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edtech

Our Edtech Toolbox is Full (for now)

November 5, 2021

Due to the funding and circumstances resulting from COVID, we have access to more digital tools than ever before in my school district. I am sure most of you are in the same situation. Where in the past we relied on free and/or freemium versions of digital tools, we have purchased premium accounts. We used to dream of being able to afford a division learning management system (LMS) and now it is a reality. It is great to have access to these digital tools that can have a positive impact on teaching and learning. We have to be cognizant of the fact that purchasing these tools via CARES funding means if we want to continue using them, we eventually will have to pick up the tab using local funding. So, for most of us, that is going to be a challenge. So, we have to start looking now at what we keep and what we give up once the subscriptions expire.

The first thing to do is determine how much your tech tools are being used. This can be done in several ways. Our Instructional Technology Resource Coaches are in the buildings so they can see what tools are being used and get feedback from our teachers. We use a program called LearnPlatform that monitors the use of tools, so this provides valuable information as well. Teachers can be surveyed on their favorite tech tools and the ones they feel are the most effective. Keep the survey short and to the point. The most important question to ask is if they have used the tool or not! If so, do they plan to continue to use it? The answers to these questions can be used to help guide staff professional development. Most staff need to be trained on the effective use of the tool.

Other things to consider are: does the tool integrate with your LMS? Is it accessible via Single Sign On (SSO)? Is there another tool that serves the same purpose? (ie. Nearpod vs Peardeck). Finally, reach out to parents/guardians to get their feedback on the digital tools their children are using, as well.

After all the information is gathered, it is time to decide on what tools we abandon once their licenses expire and which ones we work on getting into our operational budget. What tools are effective and make a positive difference when it comes to teaching and learning? Are the vendors working with you on cost? Many school divisions are going to be experiencing this situation and vendors do not want to lose customers, so they will be willing to work with you! So, start doing your work now on identifying what edtech tools you need, so you can, “Choose Wisely.”

Graphic of knight saying choose wisely


Written by Tim Taylor. Tim is the Instructional Technology Supervisor for Shenandoah County Public Schools. He is also the Chair of the Education Committee and a member of the VSTE Board of Directors.

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The Magic Beneath the Surface of EdTech

May 26, 2021

In many pursuits in life and learning there is are easy ways that cut corners and often harder but more rewarding avenues to get to your desired destination. The world of edtech is no different, especially with the incredible pace at which technology is evolving. I couldn’t more passionately recommend to not move away from a technology just because there is a new one and/or without fully exploring the tool. Many times the magic of edtech tools lies beneath the surface and is only discovered after users have had adequate time to explore, fail, learn, grow, discover, make connections, and collaborate. Simply because a technology isn’t the latest one released, doesn’t mean it isn’t the best or just as capable as another. Correspondingly, if you have given enough time for a tool to be explored completely, you do not know what was truly possible nor the effect it could have had on teaching, learning, or leading.

In the Land of G Suite

Just one area of prominent examples of the magic beneath the surface of edtech lies within G Suite. Nearly every one of the apps that make up G Suite have an incredible amount of uses that one would never discover if they only took the tool at its surface value. The power of the tools truly becomes apparent when you begin to peel back the outer layers. Two great examples are Google Chrome and Google Slides.

Google Chrome is at its surface, just an internet browser. Like Microsoft Edge, Safari, or Firefox it will connect you to the vast amount of information and resources the internet hold. It will allow you to bookmark pages and even autofill forms & passwords for you. However, the magic beneath the surface is infinitely more powerful!

The first example of this is the ability to quickly change between Chrome users. This allows one to switch between work and personal accounts in second, each complete with their own separate bookmarks, saved autofill information, Google Drive, and more! Kasey Bell of Shake Up Learning explains the greatness of this feature quite well.

The second example of a bit of Chrome magic is found in the power of extensions installed via the Chrome Web Store. This store holds many free extensions that truly save time and enhance a user’s experience with Chrome. Countless added features and benefits can be found by adding in carefully selected and managed extensions (they do take system resources so choose wisely and manage with something like Extensity). Check out these blog posts all about Chrome Extensions and the magic they add to Chrome (Post 1, Periodic Table of Extensions, For Struggling Students).

If you listen to the Google Teacher Tribe Podcast with hosts Kasey Bell and Matt Miller, you’ll know that Google Slides is the “Swiss army knife of G Suite” (Episodes). Without stretching the imagination too far, there are easily fifty uses for Google Slides that are not presentations. Some of these include social media templates, eBooks/storybooks, review games, animation, choose-your-own adventure stories, brainstorming, interactive notebooks, and even create an “app.” Trust me when I say this is barely checking into the magic beneath the surface of Google Slides… check these out for more: Control Alt Achieve, Ditch That Textbook, Shake Up Learning, Teacher Tech, & All The Things You Didn’t Know Google Slides Could Do!

The Deep End of G Suite Magic Beneath the Surface

Thinking the above just isn’t enough Google awesomeness? I agree! Check out these further resources to take an amazing look into the deep end of G Suite magic beneath the surface:

  • Google Experiments
  • Hidden Google Goodness
  • Hipster Google: Google Tools You've Probably Never Heard Of
  • Uncommon G Suite Uses & Tools
  • Stranger Google: Crazy Tools From the Upside Down!

Written by Patrick B. Hausammann. Patrick is an Instructional Technology Resource Teacher in Clarke County Public Schools, and was recipient of a VSTE Tech Coach of the Year award at the 2018 Conference in Virginia Beach

Patrick describes himself as a perpetual optimist and believer in the power of a #growthmindset to #failfoward. He is the founder of UnisonEDU, Co-Founder of #EdcampNSV, and a Google Certified Innovator, Trainer, Admin, & Educator 1 & 2.

He can be found online at his website and as @PHausEDU on Twitter.

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Brainstorm 2020: Educational Duct Tape: an EdTech Integration Mindset

April 29, 2020

<-- Back to conference page

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

In a multi-session, content-rich, idea-filled conference like this one, educators can fall into the trap of “paradox of choice,” which often keeps educators from integrating *any* of their newly learned skills. In this session, Jake will share about how “Educational Duct Tape” can help educators overcome this paradox. Learn how Jake’s silly metaphor can be used as an #edtech integration mindset in your instruction, tomorrow!

Session note sheet

Certificate of attendance form


Transcript

0:05
Hi there, my name is Jake. I'm here to talk to you about duct tape . . . and educational technology. And, how in my silly mind, I've got this metaphor where the two of them work together--duct tape and educational technology. And they form a metaphor, a mindset I actually say that I think can benefit you in your learning environments, right now, today as you go through the sessions that you're going to experience during this brainstorm conference. You could put this educational duct tape mindset in play to help you decide what different things to implement in your learning environments and in the future when we get back to our classrooms, in your

0:39
classrooms.

0:41
As I said, my name is Jake. Jake Miller is my name. I'm the host of the Educational Duct Tape podcast. You could find me on social media @JakeMillerTech and find my work online at JakeMiller.net. And you can also find the slides to this presentation at JakeMiller.net/EDT (as in educational duct tape) Pres (as in Presentation) 20 (as in the number after 19). Now, this not only gives you access to the slides that I'm going to go through, but it gives you access to some giveaways I do every time I do this presentation. So even though we're not in person together, learning at a conference, like I would love to be, I'm still going to do some giveaways here. So I'm gonna give away two different prizes. So the first prize is a sticker. These are coveted stickers, you guys, you get to choose which sticker you get, depending on how you pronounce the animated file type GIF. You know how I pronounce it. The .gif file type. You will select either the correct sticker--if you believe it's pronounced gif like gift--or the incorrect sticker, if you believe it's pronounced like... that's hard for me to say it... like the peanut butter, right? So you'll pick one of those if you're this winner, and I'll send that we send you one of those in the mail. I promise I'll disinfect the stickers before I send them to you. Now, the other thing you could win is registration and an online learning opportunity that I do called GIF a day. Now what the way GIF a day works is the people who pay to register or when registration in it. Receive a GIF and their email every morning to learn a new skill. Currently, I do this on Google Sheets. So if you participate, you'll get a new gift every morning explaining a different Google Sheets skill to you, and one person will win registration in that. So to sign up for those giveaways, you go to Jake Miller dotnet slash EDT pres 20 which will give you access to these slides as well as signing up for these giveaways. Okay, so what is educational duct tape? And why is Jake here to talk to me about educational duct tape? Well, to tell you about educational duct tape, I need to go a little bit back to kind of my origin story of educational duct tape and it really all starts with Edu gifts. Okay, now where these Edu gifts come from, we're going to get to but the thing that you need to understand now is in order for me to get to the position where I knew Patrick, who invited me to present in this conference, I had to start with the Edu gifts. That's these are the things that earned me the invitations to do things like this conference, these Edu gifts

2:55
or Edu gifts. Well, we all know

2:58
what gifts are animated gifts. are small file sizes that are kind of like an image but kind of like a video, right? They play in a loop normally short they don't involve audio and we're familiar with fun ones like this one. This baby is so surprised me my presentation right now. But we're surprised we're familiar with fun ones like this one are ones from the office or maybe from a sporting event or from our favorite movie or things like that that we send to our friends. Many of you have probably already sent out multiple gifts in emails or texts or tweets so far today. Now I don't create gifts like this one, I create Edu gifts, meaning I use the gift file type to give instructions on how to do something. So here's one that that I created a while back about how to do translations in Google Sheets.

3:40
I'll let you watch it

4:11
And as you can see it loops over and over again. So the people if they missed it the first time through, they could see what happened the next time through now I made this one. When we tried to find a way to support a new student in our school, who spoke little to no English. She had a Ll tutor who was supporting her and learning to assimilate to the school, but her teachers needed a way to help her understand classroom vocabulary. So they created vocabulary lists using this formula in Google Sheets. Now, it's not 100% perfect, but they had to go through they were able to go through and do like minor tweaks, here and there were needed when she found that words didn't quite make sense to her. Now, when we saw this, I was so excited about it. I wanted to share it out there to other educators. And a GIF is how I shared it. This one went particularly viral and had 10s of thousands of views and retweets and countries all around the world because of the small bite size information provided to them now I'm not trying to tell you that you should start making gifts for your classroom or you should start using gifts in your classroom or in your online lessons. I'm also not telling you this to brag about the fact that this tweet had 86,000 retweets in Malaysia because it doesn't really matter that doesn't really impress people like,

5:16
Hey, guys,

5:17
I'm pretty big in Malaysia, like, that's not really gonna get me anything, right. It's not gonna impress

5:21
anybody

5:22
all that much, while I'm telling you about is because these Edu gifts help, like showed me a way that we could approach educational technology in the classroom. And that is what I think you can apply to your lesson. So let's talk about where they actually came from. So I started my career as a math teacher. And in my second position, I was an eighth grade math teacher in the school district that my kids still go to, and my wife still works in. And I absolutely loved that job. I thought I was going to work in that position for 35 years until retirement and be happy the whole time because I love the content. I love the age of students. I love the community I was in and I really enjoyed what I did as an eighth grade math teacher. But what I found over the next few years is that I like trying out new things. So I said, Well, I'm gonna try fourth grade math. And I'm going to try eighth grade science. And I'm going to try eighth grade stem. And during those years, I also found that I got more and more excited about educational technology. I was excited about what it could do for my instruction. And then I was excited about what it could do for the way my students displayed their learning. And then I started sharing it with my team of teachers, and then with teachers across my school building, and then teachers across my entire school district. And then even that wasn't enough. And I wanted to spread the word of this educational technology even further. I wanted to impact teachers around the world so that I could indirectly impact thousands and thousands of students by supporting them, their teachers directly them indirectly, by supporting their teachers through this educational technology. So I said, How can I share these tips with more educators? So I had a goal, and I needed to identify some tools that I could use with that goal. So my goal was sharing edtech with more educators, so I thought about what tools I had available to me and those tools were Camtasia a screen recording program that I'm actually using to record this very video, YouTube. Obviously, I can host the videos there for people to watch my website so that people could find all of my videos and my Twitter account so that I could share these videos out there and have more people see these videos, okay, so late at night after my wife and I put our three kids to bed after we had cleaned the kitchen and made it look like nobody lived there that day. And after we had packed lunches for the next day, I would come downstairs to this very basement office, which isn't much of an office if I were to pan the camera over that way you would see my kids Lego table. And if I would hand it over that way you would see collections of already built Legos. I have a nice Lego gymnastic set right up here overlooking me while I do my work. So I call it my office my kids called the Lego room. Regardless, I would come down here late at night with my dress shirt on from that day of work and pajama pants because you can't see what kind of pants I'm wearing right now. And I'd have a beard just off screen because it was 11 o'clock at night and I was working hard and I deserved a beer Okay, lay off so it'd be off screen so you couldn't see it in the video and I would record A video just like this one right here that you see on the screen of some specific technology tip, some edtech tip that I thought teachers would benefit from. So in this particular video, you can see I was sharing a keyboard shortcut on Chromebooks. That makes it so that you can quickly split your window between one screen on the left and one screen on the right. And I thought it was a really quick hack that I felt like all educators should know about. So I wanted to record a video to get it out there for them to see it. Okay, so I would record these videos. And then what I would post them on, I would edit them on Camtasia, I would post them on YouTube, I put them up on my website, and then I would share them out there on Twitter for people to discover. And I would stay away from looking at the video for a while. I didn't want to worry too much about how many views I was getting. But about a week later, I would finally go back and look at the views and I would just discover stuff like what we see right down here, which is seven views, eight views, maybe nine views if I was lucky. And

8:53
the sad thing about those number of views is two of them. Were me making sure the video worked. One of them was My mom who's a retired educator and doesn't give a crap about Chromebooks, but is checking up on me because she loves me. So my videos were really getting like four or five views in a week. So why was it that I was creating these what I thought were quality videos about what I felt were important tips for educators. And yet, educators were not watching them. No, it wasn't like they were going to them going like Jake, this is a horrible video, I'm going to close it. They just weren't even going to the video. What was happening there. What I realized was I had too many hurdles in place for my videos, the teachers had to be following me on Twitter or be visiting my website. The teachers had to believe that the video was going to be worth their time, they had to trust me that I was making good content. They had to trust that it was going to be worth five or six minutes of their time to watch the video. They had to be in a place where they could plug in headphones or have the volume on there were too many hurdles to get them to even click on the video so I had to figure out how do I get rid of all these hurdles. So I found the idea while I was sitting in my doctor's office, waiting grandma's sitting there waiting to get called back for my appointment, and I decided to start looking through Facebook on my phone to see what all my friends were up to. And I'm scrolling down through Facebook looking at pictures of friends, kids and vacations that kids and friends had been on and things like that. And then it happened. tater tot casserole happened. I found myself sitting and watching an entire video recipe of how to make tater tot casserole. Now the sad thing here is I don't do much of the cooking in our house. My wife does most of it. And when I do the cooking, she either gives me the recipe or tells me exactly what to do while I'm making it. So I don't need to know how to make tater tot casserole. Worse yet, she already makes tater tot casserole and it's delicious. So she doesn't even need the recipe. And in this recipe, they put frozen peas into it. Look at that frozen peas into the Tater casserole, who would do that way to ruin a good dish with some frozen peas in there. So this video was totally totally worthless to me. So why did I watch the whole thing

11:04
I just I just started watching it again right now what is it about this video that makes me watch it even though it has no value to me? Well, what I realized about this video is a couple things. Number one, it auto played number two and moved quickly. Number three, it was well made. And number four, it didn't require audio and number five, it was short and brief, right? So I realized this is what my educational technology tips needed, they needed to be like this tater tot casserole, okay. And that's when I started making what I called it, what I call Edu gifts or Edu gifts. I realized that that Camtasia software that I've been using all along to make my screencasts I realized that it also could export the video files as gifts. Now I had never done it before because I had never had a reason to do it before but now I felt like I had a reason. So I would I would take these screencasts that I was making a night I'd come down and instead of having my beer off screen, I didn't need to have it off screen because I wasn't recording my face anymore. I didn't even I need to have a dress shirt on, I could have my hoodie on because nobody saw me in the gifts. I was just recording these gifts and putting them out there. And what I found is instead of seven or eight views in a week, I was getting seven or eight views in the first hour or something because they were auto playing on Twitter. Okay, now, this didn't completely remove all of the hurdles, because some of you have never seen one of them, right. But it remit really drastically lowered the height of the hurdles. And what I realized in my use of Camtasia to make these gifts is that that educational technology I was using that technology that I use to make that gift was at its best. In this situation, it was the most useful in this situation, because I was using it as a tool to solve a problem or meet a goal. I had used it to take these giant hurdles that were keeping educators from watching my videos to reduce the size of those videos. And again, the hurdle is still there because not everybody's seeing them. But I made it much easier to get over these hurdles by using that technology as a tool. Now how did this become edge occasional duct tape. Well, that's a different story. That all starts on one of those evenings while my wife and I were doing that cleaning in the kitchen in that lunch packing. And she showed me on her phone a picture of this bounce house. And she said, Jake, I want to get this bounce house for the kids for Christmas. And I said, What? Are you crazy? That thing has an eight foot diameter, it'll take up our whole living room. We don't have space in our living room to walk through without stepping on toys. Anyhow, why would we do that? And she said,

13:27
because it would make the kids happy.

13:31
And I realized very quickly there I probably

13:33
don't have a choice in the first place. But I realized when she said that, yeah, she wants she's right. It wouldn't make the kids happy. And so we should get this for the kids. So she ordered it that night. It arrived on December 24 delivered by them and the big red suit, but it was not inflated. Right. And that began the love hate relationship between me in this bounce house because I was the one who had to inflate it. Okay. And I loved how happy my kids were the next day when they saw it and started playing In it, but I hated that two days later when they were over it. I was the guy who had to deflate it and put it away because it was in everybody's way. I was the guy who opened open all the holes. I was the guy who had to push it down to the floor. I was the guy who had a roll around on top of it like a six foot four rolling pin to push all the air out of it. I was the guy who had to fold it up and I was the guy who had to put it in the basement now. I also loved that a month later, when my kids were feeling restless on a snow day, I could pull this back out, inflate it and the kids had a blast in it for a couple hours. I did love that. And I loved how much they enjoyed it. But I hated that a couple days later, it was in their way once again, and I was the guy who had to again roll around on it like a six foot four rolling pin so that I could put it away in the basement. Okay. I loved how happy it made my kids I hated how much work it took for me until one day when I was inflating it for the kids and I heard this sound and I went into Mr. Burns mode from the Simpsons you know Mr. Burns. I went Yes, excellent, because I knew that I could finally throw the damn thing away. And then I saw my kids standing in the corner and they were giggling adoringly about the sound and I looked at them and I went, Oh, I can't throw it away. Look at them. They're adorable. They love this thing. They're so cute. I've got to fix it for them. Okay, so what do you think I used to fix that bounce house? Go and guess. Did somebody say pepperoni? That's a really weird answer. No, I use duct tape to patch the bounce house. Duct Tape ended up being the perfect tool for patching this bounce house and making it so my kids could plan it. It worked great. Okay. Now it's important to note that I wasn't planning on using duct tape that day. I wasn't even planning on using the bounce house that day. They were both tools that I use to meet goals that I had and my goals were for my kids to have a fun day right. That's all I was trying to achieve. The bounce house was the first in the tried to help me achieve that. And then duct tape became another tool that assisted in that measure. And it worked. My kids had a blast that day. And the duct tape worked. The bounce house didn't deflate that day until I was ready to deflate it right. And this helped me start to see something about educational technology, I started to realize that this is how educational technology works as well. But it wasn't quite educational duct tape just yet. For me, that didn't happen till I was at a Technology Conference, kind of like this one, except in person. And I realized that there were three main types of people at these educational technology conferences, there was the person who's like, ooh, flipgrid I'm gonna use that in my class tomorrow, it's gonna be great. And you're like, great, what are you teaching that you're gonna use? flipgrid with, and they're like, I don't know, but I'm gonna use flipgrid. And you're like, Listen, I love your excitement for these tools. I love your innovative attitude and your willingness to try out new things, but maybe think about your pedagogy and your teaching standards first, right? And then there's the people that are like, Oh, man, there's flipgrid And there's paradise. And there's Nearpod. And there's scratch and there's hyper dogs. There's too many tools to learn. And we understand how this person feels right. We're like Phyllis, we get it. That's a lot of different educational technology tools, and you can't keep up with them all. I can't keep up on the Mall, and educational technology is my jam. But I can't possibly keep up with all of the tools. And then there's the third type of person the Educational Technology Conference, who strolls through and thinks, Oh, flipgrid, I could use that when I need to hear from each student. Oh, Pear Deck, I could use that when I'm teaching a lesson and need some formative assessment as I go, oh, scratch I can use that when I want my kids to create their own animations to show how a project or a topic works. This person is seeing the educational technology things as tools, tools that he can use. When he has a specific lesson or need that they will help him meet. He doesn't worry with learning exactly how to use flipgrid or exactly how to use Pear Deck or exactly how to use scratch. He knows If he knows what it's for, then when it's time to use them, then he can learn how to do it. The thing about it's on YouTube, right? And this is when this all came together. For me. This is when the tater tot casserole and the bounce house and the three types of people at a tech conference came together to form the educational duct tape mindset. For me. It's when I realized that educational technology is at its most useful when it's not the goal of the lesson, but a tool used to solve a problem

18:29
or meet a goal. Similarly, using duct tape is never one's goal. But as an incredibly useful tool when solving problems or helping you meet a goal, think through all of my situations here. I didn't need or want or think I should create gifts, but they became a tool that helped me solve the problem I had, which was to get more educational technology out there ideas out there to educators. I didn't need or want to use duct tape that day, right. But it'd be came a great tool for solving the problem that I was having with that bounce house. So the educational technology is just tools. So as you're going through the sessions that you're going to view today, and over the next few days, think about these educational technologies as tools. Some of them you'll throw in your toolbox and not use anytime soon. Others of them will immediately meet needs and goals and problems that you have. And you can put it in place right now. But if you think about it, from that mindset of these things are just tools that I use to meet goals. You'll be able to prioritize which ones are learned nouns and which ones are remember, but learn laters or maybe learn Nevers because maybe they don't meet a goal or problem or need that you have in your classroom. So after I thought about this educational duct tape mindset, I created a podcast around the mindset. And in this podcast, I bring on different guests and we talk about teacher problems or teacher questions. How can I formatively assess my students? How can I support learners with special needs? How can I get my students to create things? video projects? How can I do this? How can I do that things that teachers might ask, and the guests and I come up with suggestions about different educational technologies that they could use to solve these problems or meet these goals. A couple of my favorite things about this process is that the guests and I almost always have different suggestions for tools they could use, and I'm not the right one, and they're not the right one. We're both right. Because there are lots of different educational technologies. There's no one right answer for almost any problem that you could have our goal that you could have as an educator, oftentimes, the guest and I both have multiple different answers. And that's important to understand that if somebody tells you this is the educational technology tool that you should use for this, they're wrong, that's the one that they should use for it. You should pick the one that best meets your goal, your problem your needs, and best fits your style as an educator, your content, your students their age, their style of learning their modes of learning, the They work. every classroom, every teacher, every content, every group of students is different. And so understanding directly exactly what you're trying to achieve helps you choose the tool that's right for you. And it might not be right for the teacher in the classroom next to you, right? different different educators and different situations need different tools. Okay, so then how do we choose which technologies to use, because if you're going to watch a bunch of videos today, you're going to discover a whole lot of different educational technologies that you might consider putting to work in your classroom, and you can't do them all. Actually, I know from experience going these Educational Technology Conference or viewing these online educational technology conferences, oftentimes, we use little to none of what the educational technology presenters share with us, we go back to our classrooms or to our remote learning environments. We get overwhelmed by the work that we have to do right now. We can't make a decision on which tools to put into work in our classroom, and we end up choosing none. We know it happens. It's probably happened to you. I know for sure. It's happened to me. And this is because of something called the Paradox of Choice. Now the Paradox of Choice comes from one of my favorite TED Talks. It's by a guy named Barry Schwartz, I recommend viewing the whole thing. But my favorite part of it is when he says all of this choice produces paralysis, rather than liberation. With so many options to choose from, people find it very difficult to choose at all. All of this choice produces paralysis, rather than liberation. With so many options to choose from, people find it very difficult to choose at all. And this is what happens at educational technology conferences, whether they be online and virtual or in person, we get so many different options that it becomes very difficult to choose at all and we end up with paralysis rather than liberation. We end up using

22:45
none of it.

22:47
And that happens to a lot of us. So how do we avoid that paralysis? Well, I think the best way to avoid it is to narrow down our choices. Okay? The best way to narrow down our choices is to think specific about exactly what we need. Now, Barry Schwartz talks about in this TED talk how one company that he studied, found that for every 10 additional mutual funds that they offered to their, to their employees, they had a drop in 2% participation, meaning the more mutual funds they gave their employees to choose from, rather than their employees being excited about the options, they became less likely to even participate at all. Like they're like, I'll keep my money in a box underneath my bed because I just can't choose which one to do. So the best thing that I think that company could do is narrow it down to just a few choices. This is a fun, that's good for if you're retiring within the next five years. This one's good for if you're retiring within the next 15. This one's good if you're in the next 25. And this one's good. If you're just starting out and you expect to be in this position for 35 years. Here's your four mutual funds, select the one that best meets your needs, and that's the one you're going to select. I bet that would increase their participation. Now, how can we leverage that with educational technology? Well, we leverage it by thinking That educational duct tape mindset and it said, educational technology is at its most useful when it's not the goal of the lesson. But a tool used to solve a problem or meet a goal, just like that duct tape. So if we think specifically about what our problem or goal is just like thinking about when we plan to retire, it becomes easy to select that educational technology tool or easier, just like it becomes easier to select that mutual fund that we might use. Now I want to share with you a story to illustrate how this works. So I used to be a stem teacher and in my stem class, everything was student paced, so the kids got to the activities and watched videos of me explaining what they were going to do because they were all getting to them at different times. So in the class we used to build basswood bridges, these bridges were built out of wood, the kids that had cut the wood with Exacto knives and glue it together, we would test their bridges to see how much weight they held. Now, before I went to student paste, I was able to give the entire class instructions on exactly how they were going to build it. How to use an exacto knife. Imagine eighth graders with Exacto knives read I had to go through instructions, safety instructions on how to use it. Now, when I switch the student paste, I had to do this via video. So in the video I recorded here's it, here's a picture of me recording that video, I'd have to go through exactly how to use that exact and I have how to plan their bridge out how to how to design their bridge, the regulations for the shape of their bridge and everything, all in this 15 minute 39 second long video. Now I can remember one day a kid coming up to me and saying, Mr. Miller, I'm ready for my Woods before my boss Woodbridge and I said to him, great, show me your plan for what your bridge is gonna look like and he said, What plan I said the plan that I described you making in the video and he's like, Oh, I didn't see a part about about a plan and I said well, it's in the video that you watched how could you not have seen the part about making a plan if it's part of the video that was what you have to do? It said in the video you'll make this plan and then you'll show it to me I'll check it I'll confirm your measurements are right and then I will give you the wooden the exacto knife and he's like, Oh, I don't remember that part of the video. So click He had not watched the video. So I remembered, I realized the problem that I had, I was creating these videos and yet my students were unlikely to actually watch them. Now, it's not a whole lot I could do to force the kids to watch the videos. And there's nothing I could change about the kids to make it. So I needed to come up with a reaction on my own end, that would help make sure these videos got watched. Right. So I asked this kid a question. I said, What should I look like in the video? Now, as you can tell, right now, when you're looking at this picture, I had glasses when I recorded that video. Okay, that was the semester before I had the student in my class and I no longer needed glasses because I had LASIK eye surgery. When I had this kid in my class, I also did not have a beard yet in this video. As you can see, I did have a beard. So I said the kid What did that look like in this video expecting him to say if he had watched the video you had on glasses and a beard unlike now, but he hadn't watched the video so we couldn't say that. One of his classmates, his friends were in the background going classes, beard classes, beard, but he didn't hear that kid. And he said to me, no, I'm not making this up. He said to me, uh, looked handsome.

27:04
Can't make it up. It was true. I could picture this kid saying and I remember this event. And well, maybe it was right maybe I did look handsome. I don't know that I don't know look a little bit funny there. My hair was funny like, swoopy thing I was doing my hair then. I don't know. So I said to the kid, well, thank you very much. But no, did I look any different in the video? And he said, No, you pretty much look like yourself. And I said, Did I have on glasses in the video? And he said, Mr. Miller, you don't wear glasses? And I said in the video I did. And I said that I have a beard in the video. And he said, Mr. Miller, you don't have a beard. And I said in the video I did. So clearly he had not watched it. So we both had things to do. He needed to go watch a video. And I needed to find a way to make sure my kids were making the video. And what I started using was a tool called edpuzzle and edpuzzle. Let me take my videos and embed questions at certain locations in the video. And the kids would have to answer those questions while they went through

27:51
it. And then I got

27:52
data on the end that showed me had the kids watched it, how much of it had they watched how many things could they get? Right? So Then I could say to that kid Ah, yeah, I see you watch the video. Yes, you're ready for the wood for your basketball bridge. But I could also say, which I didn't even think about, Oh, I see that you missed this question. And this question and this question this question, let's talk about those things before you start building your bridge. So it didn't just become a compliance tool, which is what I really thought it was going to be, which a little bit of ashamed of, but it also became a formative assessment tool, because I was able to talk to those kids about misconceptions that they had throughout the process. Now, I was proud of myself before from making these videos, but I realized I had a new problem and that's the kids weren't watching the videos. So now I needed a new solution, which was to add them into edpuzzle to ask the questions that I had for the kids to confirm that they were watching them, okay. It's important to understand that when I made these changes, it was in the interest of getting better. And that reminds me of this Dr. Maya Angelou quote and she says, said, Do the best you can do until you know better. Then when you know better

29:00
do better.

29:01
It's important to understand that I'm not, I wasn't doing the wrong thing by recording those videos, I was doing the best I could. And then when I knew that I needed to find a way to make sure that kids were watching them, then I knew better. And so then I did better. So I went from teaching this lesson to all the students at the same time, which I'm proud of what I did then. And then I knew better I knew I should student paste my work. So I went to recording as a video that was doing better, but then I knew that the kids weren't watching it. So I needed to add them into edpuzzle. And that was doing even better, do the best you can until you know better. And then when you know better do better. So as you go through these sessions in these videos over the next few days, think about it from that view. Do these sessions, meet some problems or goals or needs that you have? Do these sessions make you realize things that you now know better? And if they do, then it's time to prioritize which steps to take to do better. Thank you for watching this video. Thank you for your time. Again, my name is Jake Miller. If you try out anything that you learned during this session, I'd love to hear about it. There's my contact information. If you have any questions, feel free to reach out. I'd love to answer them and support you in any way I can. And I will be sending out an email about a week or so after all the sessions finished airing to give away the prizes that everybody won. If you haven't signed up to win one of those prizes. That link was back at the beginning of the video. Again, thank you for what you're doing for students. Thank you for your hard work. Thank you for being a lifelong learner and continuing to work hard to get better and do better for your students.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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Brainstorm 2020: The Magic Beneath the Surface of EdTech

April 27, 2020

<-- Back to conference page

Presented by Patrick Hausammann, Supervisor of Instructional Technology, Clarke County/UnisonEDU/VSTE

Stop, collaborate, and listen! Do not move away from a technology just because there is a new one and/or without fully exploring the tool. Many times the magic of edtech tools lies beneath the surface and is only discovered after users have explored, failed, and grown. Digging deeper alongside concepts such as “app smashing” creates all new worlds of possibilities! Come learn all about some of the magic beneath the surface of many popular EdTech tools, especially in the land of G Suite!!

Note: We are aware of some sound quality issues with the video due to internet and microphone limitations for the presenter. Please contact him directly at [email protected] with any questions.

Session note sheet

Certificate of attendance form


Transcript

Hey everybody, super excited to be with
you for the Magic Beneath the Surface of Edtech

presentation. This one being a
special G Suite edition. Hope you enjoy,

hope you learn, something, and on the
flipside connect with me anytime for

more help and diving deeper into a range
of edtech goodness. Welcome to the Magic

Beneath the Surface of Ed Tech. You'll see
a bit.ly on your screen that will get you

directly to this side deck. So if you
want to go ahead and pause for a second to

type that bitly into your address bar.
You'll be able to follow along with

the slide deck and hopefully jump into
the tools as I do as well. I am Patrick

Hausammann. I can be found at phausedu.com. I
can also be found at unisonedu.org,

which is my nonprofit I started to help
all schools in need of great

professional learning opportunities
at rates or even a free cost to make

sure they're moving forward with all
schools. You can also find me at PHausEDU

on Twitter and [email protected] You'll see a range of

different badges on your screen, know
that those are not there in any way to

boast or brag. I put all the different
things I've earned up there so you know

that I'm coming from a knowledgeable
base when I share with you. But also so

that you can get a really good idea of
what I could help you get to if there's

different certifications and badges you
want to get to, such as Google innovator

or Google Certified Trainer, Common-Sense
Ambassador, WeVideo ambassador or any of

those things you see. I'd be more than
happy to walk you through the process

that I took... help review applications and
help you get to that point. So what do I

mean by this magic beneath the
surface of edtech? Where is this magic?

What is this sorcery? I believe that many
times a magic of edtech tools lies

beneath the surface and is only
discovered after users have had an

adequate amount of time to explore, fail
learn, grow, discover, make connections, and

collaborate. It's not a instant dive in
and you

know everything about that tool. You need time
really play with it, fail, and grow from that

failure. To connect with others, collaborate
with others to do great things with

edtech. Simply because an edtech tool
isn't the latest one released doesn't

mean it isn't the best or just as
capable as another. You don't want to

instantly jump on the bandwagon of new
tools just because they're new and shiny.

Look at those old tools... see if you can
think of an awesome new way to use that

and does just this great if not a
greater thing than the new tech cool.

That doesn't mean don't try new things
but make sure that tools you're

comfortable with and the tools that your
students are comfortable with need to be

changed in order to do something else is
great. If they already know it and have

mastered it use the one that you know
they know to do the amazing things with.

With all of that said G suite is the first
area that we're going to jump into and

the main area for this presentation. So
get ready and I hope you learn a lot

about G Suite. There is a ton of awesome
stuff within the land of G Suite. It truly

is quite "suite." You'll notice on this
slide you have a lot of different links

through a lot of the different areas of
G Suite but by no means is this

everything. We have other things like
Google Keep that have phenomenal

resources and awesome uses they're just
not in this presentation. You'll notice

that we have links down the left hand
side and we also have two presentations that

are linked on the right side with the
images. One for Tips and Tricks and Just

Plain Cool stuff in G Suite and one
for All the Things You Didn't Know Google

Slides Could Do. We'll touch on some of
the things in those & if you want to learn even more

about G Suite than what is linked on the
left,

check out those slides as well. I will go
ahead and jump out of the slide deck and

we'll bounce through some of the tools. I'll
walk you through some of the awesome

stuff and then we'll come back to this slide
deck and make sure you have that bit.ly

one more time because there's
another thirty some slides in this side

deck. They go well outside of the land of
G Suite into a ton of awesome and edtech

tools.
So the first thing that we're going to

explore is Google Chrome itself.
So you'll notice as I go down down through

some of the tabs I have open, one of the
big places start is a Chrome Web Store.

The Chrome Web Store is where you can get
different extensions and themes but the

powerful one of those two is the
extensions . They will let you do a

ton of different things that aren't
inherently built into Google Chrome. For

instance, if I scroll it down just
slightly you're gonna notice there is an

extension for Kami. Kami will let you open
PDFs that you have within Google Drive

and annotate them in a range of
different ways. My internet going a

little slow, we should have a preview on
the screen but you can see that's not

loading up for me. There we go,
so what it does is allow you to annotate

via highlighting via text boxes and a range of
other ways for free. There are a couple

freemium pieces. One of the things I
always recommend with this store is to check

the overview. Check the different things
that give you an idea of what it does

here as far as they'll be some images or
maybe some videos and also jump over to

the reviews see what the reviews are
saying. What I would recommend is

changing this helpful to recent so that
you see the most current reviews not

necessarily just the ones that are
skewed towards a good side. Check this

new one and see what people are saying
right now with a side note of making sure

you read through a decent number. Don't
just take the first full negative ones as the

truth because students are actually
getting smart enough, & in some cases adults as

well, they will go in & bash the comments with
tons of negatives to try and get it to not

be approved to use. So make sure you read a decent
amount just like you would if you're

online shopping. When you want it and are
ready to use it, just click on the add to

Chrome and it'll join some of the
extensions you may already have up

because at your district side your
school can actually push the extensions

so you may well have some things that
come out there that will that you

use them without you having to install
them. One of the biggest resources I'm

going to share here comes from one of
my friends and UnisonEDU team

member, Denise Henry Orndorff and she
has made this periodic table of Google

extensions and you'll see there are a
ton of different extensions. By no

means is this all of them but you'll see
different things like EasyBib that'll

help you cite resources or help your
students cite sources. Things like share to

classroom that will let you put just about
any resource, link it directly in the

classroom without opening classroom or
using something else. There's things like

Screencastify that you'll see down here
at the bottom that is actually a

screencasting tool that I'm using right now
to record this video. There are ton of

different other ones like Mercury Reader
that will help take all the distractions

away from an article so you can read it
clearly. Check out a ton of these

different extensions, check out the
Chrome Web Store, do some Google searches...

there's a ton of the things being
shared out there. Know that the way

Google Chrome operates on the surface is
very far shy of what it can actually do.

So make sure you dig a little deeper on
Chrome. Some of the other things we're

going to look at are different instant
searches that you can do. If you've not

been to ControlAltAcheive.org, I'm sorry, .com. It's Eric Curts'

website he puts tons of awesome
resources up. The one that I'm going to show

you right now briefly is 20 instant
searches your kids need to know or your

students should know. Instant searches are those
things they type in the address bar or

the URL bar and they will instantly do
things for you without you having to

click more things. One of those is as
simply as typing "flip a coin."

Google will automatically then put a coin on your screen so you can flip it.
Y ca do a quick heads or tails type activity.

Maybe you're looking at probability...
It'll come up saying preparing to

flip and when you click it it'll flip it
and of course you can click it multiple

times you continue to flip. Some of
the other things that

are within the blog post and there's
actually a second companion blog post to

this as well but you can do things like
roll a die, quickly get definitions,

check the time, particularly in different
countries by saying what time is it in

this place, one of the ones a lot of our
elementary teachers use and even

secondary is the timer function. They'll
type in something like 15-minute timer

for their stations. It'll automatically
load the page with the timer you see,

start it counting down, and you'll notice
there's a small volume option there

that'll let you control whether or not
that makes sound when that and runs down.

You have calculator options, things all
the way up through and including

calculating the area of shapes,
calculating the volume of shapes, even

going as far as graphing equations. So
just the search bar within Google Chrome

itself gives you a lot more than
literally just typing in a website or

doing a search for something that you
then have to dig deeper. There's a lot of

things you can instantly find out if you
dig a little bit deeper than that

surface level. So check out these, go to
ControlAltAchieve.com and check out

the companion posts. It's going to give you
a lot more things that you can search

for and instantly get the things you
need. You can see there's also some

keyboard shortcuts and using different
users in Google Chrome. Definitely things

if you use Chrome for a lot on the
personal side and work side I would

check those things out so that you get a
really good idea of all the different

things Chrome can do for you. As we come down,
the next thing we're going to look at is

Google Drive. We won't do a ton in Google
Drive but the first thing that I want to

look at is actually using emojis. There's
a couple different ways that you can use

emojis If we come into Google Drive
itself,

you'll notice as I scroll down I have
one emoji up next to the name of a

folder and that helps me really quickly
find it and be able to pick it out of

the list of all the other folders. I've
shared this with different students as

well and it really helps them find
things in the maze of all the other

things listed in their Drive. Adding
emojis into those things is

very easy to do.
if I right-click on the file or the

folder, I'm just going to go into rename and
you'll see I can type in this I can do

whatever. What I'm actually going to do is
hop over to a different website for

emoji pedia and we'll just do something
quick and easy. We'll search for smile

and you can choose which one that you
might want go ahead and click on it and

it will tell you, which is nice about
this website, what that [emoji] represents but it

also gives you this quick and easy copy
button. So I'm going to snag that, come back

to my tab, and then I can just paste it
in like I would anything else. The

important part here is that you paste
it after the title or after the name of

the document. If you put it beforehand
it's actually going to break up the

alphabetical order and put it up towards
the top like you added a number at the

beginning. So make sure you put it after
and then you just hit OK and it's going to

be right in there. You could do
the same thing if I was in an open Doc.

I could easily hit that copy and paste and go
ahead and paste it right into my

document. If I click on the title you notice that this
one already has a couple in it. Very cool

stuff, really helps students find those
things. What you want to make sure of on

your side and also likely on the
students side is that you've cautioned

them to not add too many. If every folder
in their Drive or every file in their Drive

has emojis, it's not going to help them
find anything. Another really cool thing

that you can do with emojis within
Google itself as far as in a Doc, if I

come into my document if I just want
an emoji anywhere I can come up to insert,

go special characters, and in the
drop-down (it's usually gonna be on

symbol) but you can choose a emoji and you
have an emoji library there you can

insert things directly into your
documents. You can even try your hand at

drawing the symbol for the emoji. You'll
be able to find it on the screen and

insert it directly into your Doc.
Another thing that you can do that's

cool is customize your bullet points. So
if I click on the bullet point twice [slowly] and

I'm going to right click on more
bullets and you'll see I'm right into

that insert special characters again. I
can choose and I can make any emoji that

bullet point and if I hit enter to add
another one it's gonna be that same

emoji. Cool stuff and stuff that really
captures students attention and makes it

a little bit more exciting than just
another bulleted list.

Side note of different projects you
might be able to do as well as far as

something one of our teachers does is
recreating the Bill of Rights

written completely in emojis. As we
come through and look at our document a

little more, popping back quickly to the
slide deck, you're going to see there's other

things here like shortcuts, work spaces,
and different apps that you can bring in.

Just like other things in the land of
Google if I go to new and more I'm going to

see all of those other things I do like Forms, Drawings, Sites, and

different apps I connected into my Drive
to other things, for instance like WeVideo

allows me to edit different videos,
Jamboard is a another piece that allows

me to do whiteboard type things in the
land of Google, with Beautiful Audio Editor I

can edit audio in Google Drive which is
not a capability it normally has. But if

I scroll to the very bottom of this list,
and again, I'm in "Create," then "More," then at

very bottom "connect more apps." I will
have an app library that I can search

down through and install things. A lot of
these including this apps for as well as

extensions need to be enabled by your G
Suite administrator to allow you to

install them. A lot of times this is disabled
for students and left on for teachers

but if you get to this and it doesn't
let you install anything, connect with

your administrator to get that turned on.
Those are some cool things that you can

do just in Drive a little bit within Docs.
If we come down through we're going to go

ahead and jump right into Docs and
keep rolling on quickly through our

different things. So in the land of Docs, you'll notice I closed a tab I needed. Quick tip,
control+shift+T will open the last tab

closed and, say it was five tabs ago, just
hit control+shift+t five times & it'll

instantly bring back those five tabs in
the order that I closed them. If I look at

this, I also have add-ons within Docs, which
are really cool. So if I come into

"add-ons" and then click on where it says
"get add-ons" that's going to let me

explore again on another store full of
different things that add increased

function and capability to Google Docs.
So it's going give you different options

that allow you to do things like
bibliography work with EasyBib. It's

going to give you maybe Math Type to let
you type different things within the

realm of equations... things like that.
There's also a great accessibility

add-on that you can use Called Grackle Docs
that will scan through your Doc & give

you suggestions on how you can approve
it for accessibility. Well, you'll notice

I have a fairly small scroll bar which
tells me I have a lot of

different things I can check out in
there. These will not slow down your

machine at all but something I should
have mentioned when I talked about

extensions is you want to make sure you
don't install too many as extensions can

slow down your machine. I would also
recommend... you'll see a small yin-yang

symbol at the top right in my screen.
That is Extensity. That's will let you

toggle on and off extensions that you
use or install. So if you need it right

now you can just click it turn it on, if
you don't need it it's okay to turn it

off so it's not using those system
resources. Another thing in Docs that I

want to show you is within the "Tools"
menu. If I click on that I can click on

preferences and these will allow you to
customize different things that Google

does for you. By clicking on the
substitutions tab I could type something

like Haus, like you'll see down here at
the bottom, and it will type my last name

instead. If you consistently spell a word
wrong you could type in the one that you

usually type it as and set it to auto
correct something else. You'll see this

is where the things like the fractions
that autocorrect themselves. Those are

pre-programmed things by Google. You'll
see the copyright symbol, the trademark

symbol, those are all things already
there but you can add your own just by

typing them in at the top, hitting the okay
button and it will automatically

substitute for you and make that a
preference that goes forward with you in

your Docs.
Another thing that I'll touch on here in

Docs and then we're going to jump out and
keep rolling through is for instance if

I highlight this it's going tell me that
that font is Arial. Maybe I want it to be a

different font instead and maybe I want that
to be my headings font for the end of

time in Doc's or at least in this
Doc. If I click on the drop down we'll

see Heading 3, I can click on update heading
3 to match so that is going to make it so

in this Doc alone that is going to be
any time I do heading 3 it's going to look

exactly like that. If I want to apply it
globally to Doc's I could come down to

options and save it as my default styles.
Which is going to mean anytime I use head

three any time in Docs from here into
the future it's gonna look exactly like

that. So, if you want a different normal
text so that when you open the Doc it's a

font other than Arial 11 you can program
that in the exact same way. We're going

to keep rolling down through our
different things and we're gonna skip a

couple of these but I'm going to hit on
Slides first and notice you have this

other slide deck "All The Things You
Didn't Know You Could Do With Slides," so

if I pop that open and I'm going to to do a
quick scroll through because we're

actually short on I'm already. But if you
check it out you're going have different

sections: "General Awesomeness" which tells
you how to do different things like

customize the slide side size, how do you
bring in images, auto type or speak to type your

speaker notes via your voice, different
transitions and things you can do,

format options, and as you come down
through... There's some simple things your students can do

like applying gradient backgrounds,
different things like the

re-emergence of "Word Art" within the land
of Google but as I come down through

there's a next section that is "Next
Level Awesomeness." That's going

to show you how to edit things like the
master slide, how to do things like word

sorts, different add-ons that you can use
in Google slides, and know that there's

add-ons in Forms and as well as Google
Sheets as well so check those out when

you're in those apps. But as we come down
through you'll see there's different

things that walk you through or give you
a template on how to do things like word

sorts, how do I add add-ons, what about
social media templates (things like

Instagram templates, things like Facebook
all of those different things... maybe even

some new tic toc ones that are coming
out), how can you use those in a safe way

without maybe jumping into the app
itself. Different infographics, how to do

stop motion animation, choose your own
adventures, magnetic poetry, even a thing

that comes from Micah Shippee on how you can
teach your students how to create an app

within Slides. So, please don't think that
Slides is just the presentation tool. I

can just do a PowerPoint but I'll do it
in Slides. Slides can do so much more...

It can be your newsletter with a custom
page size. You can design

full-size posters by making the slide
size 24 by 36, save it as a PDF, and send

it to the publisher to print out. Its a
ton of different things you can do so

don't discount it as just the
presentation tool. There's a ton of

different things in there including what
I didn't touch on is a sweet way that

you can do a magic reveal by playing
with the ordering of an levels of

pictures, images, & texts that are on your
slide. Really cool stuff that you can

check out. I'll touch on a couple of
these things briefly without necessarily

touching out of the slideshow much but
in Sheets think of things like pixel art...

and there's a ton of different resources
on Eric Curts' website including things

about pixel art. Things like doing "Battle
Sheets" and you'll see right here a

template for 20 color pixel art
template as well as pixel art activities

for any subject with any grade. But it
gives you a really great idea of ways

that you can use Slides [meant Sheets] that are
different or cheats that are different

than just typing in formulas and numbers.
Getting the students really comfortable

with something like Sheets that will
then allow you to work your way into

those numbers formulas and things. Give
them comfortable, fun things to do in

school before you jump into that a
little bit heavier things to do in

Sheets. Something else that's really cool
is that you can actually translate

things within Google Sheets. On Jake
Miller's, JakeMiller.net, his website, he

actually gives you an animated EduGif
here that shows you how to do this

within Google Sheets where you can have
it translate into different languages

just by typing in the right formula and
then filling downward. And it's going to

translate those things in different ways
for you. Really cool kind of trick or

hack that I didn't even know about but
is really simple to do and could be a

game changer in your classroom with your
kids.

One of the last things I'll touch on is
flippity.net. This does a ton of

different things with Sheets and they
give you Demos, instructions, and

templates for just about every one from
things like scavenger hunts, quiz games,

random name pickers... You can actually make tournament boards or brackets, badge makers,

also word puzzles, bingo, hangman,
certificates... tons of different things

that all use easy to follow instructions
and templates and utilize Google Sheets.

As we continue down our list and get
towards the bottom here there's a lot of

cool things you can check out with Forms.
One of the biggest things I like about

it is creating basically really easy to
create digital break outs that use

something like Google Forms with the
verification side turned on. There's

directions in a slide deck there for you
as well as playing with the confirmation

message by embedding some sort of
enrichment activity in there via a link so

that when students finish whatever quiz
or activity breakout they're doing

there's one more added wrinkle that they
can get to and add something fun on. I

also like a thing that Tom Mullaney
posted about an "impossible to fail quiz."

If students get it wrong that form will
then branch them to more help, & have them

answer the question again. So think of it
a way that they can do a quiz but review

at the same time. Really sweet stuff!
The last thing we'll touch on this slide

is Google Drawings and the only one I'm
going to touch on on this one is what

Eric Curts calls a "Googlink." Which makes
it very similar to if you've used Thinglink.

This is what it is but made in the realm
of Google. You can create a Google

Drawing and this will walk you through a
hundred percent of the steps of how to

do it. You can embed links& pictures. You
can even use a hack that is listed on

the slide to bring in an image or sorry
a video within Google Drawings, something

you typically can't do. But watch that
link and you'll know how to do it fairly

quickly. But what it [the Googlink"] allows you to do is
embed everything in one spot, use the

published URL, and then you basically
have a one-stop shop

for all your students that they could
link into different websites, their

different activities, they could watch a
video answer questions from the Google

Form... anything that you can link in you
can bring into the "Googlink" & have it

in one spot. This actually is a good
segue and a touch point to something I

didn't touch on up in the top part here
and that is Hyper Docs. It's a way to

package your lesson all in one spot that
is linked on the slide as well if you

look at HyperDocs.co you'll get
tons of information there. Think of it as

an amazing way to engage your students,
give them all kinds of activities and

awesome things to do, and also bring them
around to some sweet reflection at the end.

That's where we're going head right now.
At the end of the slide deck you're

actually going to see a slide that'll be
an evaluation link. Please do that. Give

me some feedback. Let me know how it went.
I know it went fast but remember too

this is a video so you can go back and
pause and re-watch anytime.

And also check out some of the many different sections like Flipgrid,

Adobe Spark, Wakelet... & tons of
others that are linked in. The bit.ly is

back on your screen for a moment here so
you can grab that if you missed it at

the beginning. And I'll also bring up my
contact information so you'd have that

one more time.
Please contact me anytime, it doesn't matter

if it's today when you watch this, a week
from now, or a year from now, send me

questions and act to collaborate any
time. We'll make great things happen with

our students and last thing that I would
ask you to do is towards the very bottom.

And I'll leave you with this to repeat...
please place your

hand on a keyboard when you do so. Give your permission self permission to dive deep

into edtech to check out the magic down below
by reciting the oath but remember the

last part of connecting with a loved one or
a friend that can bring you out of that

rabbit hole if you dive too deep or go
for just simply too long. Thank you guys!

Really enjoy being with here with
you, wish we're in person but love that

we could do it virtual, if nothing
else. Thanks!

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