educators and this is truly very important so building that professional Learning Community is Greenleaf and is one of the biggest impacts that we felt as Educators at as podcasters and and just for our own growth as well what's my third swag bag out of my 13th wait wait podcast so many different types of podcast subject-specific Shirley Jean from absorbing a diving fall into the podcast industry educational podcasts there are lots of different ways that you can connect with Chan myself on Twitter we have several handles of the very first and foremost would be at staff and this is our staffing podcast handled through here we we participate in a lot of stress to build our professional Learning Community we also put out our new episode Lane any other really big project radio is at the driveway said she can be reached at myself at wonder and then education Never Dies can be reached at Legend Never Dies other ways you can contact us if you can stay connected. From podcasting drive through Facebook Instagram Instagram comments feedback up question always goes to the podcast value you will rise together take a note is podcasting is something that you might be interested in doing as an educator please don't hesitate to contact us we were helped through somebody else who was able to give us a lot of information to get started and we would love to be able to offer the same to anyone else who might also be interested in as well please reach out to us at the staff at gmail.com we can also be reached through the education Never Dies email address if you'd like to reach us there and please feel free to ask any questions about getting started or about amplifying your voice as an educator in general it's very important that we are able to do that as teachers because it is us that is going to be helping to move this profession forward and to evolve not only as individual Educators but as a team of teachers and in the system we have to be able to put in that kind work if we want to see our system change and grow for the better for our students

Brainstorm 2020: HACKaroni & Cheese: EdTech Hacks & Cheesy Jokes!

April 30, 2020 by timstahmer

Presented by Jake Miller, Technology Integration Specialist, Orange City School District

EdTech Hacks and Cheesy Jokes! This session focuses on little tips and tricks to make your edtech tools (primarily Google for Education tools) do things that you didn’t know they could do! And, yes, along with all of those hacks come plenty of silliness, a.k.a. cheese.

Transcript

0:06
Hi there, my name is Jake Miller, and welcome into HACKaroni and cheese. You can get to the slides for this session right here at JakeMiller.net/HACKaroni, now I call this session HACKaroni and cheese for a couple of reasons. Number one, because I like cheesy jokes and saying something weird like HACKaroni and cheese just fits my personality. And number two, because it summarizes the two things that we'll do in this session. Number one is the HACKaroni part. I'm going to teach you a whole bunch of G Suite for education hacks. So if you're a Google tool user, you're in the right session. And in this session, you're gonna learn how to use those G Suite tools like docs, and slides and things like that in ways that you might not have known you could use them. So some hacks for using G Suite tools. So that's the HACKaroni part. The other part the cheese is I like cheesy jokes and I tend to be a dad joke teller. So I'm going to share some of those during this session. Actually, let's start off with one, ready? Knock knock. Did you respond? Let's try it again. Knock Knock. Are you seriously asked me “who's there?” I just told you my name is Jake Miller. It was just on the last slide. Geez, guys, come on. Pay attention. You’ve got to focus when you watch these virtual sessions. Goodness. Also, by the way, before I get into the session, did you know that I was named after Alexander Hamilton? Yeah, it's true. He was named in like 1755. And I was named in 1980. I was named after Alexander Hamilton. Did you eye roll on that one? Sorry, should I start talking about some technology? Maybe that would help instead of the cheesy jokes. So as I said, my name is Jake Miller. You could find any resources from me, including all the GIFs that you'll be seeing during this session at JakeMiller.net. You can connect with me on social media @JakeMillerTech. So if you have some questions about some of the things I go over, or if you try them out, and you want to share with me about them, you could reach me on social media at @JakeMillerTech. I also am the host of the Educational Duct Tape podcast where we focus on educational technology tools that we could use in the classroom to solve teacher problems. And you can learn more about that podcast at EduDuctTape.com. Now, as I mentioned before, the slides for this session are at JakeMiller.net/HACKaroni, which you can see right there highlighted in blue. Also at that site is access for you to potentially win a prize for viewing this session. So anytime I do an in-person session, I do giveaways. And in these days we'll do it for virtual sessions too. So if you go to JakeMiller.net/HACKaroni, not only can you get these slides, but you can sign up to be one of the two giveaway winners. So the two giveaways. The first one is a sticker. Now you get to choose which of two stickers you get and I'll mail them to you (I promise I'll disinfect the sticker before I send it to you) but you're going to choose which way you pronounce the file type .gif. So those animated things that we send out to people with Michael Scott from The Office or cute babies or things like that, that you send to people to react to things in texts or tweets or emails or whatever it might be. I'm going to give away one sticker if you agree with me, you'll select the sticker that says it's pronounced with a hard g Like the word gift, it's pronounced GIF. If you disagree with me, which is okay, I won't judge you too much. You can choose the other one, which is that it's pronounced like the peanut butter brand. JIF. Okay, now the second thing I giveaway, so one person will win one of those stickers, the second thing that I give away is registration in an online learning program that I do called GIF-a-day, that has a new one starting up here in a couple of weeks, so you'll be right in time to register for it. What GIF-a-day is is people who are registered for the course get one GIF sent to them in their email every weekday for a series of days. Currently, it's about 30 days for the sessions I've run. And that GIF that they receive teaches them one new skill with a certain platform. So currently, I'm doing it with Google Sheets. So if you're interested Google Sheets, that'll be a good opportunity for you to learn more about how to use Google Sheets. But in the future, I will ramp it up to include other tools. Currently, it's Google Sheets, so one person will win registration in whatever cohort of it they want to choose to do. Okay, so again, JakeMiller.net/HACKaroni and I'll wait until all of this days of the Brainstorm sessions are over before I actually choose the winners of that. So you've got until the Brainstorm is over to register to be one of the winners for that. Okay, so let's actually dive into the HACKaroni and cheese. Now. As you can see there at the top is the, again, the link for these slides - it’s the last I'm going to show it on the screen until the end of the session, JakeMiller.net/HACKaroni, let's actually dive into the cheesiness. Are you ready?

4:27
Okay, so first, we're gonna start off with some Google Chrome hacks. So these are things that you could do within the Google Chrome browser. So if you're using Google Chrome, Chrome, these are some ways to upgrade what you're doing. If you're not using Google Chrome. By the way, most Google tools do function better inside of Google Chrome than they do and say Safari or Firefox. It's not that you can't use those. Instead, you're going to see better functionality if you're in Google Chrome. So here's some hacks and using Google Chrome Actually, you know what, before I get to that, this has been bugging me and I've got to tell somebody about it and get this off my chest. This morning. You know, we're doing remote learning. here so myself and my wife, and all three of my kids are at home right now, doing schoolwork at home doing our regular, we're gonna be doing all that kind of stuff at home. And my son asked me this morning, he walked up to me said, “Can I have a bookmark?” And I just, I gotta tell you, I cried. My son is 10 years old. And still thinks my name is Mark. Why can’t he say, “Can I have a book, Jake?” Gosh, I told you they were cheesy. But we are going to talk about bookmarks here. So in Chrome, we have the bookmark bar up along the top of the bar. And did you ever noticed how much room some of those bookmarks could take up because they have long website names? Well, actually a little hack for you, you can make them take up a little less room, there's a couple different ways you do it. One is by taking the name completely out of the bookmark. And then you'll see that fav icon or favicon, is what they call it, just the logo for that website shows up on your bookmark bar. So instead of taking up an inch or so if your bookmark bar, it takes up an eighth of an inch of your bookmark bar just by being that symbol. Now, some sites don't actually have a symbol or favicon associated with it. So like maybe it's a Google Doc, you need something next to it. Now you could shorten the words that you put in there. Or you could put an emoji in place of that. So here on this GIF, you'll see I use the website get emoji calm, or emoji pedia.org. To find the emoji that I'm going to use for it, you could just use your keyboard if you know how to add emojis on your keyboard, but then you'll end up with that blank favicon. As you can see here, it's a Google Doc symbol. And then next to it, I have a bell to show this as the school schedule. So that's a way to clean up space on your Chromebooks Mark bookmarks bar. Now, you can go back and rewatch that GIF as many times you want to or you can hop over to my site, JakeMiller.net, search for Chrome bookmarks GIF and you'll be able to find it and watch it on loop as many times as you want to. Now, because they do take up so much space, even still on my bookmark bar, it is packed with stuff. So another way that we could take up a little bit less space on our bookmarks bar or maximize that space, I should say and get a little bit organized. It's used folders on the Bookmarks Bar. So if you click Add folder, so I right-clicked on the Bookmarks Bar, and I clicked add folder, you create a folder for whatever you want it to be. And you can actually have folders within folders. within folders, you can have nested folders. And you see here, I made one folder called awesome edtech blogs, and I put in a few of my favorite bloggers in there. And you notice I can also reorder those bookmarks. Notice the other keyboard shortcut that I stuck in there, if you click Ctrl, Shift B or Command Shift B, if you're on a Mac like myself, you can make that Bookmarks Bar appear or disappear. So if you're like, what is this bookmarks bar, Jake, hit Ctrl, Shift B, and you'll be able to see it on yours. And if we nest things into folders, I think up a little bit less space that way. And a cool little hack too is if you control-click on that folder, it'll open all of those bookmarks. So myself on my computer, I have certain sets of bookmarks that I open in certain situations is that my presenting or my just at home working what is or is at Google, like a Twitter chat. What am I doing? I can control-click on a folder and it'll open all the bookmarks out of that. That set So I kind of had these groups pre-prepared for myself. So they're organized there so I can find the things. And it's a little hack for me to open them up a little bit faster. Okay, what if, as you're opening up all those bookmark pages, you close a tab that you actually didn't mean to close, That's so annoying. And it's like, go to your history figure, find the tab, find the website, click on it, or just search it back up again and refine the site. Well, not the case in Chrome, there's actually a shortcut that can bring that tab right back. So two shortcuts in this GIF. One is if I click Ctrl-W or Command W, it closes the currently open tab, the currently selected tab. The other one is if I click Ctrl-Shift-T, it'll open the last tab I closed and it goes all the way through as many tabs as you've closed, you can click 10 times and open up the last 10 tabs you've closed. You'll see in this GIF

8:47
Also, I closed like three or four tabs at the same time and I click Ctrl-Shift-t it'll open all three or four of those back up together. So watch I've closed them all Ctrl-Shift-t both of those two tabs open right back up. Now. This is also So nice little teacher hack for when we're live in our classrooms with students. Because if we are, you probably had this situation where kids are on Chromebooks. And you're walking over to a kid and they suddenly frantically close a tab and you're like, I know they run something they weren't supposed to be on, well, you could just walk over to their computer, click Ctrl-Shift-T, and open it back up. Now, I don't like to give like gotcha lessons of how you can get students in trouble and things like that. But I do think that's a nice opportunity for us to talk to kids about what's appropriate, they do need some feedback about why that's not what they're supposed to be doing in class. I'm not so much trying to get them in trouble, as I am helping them improve the things they're doing in the classroom so that they can be better and more effective students and learners. Okay, another Google Chrome tip, which I think works across all browsers. I don't know I don't use the other browsers. But if you've ever pasted something into a document from a website, you might have had that situation where you're like, ah, I hate that. It's formatted like the websites, texts, and now I need to go through and format it like my document is okay. You click Ctrl C to copy and can V to paste and you're like, Oh, it looks like the website. Well, here's a little hack. Watch here, when I copy this text Ctrl C, and then I go and paste this text Ctrl V, it's in that blue and gray font like the website was. Instead, if I click Ctrl, Shift V, it takes on the formatting of the page in the doc I'm on. So you could paste it into your doc, and it'll take on that Arial, font size 12, whatever it is that you might be on, and it'll paste it just like the way you want it to look. You see another tip in there, I use Ctrl Z to undo that when I decided, wait a minute, that wasn't the way I wanted to paste that in. Okay, that does it for Google Chrome tips. Let's move on to a different set of tips. First, a question for you, though. Do you know where people who work at Google park their boats they park them at the Google Docs. But that's super cheesy. It's Thank you, one. Let's move on now to Google Docs hacks. So a couple hacks on Google Docs. Do you ever notice that on your phone, when you're typing things in, sometimes it completes the words for you? And when it's right, it's so convenient because you don't have to type the entire word like, especially with a long word that might be difficult to spell. Well, in Google Docs, it does this as well. But you can also train it to do things that are certain sets of texts that you type regularly. So you'll notice if you type in Google Docs, parentheses, see parentheses, it'll automatically change that to the copyright symbol with a circle around it. That's because it's a piece of auto-text that's in Google Docs by default, now you can add your own pieces of auto text. So I used to have one when I was a classroom teacher before I was a technology integration coach, where I would be making worksheets and I normally put name, date, and period at the top. So I taught it taught Google Docs with that when I typed NDP to put in “name, date, period,” and it put the whole set of text in there. Recently on the Educational Duct Tape podcast. Catlin Tucker was my guest and she was saying when giving feedback In the classroom, we often end up saying the same things to students. So why do we retype those every time? So she said she often found herself when she was in a language arts classroom, typing awkward phrasing and to the students. So she trained Google Docs that when she typed “awk” and hit the space, Mark her spacebar, it would replace “awk with awkward phrasing. So she was saving a couple of seconds every time she had to type that in, it's just a couple seconds. But if you pile it up across a bunch of times typing it gets pretty handy. So here's how you do that. You click on Tools, and then you're gonna go down to preferences and under preferences is your text replacement options. So on the left, you type in what you want to type, and on the right you will type out what you wanted to replace it with. So you saw I typed in NDP, and we'll put a name date period. Unfortunately, it doesn't do capital letters. I really hate that it doesn't do that. So I sometimes have to go back and add in those capital letters. So you'll see @JakeMillerTech I had the J, the M, and the T capitalized, but when I pop them in all lowercase. So that's a little annoying factor here. I also like that it's a little bit tedious to put emojis into a Google Doc. So I put in one here that was hashtag lol. And when I type hashtag lol and hit the spacebar, it's going to replace it with that symbol. So this is how you do auto text anind Google Docs super useful for creating resources where you type the same things over and over again, or for giving feedback where you often get the same feedback over and over again. Okay, another Google Docs hack.

13:30
Doesn't it drive you crazy when you send a document out to students, and you tell them to make a copy of the document to fill in their answers? And you just get a whole bunch of emails of them requesting access. Doesn't happen as much anymore because Google Classroom does this part for us. But you've probably been in a situation where you've sent out a doc as can view to a bunch of people and said, go ahead and make a copy. And people who don't really understand what they're doing, ask you to share it with them. You want them to share it with you. You want them to make their own copy and your Hit file, make a copy, where you can actually tell the documents link to do that. So if you take a link to a document, so this one, I'm going to share it, I'm gonna make it so anybody can view the document. I'm gonna make it anyone with the link can view, save a copy that link. Now instead of that link, I'm going to take the end off the off the URL where it says Edit question mark USP equal sharing, and I'm just going to replace it with the word copy. And now when they click on that link, it's going to open it up and just already, like they click File, make a copy, ask them what they want to rename the document, so it'll force them into making a copy. Now, I should note that some people rather than doing this actually prefer to change the link so that it opens up as a template where they can't ask you to share it, and then ask them would you like to make a copy of it and use this template, so that's another alternative option out there. I would recommend just googling for that. So you could find out how to send it out as a template instead of a copy but I think this copy version works just fine. Here's another Google Docs hap hack Have you ever put an image into a Google doc and wish that you could format the way the text interacts with the doc a little bit or with the image, I should say, a little bit differently. I know I have, I missed the way microsoft word used to do this. And I fully transition over to docs A long time ago. But this is one of those features that just annoys me, you could choose a couple of different things, you could either have the image be like by itself on its own line, or you can have the text wrap around the image. And that's nice when the picture I'm sorry, wrap around the image. And that's nice when the pictures on the left or the right side. But what if you want the picture in the middle and you want the text to go around it? Well, the way that will happen is it will literally go partway up to the picture and then I'll start on the other side of the picture which nobody wants to read it like that. But what if I'm trying to create like a, a nonfiction book like a resource or an event or a journal or a magazine or a newspaper-style document, that feature is not in there. So here's a hack to do that. Notice when I put the image in the middle with Wrap Text selected, the text goes across the image, that's annoying. Instead, at a table, I'll put the image in the center column of the table, I'll space the table out the way I want. Notice that one set of text is on the left and one set of text is on the right. And then I make that table have a zero point border, meaning there's no border, you can't even see the border. So nobody knows that there's a table there. But there really is. So this is a little hack to make it so I could put text on the left and the right side of an image by using a table that nobody can see is there. Another alternative option is to leave the borders at one point or whatever they are and change them to white. So the borders are there, but nobody can see them. Another annoyance with images on Google Docs is that there's no way to add a caption underneath the image the way a piece of informational writing might have. You can add the image in you could add text underneath it, but you can't make the text just be the width of the image. You can just be regular text from within your document without hitting Enter and going down. And that's a little bit difficult and some of these situations So one way to do it would be that table another way would be to insert the image as a drawing. So put it inside of the drawing, put a text box below the image, type into that text box. And then when you hit save and close, it has it as if it's one big image. In reality, it's a drawing that you can go and edit. But now I could put it wherever I want with that caption underneath that another hack would be to do the table trick we did before, except have a cell below the image where the text was typed in. So that's two different ways you can go about doing that.

17:34
Now, this is a hack that teachers love in Google Docs. Have you ever been typing comments to students and you wish that you could focus their attention on a certain comment within your with a certain element within your comments? Well, you can using this hack, okay, you can make comments bold or italicized. In order to add comments, I'm going to highlight and click the Add comment button and you'll notice when I type in this comment, if I put the asterisk symbol Around a word, it'll make it bold. If I put the underlined symbols around a word, it'll make it italicized. I know it seems like it should be underlined, but it's italicized. It's just the way it works. I'm sorry. All right. And if I put hyphens around the word, it'll make it strike through. And I don't know why you'd ever want to strike through a text. But it's pretty cool. All I got to do is put it before and after. And when I, when I make the comment, it'll actually show up bold, italicized, or strikethrough. Now, it doesn't have to be just one word at a time, you could actually start the asterisk at the beginning of the comment and have an asterisk at the end of the comment, and then your entire comment will be bold. It's everything in between the two symbols, bold, italicized, and, and strikethrough. Again, probably won't you strike through very much I wish that underlying whereas in here, it's just not. This is an old piece of web coding language stuff used to be in there. It just happens to work in Google Docs. It's not like an intentional feature that Google built-in here, just kind of something that we used to work on the web, and so it works within comments as well. Okay, so let's look at another Google Docs feature that's especially helpful if you're teaching in a blended learning setting or right now in a remote learning setting where you're sending out a lot of Google Docs. If you've got a grade those Google Docs, it can be tedious to find lots of student answers in Google Docs. So I'm gonna show you a couple of different hacks for doing that. The first is to type in your question you have and in the space where you'd expect the students to type their answer to go ahead and put some spaces in there and format those spaces to be a different font or color or size or formatting or whatever, than the way your question is. And then when students click in there to type, their answer will take on that same formatting. So in this GIF, what you see is that I changed the blanks to be blue in this happy monkey font and highlighted in yellow or something like that. When I go in as a student watch here, blue, yellow, happy monkey form font formatting, so it pops right out of the off the page for me to see it and easily graded. Okay, this is one way to do it. Let's look at another way to do first let's play this one again. So I add some spaces. Well, first, I changed the font, the font formatting, and I add some spaces in that new formatting. If you don't add the spaces, this will not work very well. So Add some spaces in that format so that when the kids click there, they're kind of like inside of that range of spaces. Okay, let's look at another hack for making it easier to find students’ answers in Google Docs. Okay. And this is to actually add an a table. So different people do it different ways. One, is that a one by one table for just the answer. The second is to add a one by two table for the question and the answer. And the third is to add a multiple-row table for questions on the left and answers on the right now some people when they do this, they also prefer to like change the borders, so maybe you can't see the table at all. Or maybe you just see the table for the answer and not for the question. And you'll see in this GIF as I go through there, how I do that. So watch, I highlight those, I take away the border, I highlight the other ones, and give them a border on the left as well. However you want to format it, it's totally up to you. But now the students are forced to type their answers inside of those boxes and it gets a little easier for you to find them. So again, first is to add a one by one table for the answer to go inside. Second is To add a one by two table for the answer and the question to go inside, then you could change the borders if you want to the boundaries of the columns, I should say. And third is to add multiple rows and multiple columns so that all the questions can be on the left and all the answers can be on the right. Notice that you can take away those borders like I do here. Or you can add borders to just the answers like I do here. We have no borders at all totally up to you how you want to format it. The nice thing that elementary school teachers like about this is sometimes it the students like start typing, and it messes up the entire document or they start typing up the answers or something like that. This makes it so they type in just the spot you want them to type in.

21:40
Now, once you have all the students completing all of that work in Google Docs, how are you going to grade all of it? Well, my favorite practice is to actually give some feedback during the work cycle. So before the kids are even done with it, so before they've submitted in Google Classroom to start going through and looking at those docs, there's a couple of different ways to do that. You can just do it from within Google Classroom. But one little hack that I like is that you can look at them in preview mode from in your drive. Now, every assignment you do that's assigned through Google Classroom shows up in your drive in a folder, you get all of the students’ documents within one folder in your drive. So you can open up that drive, click on the first one, and click the Preview button. And now if you click through them, you can go document by document by document and look at these preview versions of there and you can identify which kids might need some support during class that day. Now, as that orange box says there, sometimes the previews aren't current like they might be like from a minute ago, or from even 10 minutes ago, or from a couple of seconds ago. So sometimes you might find that you open up a document and you're like, Oh, this student hasn't typed all period. But then when you look at the actual document, or like, Oh, really they have, but at least this is helping you narrow down which kids do you need to focus on. So you don't have to open up all 25 documents. You just identify four or five kids that need some support, and then you open their documents, okay, and you see that click open with Google Docs. Click open new. And you see in this one here, there actually was some typing there that I couldn't see in the preview. It happens sometimes, but at least this is a hack that helps you focus in on which students you need to pay attention to giving some feedback to today. Okay, another little hack here, this isn't really hacked. It's just built-in and I want to share it with you. What if you have a Google Doc? Oh, it's all in English, and you need to translate it for maybe a parent or student that speaks a totally different language? Well, Google has built-in a translation tool. And this is a GIF from Google, not from me. And you'll see that once they have the doc open, they'll click on Tools, and then Translate Document and it'll ask you two questions, what language you want to translate it to and what filename Do you want to give to this document you see, by default, by default, it's translated copy of mobile commerce was the name of this document. And now it's a completely separate document. So it's not translating your document. It's making a copy document that is translated. So it's a nice way to provide translated newsletters and things like that to students or families that need them. By the way, we're almost done. And I think after the session is over, I might go to the playground. Do you know why I cross the playground? To get to the Google slide! Oh, these are bad jokes. I should call this HACKaroni and bad jokes, not HACKaroni and cheese, right? Quick Google Slides tips. So some Google Slides hacks. One is what if you're making that paper newsletter, and you don't like the formatting and docs you wish you could use the formatting tools, you're in Google Slides where you can have images everywhere in text everywhere. And you could select where your text boxes go, and you get fancy with your backgrounds. Not super easy to do that kind of stuff and docs, but it is easy to do in slides. But yet slides isn't paper shaped, right? It's like shaped like, like a three by five index card or something like that? Well, you can actually change the size of a Google slide by going to File Page Setup and then you could select Custom to make it anything you want. So if you want an eight and a half by 11-inch slide, you could do that and then format your newsletter or your handout or your worksheet or whatever it might be, and prepare it just like it's on paper and then print it out paper size and you You can make it anything you want. Another Google Slides hack. A lot of like I used to teach from a Smartboard in my class. And I love that Smart Notebook, I can easily put up timers on the screen for my students to do activities. And that's not built into Google Slides. So I'm gonna show you two different ways to do that. The first is to add a timer YouTube video. So watch, I'm gonna click Insert, and then video and I'm going to search for timer. Okay, I could search for a certain amount of time. So I do 20-minute timer and there's a timer right there, click to add it into the page. And now when I'm in present mode, I'll be able to click play on this timer and have it go for 20 minutes. Now, I do recommend screening the timer's you use. They were some that end with like a bomb sound or like a warning like fire drill sound that would probably scare your students, you probably don't do those. You do want to make sure that the content of the videos are appropriate. So just scrub through them and check on those slides those times before you actually use them. The nice thing too is what if you were planning on a 20-minute timer and you actually need a 19-minute timer. We'll do the 20-minute timer and then Slide it in one minute and start it from 19 minutes. It's just a YouTube video who said it wherever you want to.

26:05
Okay. Now one more. One more hack for doing this timer and Google Slides is the new one that didn't used to be part of it, a guy named clay Smith, who was at clay codes on Twitter. He's an educator in New York City, I believe, and he makes some Google scripts and add on add ons and things like that. And he made a slides timer one. So watch, if I have this extension installed, it's called slides timer extension, which can get from clay codes. org, click on it, and it it is set up so that you can run timers in your slides, those won't work on somebody else's computer unless they have that extension too. So it's three different things I could do, I could do a countdown timer, I could do a count-up timer and you see how you format these. And I can also do a current time so it'll show the current time up on screen. By doing that and having the extension installed when I click present, it's going to automatically do that.

27:02
Let's watch it again, I do that countdown timer the down with less than less than the number of times the amount of time and then a minus symbol and then > >. For a count-up timer. It's the exact same thing except a plus where the minus was. And for a current time, I just put the word time inside of those less than and greater than symbols. Another joke for you, Knock knock. Tank. Thank you for watching my video. Now I've got to tell you this presentation is normally a 50 minute or one-hour long session. So I've skipped over a bunch of slides that are in this slide deck that I normally present because these sessions are going to be 25 and 30, between 25 and 30 minutes. So if you want to go to that link, which I'll put up again in a second, you can see all of the slides that I skipped over and all of the hacks that are in there too along with those GIFs. And if you have questions on them again, please reach out to me at @JakeMillerTech on social media, or head over to my website, JakeMiller.net. And you can find my email address and stuff there. But again, if you go to JakeMiller.net/HACKaroni, you could see these slides and go through whatever ones that I skipped over or refresh your memory on ones that I might have gone through too quickly, or that you forgot about or anything like that. Also, if you go to that site, you'll be able to register to win one of those two giveaways either the GIF or JIF sticker, or the registration in an upcoming cohort of GIF-a-day. Lastly, I want to thank you for what you do for students, I want to thank you for being a lifelong learner. It's so awesome that you're giving up time to watch these videos to get better at your use of technology and your integration of it into the classroom and just the great things that you do for kids. This has been a tough couple of months here in our world, not just in America, but in our world. And you as educators are working so hard and doing such awesome things for students and for the learners and for the parents even and thank you so much for that. Thank you for being a lifelong learner. Thank you for being an educator and thank you for what you do!

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Brainstorm 2020: Is the Sky Even the Limit with the Rubik’s Cube?

April 30, 2020 by timstahmer

Presented by Dan Van der Vieren, Ambassador/Educator, You Can Do The Rubik's Cube

When the Rubik's Cube was invented by Erno Rubik in 1974, it was a wooden prototype with rubber bands for its twisting mechanism. Since then, the Rubik's Cube has caught the attention of many. This puzzle can be integrated in any curriculum to create mosaics, qteach problem-solving skills, encourage teamwork, and spark students' curiosity. Dan Van der Vieren, who spoke about this topic at TEDxBoulder in 2018, will share his successes in the classroom and ideas to take the Cube to the next level.