Word Clouds in the Classroom

Many educators are familiar with word cloud tools such as Wordle, Tagxedo, and Tagul, which allow students to create colorful visualizations of text that can be posted online or saved as an image. Word clouds quickly analyze text to create a shape in which the words that appear most frequently appear bigger and bolder.  They’re a great way for students, especially visual learners, to distill and summarize information and quickly identify what’s important in a body of text.  Word clouds can be used in all subjects and with all grade levels to promote critical thinking, improve vocabulary, analyze texts, assess student writing, prompt student reflection, illustrate an event, classify objects or parts of speech, and more.

Edudemic provides a great list of 5 Ways to Use Word Clouds in The Classroom.  One popular activity, especially early in the school year, is for students to create a “Get to Know Me” word cloud that includes a list of words that students use to describe themselves.

Instead of printing student-created word clouds, consider importing the images to a Google Slideshow, student blog, or classroom website. If you must print, be sure to require that students use a plain white, rather than a solid color background, to save on printer ink.  My other tip is to encourage students to copy and paste their text, rather than type directly into the word cloud tool so that, in the event of an Internet glitch, their efforts are not lost.

One of the most popular word cloud websites, Wordle, was offline for a while. It’s back now, but in the interim I discovered another tool that has some great features.  WordClouds.Com is a free tool that has a lot of cool features, including the ability to choose different shapes, colors, and fonts.  On the right is a word cloud I created based on the content of this newsletter.

One challenge with some word cloud tools is their dependence on Java or Shockwave plugins, which require frequent updating. That’s one of many reasons to consider using the Word Cloud Generator Add-on for Google Docs. Once you and your students install the Word Cloud Generator, it can be easily accessed from the Add-ons menu in a Google Doc to generate a downloadable word cloud.

Google Drive Benefits

In an effort to convince some educators and administrators to switch to Google Drive for creating, sharing, and storing files, I brainstormed this list. It's amazing how Drive has already changed the way we work, teach, create, collaborate, and learn!

• Anywhere, anytime access, regardless of the type of computer or mobile device. 
• Applications are very similar to MS Office, so the learning curve is minimal.
• Drive applications are ideal for collaboration.  Multiple people can edit and comment on documents simultaneously.
• Share settings are private by default, but you can share with anyone who has the link, or with specific people, and you can determine if they can edit, comment, or view only.
• Unlimited storage for educational domains, with no limit to storing large files, such as images and videos.
• Increasingly recognized as the standard, especially in public education.  As a result, Google Apps integrate well with many other online tools.
• Easily move from and to MS Applications:  export from Google Docs, Slides, and Sheets to Word, PowerPoint, and Excel, and continue editing the file in those MS applications if you choose, or easily convert MS applications to Drive equivalents.
• With the Drive App installed on your computer, you can open all files (including MS Office files), edit, and save them, and they will automatically sync to the cloud for viewing on other devices.
• Drive files are safely stored on a high-security Google server.
• Sophisticated search tool makes it easy to locate files that you created and files that are shared with you.
• More reliable storage alternative than an external hard drive or USB flash drive, which can become corrupt and get lost or damaged, resulting in lost files.  
• Drive apps include newly-developed sophisticated tools, including Voice Typing for speech-to-text input, and Document Outline for easy navigation of long documents.
• Continually updated with improved interface and add-ons.
• Ability to share with others large files that cannot be sent via an email attachment.
• The Forms tool, with built-in reporting function, makes it easy to create surveys, quizzes, and other types of forms to collect and analyze data.
• Free!

Sophisticated Screencasting with Nimbus

There are several tools for capturing screenshots and screencast videos from your Chrome browser, but Nimbus has recently become a new favorite. This Chrome extension is easy to install and offers some extra features that similar tools don’t have. I really like that there are multiple capture options for screenshots, including the ability to “Select & Scroll,” which allows you to scroll while capturing so that you can grab pieces of the screen not immediately visible.  When using Nimbus to create a screencast (ie, a digital video recording of your desktop) you have access to several helpful tools, including the ability to resize and crop, a highlighter, speech bubble-style notes, and many font styles and sizes for adding text. Two very cool tools are the blur, which allows you to select a portion of the screen capture to blur out (ideal for ensuring student privacy in a photo) and automatic numbering of arrows that you add (ideal for showing multiple steps in a process).  Best of all, Nimbus provides a customizable countdown, so the recording doesn’t start until you are ready.  For an example, see the video below explaining new Google Slides features, which I created with NImbus.

The Nimbus extension integrates seamlessly with Google Drive, and has numerous educational applications. To name just a few: teachers can use it to demonstrate how to use an online resource, students can explain a concept to demonstrate understanding, or you can use it to record narration of a Google Slide presentation.  

Foreign Language Characters and Accents with GAFE

Google provides a variety of tools for incorporating foreign language characters and accents, which are useful for students studying world languages, and especially handy for teachers seeking to support English language learners and communicating with families that do not speak English as a first language.

Insert Special Characters

You can access a library of foreign and other special characters directly within Google Docs and Slides:

1. Click Insert
2. Click Special Characters
3. Choose Latin (for Spanish or French) from the drop down menu.  Many, many other scripts are also available.  You can also search for any symbol by keyword.
4. Click to insert a symbol directly into your document or presentation.

If you want to search for a symbol but can’t remember its name, you can draw the symbol, and if Google recognized it based on your drawing, the symbol will display.  Watch this video for a demonstration of the Draw a Symbol feature.

Add Keyboard Layouts on a Chromebook

1. Click on the Chrome menu (3 horizontal bars in the Chrome toolbar)
2. Click Settings
3. Under Device, click Keyboard Settings
4. Click Change Language and Input Settings
5. Click Add
6. Choose the language you need from the dropdown menu.

Switching Keyboards

Once you have set up the languages and keyboard layouts you prefer, you can click on the bottom-right system tray in order to switch between them. You can also move between your preferred keyboard layouts by using Alt-Shift to switch between your keyboard layouts or by using Ctrl-Space to go to your last layout.

Google Input Tools Chrome Extension

Install Google Input Tools to your Chrome browser for easy access to characters and symbols in over 70 languages. Google Input Tools allow you to insert foreign characters in Google Docs, Slides and other apps, and also anywhere on the web where you can enter input (ie, social networks, order forms, etc.)

Formative Assessment Tools

Innovate formative assessment have the power to engage students, provide valuable feedback, and support the philosophies behind growth mindset.  The integration of game-style approaches to formative assessment has rapidly increased with the availability of numerous online tools that can measure learning progress and provide teachers with valuable data. The following game-based tools are not just excellent options for formative assessment...they can be really fun.

Kahoot!  With Kahoot! it only takes a few minutes to create a fun learning game that can be played in a classroom setting. Students can use any device (computer, Chromebook, iPad, iPhone, etc.) to participate in the game-style assessment and get instant feedback.  You can also add videos, images, and diagrams.  A classroom game of Kahoot will yield instant feedback for teacher and students, but be forewarned….it could get raucous!

Socrative  Teachers can signup and use their free Socrative account to create instant questions, quizzes, games, and polls, or access a quiz created and shared by another teacher. Students login to the student version on any device, using a unique classroom code, and can play either in anonymous mode, or with a username that allows the teacher to collect instant assessment data.  There are two versions of Socrative for mobile devices: a student app, and teacher app.  Socrative apps are also available for Android devices.

Poll Everywhere

Encourage class participation and get immediate feedback to a single question with a “poll” that you can create in advance or on the fly.  Students can respond instantly from any device, including using a text code from their mobile phones. The free version allows for 25 responses, so will work in most classrooms, but you would need to upgrade to the paid version to extend that number, or to access reports and grading features. You can embed polls in PowerPoint presentations, and with the free Chrome extension, you can easily embed polls in Google Slides.

Quizalize

Quizalize is a newer student response system that looks a lot like Kahoot!, but with three main advantages: questions are shown on the student devices (rather than solely projected on a whiteboard from the teacher’s computer) so that students can progress at their own pace; the games can be played in “team” mode so that groups of students can compete against each other; and the quizzes can be played live or asynchronously, so teachers can assign them as homework.  Another very cool feature is the integration with Google Classroom. Once teachers signup with their Google accounts, Quizalize can access class rosters so that teachers can assign a quiz to the entire class, and students can log into the player with their own accounts. The free version of Quizalize includes all the basic features needed to create and complete quizzes.  Here’s a video that explains how to use Quizilize.

Multimedia Posters & Presentations with Thinglink

Also available on the web (so accessible by computer and Chromebook users too), Thinglink allows the creation of interactive images that can be used as multimedia posters and presentations. You simply upload any image, and use the Thinglink tools to tag and embed anything from the web, including videos.

In Ms. Melbourne’s class at the Gates school, grade 5 students used the free Thinglink App to demonstrate their understanding of the water cycle by tagging each step in an image of the cycle with photos that they took themselves from the school surroundings, and web-based images (because apparently they couldn’t find any icebergs in Acton). Once the Thinglinks are saved, they can be shared via a link or embedded in a website.  Ms. Mel’s students were clearly engaged by their ability to share and create an interactive poster for their science project.

Teachers can also use Thinglinks, to deliver interactive educational content to students, or to share classroom activities with families.  Click here to see a Thinglink I made for Kindergarten students to use for independent learning. By embedding it on my webpage, I basically leveraged Thinglink as a K-friendly online research tool.

Annotate, Highlight, Comment, and More with Kami

Kami is a free and surprisingly robust extension for annotating documents, including PDFs, images, and files created using Word and PowerPoint. I have used an earlier version of this productivity tool, which was named Notable PDF, and was please to discover that Kami is similar, but much better. With Kami installed as an extension to your Chrome browser, you and our students can easily upload files, or access files stored in Google Drive, and then instantly share them with others, highlight, underline, and strikethrough text, type your own text, add comments, and do freehand drawing. The sharing feature allows for collaborative annotation. Kami is a google Apps Technology Partner, which among other things, means that there is 24/7 tech support. There is also a premium paid version with expanded features, including the ability to insert e-signatures, and split and merge files.

Digital Tools for Integrating Current Events and Non-fiction Reading

It wasn't so long ago that Time for Kids was the de-facto standard in delivering current events to students.  Times (pun intended) have changed! Time for Kids has expanded beyond the paper version to include multimedia content, but just as mainstream adult news has been revolutionized by technology, there are now many more options for bringing current events into classrooms. Two that stand out for the incredibly high quality of news content are Newsela and News-o-Matic. Both offer free versions and paid descriptions, and include teacher tools to support non-fiction reading instruction.

Newsela curates news stories from national news organizations such as the Associated Press and major city newspapers, and re-writes them for students, adapting the stories into five different forms, corresponding to five different Lexile reading levels. The articles are tagged by categories, and include related photos and a word count, Many of the articles are also translated into Spanish.  There is a premium version that offers more features, but even with the free version, the access to timely and appropriate news content, and the available teacher tools, is all pretty impressive. Teachers and students can search featured text sets by grade level and reading standards. Teachers can assign reading to students, who access the virtual classroom with a unique code.
Featured text sets can be searched by grade level and reading standard, and be marked as favorites. Each article even includes a brief comprehension quiz.  Wow!

Teachers can easily sign up for Newsela account and follow the basic steps to get started with a classroom account in the Quickstart Guide for Teachers.

Even more impressive is the awarding winning News-O-Matic.  Offered as an iOS app, and online at www.press4kids.com, News-O-Matic publishes five news stories every day covering US and international news, sports, arts, sciences, and more, all completely ad-free.  The "home" version of the app is free; the new education version is $9.99 ($4.99 through the volume purchase program).

Launched in June 2013 and geared for students in grades 2 up to early junior high school, the app interface is incredibly well designed, with high-quality graphics and easy navigation. Each news story includes a side bar with an interesting fact, author information, a highlight tool, videos, slideshows, and my favorite feature, "Go There," which launches a map highlighting the location of the news story, distance (measured in traditional and creative standards) and interesting facts.  Every story has an audio feature, read aloud by an actual human voice, and most are translated into Spanish, also with audio support.  According to the News-O-Matic folks I met at MassCUE, plans are underway to add French languages support.  The quality of the app and the paid subscription (which includes additional tools for classroom use) is so impressive, I had to ask them, "How do you do it?"  The answer: they haven't gotten much sleep.  No surprise...News-O-Matic is clearly the product of hard work and unbounded zeal for journalism.

New Google Classroom Features Just in Time for the New School Year

The developers at Google have been busy this summer rolling out some new impressive features for Google Classroom, evidence that there is a serious commitment to supporting the use of GClassroom as an online learning tool.

Post a Question in Google Classroom
The lack of a full-featured discussion board has kept Google Classroom out of the running against other more robust learning management systems such as Moodle or Schoology.  Online discussions are key to online learning because they encourage collaboration, full participation, and higher-order thinking skills, all key to supporting the very important social aspect of learning. Finally, there is a way for teachers to post a question on Google Classroom that allows for students to respond, and for teachers to moderate the discussion.
To post a question that will be visible in a Google Classroom stream, click then click Create question, and enter a title of the question.   There are several options, including due dates, adding YouTube videos or Google Drive items, bumping a post to the top of a stream, and allowing students to see and reply to each others' answers...basically everything you would want to manage online discussions.

Get Instant Notifications with the Classroom App
Students can now receive mobile notifications via the Google Classroom on their Android or iOs devices anytime new content is added to their classes.  With this new features, students can be automatically notified when a teacher or student responds to a post, or when their work is graded, allowing them to more easily stay on top of their online learning.

Should We Teach Keyboarding?

Last month I had the pleasure of working on a committee of educators from my district to discuss the complex and often controversial issue of teaching our students to type.  Over a two-day period we poured over current research and debated why, when, and how to teach keyboarding skills to elementary school students.  Bringing a diverse range of perspectives and teaching experiences, these educators and I quickly reached consensus on the value of keyboarding, and agreed that preparing students for online assessments is just one part of the overall rationale.

Ultimately, we identified Typing.com as a primary curriculum, and Dance Mat Typing as a solid supplemental resource. We developed an implementation plan that can be adapted by all six of the elementary schools in our district, and are hopeful that a consistent, coherent approach to teaching keyboarding will benefit our students now and in the future.  You can read our entire report, along with the research consulted, here.

Student-Created Digital Portfolios

Developing portfolios can be a terrific way to involve students in the assessment process.  When students have the opportunity to curate, critique, and reflect on their own work, they gain a greater awareness of the learning process.  Using digital tools rather than traditional notebooks and paper to develop portfolios provides even further advantages, including the ability to:

• Collaborate with others on group projects

• Maintain portfolios from grade to grade to demonstrate growth

• More easily edit and refine artifacts

• Easily share portfolios with parents

• Access portfolios from anywhere

• Easily incorporate a range of multimedia elements

• Annotate and comment on artifacts using drawing, text, audio, and video

• Encourage creativity and flexibility

• Develop and demonstrate technology skills

SeeSaw is an especially kid-friendly, and currently free, iPad app this is perfectly designed for students of all ages, and can be used in classrooms with even just one iPad.  SeeSaw allows teachers to set up and control digital student journals, and provides a range of flexible tools inlcuding text, drawing, audio and video recording, and content uploading. Once teachers set up their SeeSaw classrooms, students have access to their portfolios without needing to login any login information. They simply use an iPad to scan the unique QR code printed by their teacher, choose therir name from the list of students, and create or upload content. SeeSaw is ideal for classrooms with shared iPads, as the app allows access by the teacher and every student in the class.   Other features include the ability to assign multiple students to an item for collaborative work, invite parents to view and/or comment on journals, and create and organize journals by topic or subject.  I can see this app working well for all students, from preschool to high school, but it’s especially valuable for students under the age of 13. Here's a video that provides a quick overview:

Google Sites can be used by students with Google Apps for Education accounts to create interactive digital portfolios.  Students can easily create and customize their site, add pages for each subject, and set page-level permission to share pages with teachers, or with other students for collaborative projects.  Students can type reflections and other text directly into sites, and upload a variety of Google Apps and multimedia elements, including Google Slides, Sheets, Docs, and audio clips, photos, and videos.  The Site can be maintained from one school year to the next, and when the student graduates, their educational Google account can be easily transferred to a personal Google account.  Dr. Helen Barret, a retired profession of education who has researched the impact of electronic portfolios on student learning, partnered with Google to create these steps for creating eportfolios with Google Sites.

siteMaestro is a Google add-on that allows teachers to easily use Google Sites for student portfolios by providing the ability to bulk-copy, share, and manage Google Sites with students. This is not for Google novices, but if you are familiar with Sheets, and interested in exploring using Sites for eportfolios, you might want to consider helping the developers test it out.  siteMaestro was developed by New Visions Cloud, creators of Doctopus, autoCrat, and other useful tools for Google educators.

EduClipper a free web-based tool that can be used to create eportfolios.  Once students create an EduClipper account, they can use it to store web bookmarks, computer files, anything stored in their Google Drive, and content from some online tools such as Prezi. This option provides a very visual, object-oriented interface with drag and drop features. Students can choose a unique design and determine privacy settings. Watch the video below to learn more.

Digital portfolios can be created by even very young students using some of the latest web-based and iPad tools Here are four sources for implementing digital portfolios in your classroom.

Getting Started with eduClipper Presentation Portfolios from AdamBellow on Vimeo.

Blogging With Students

Google's recent retraction of a proposed ban on adult content in Blogger (click here for the ABC News report) prompts some deep-thinking for educators about whether Blogger is the best tool for student blogs.  While it will continue to be a viable asset in the suite of Google Apps for Education, it may not be the best tool for young students.  A student or teacher-created Blogger account will obviously not include inappropriate content or any advertising, but it is possible for students to unintentionally navigate to another, possibly questionable, blog, by clicking the "Next Blog." link at the top of the blog page, in the "navibar."

Luckily it is recently possible to remove the navibar.
1. In the edit mode of your blog, click the Layout menu on the left
2. Click Edit, and then click Off to turn off the navibar.

For elementary school I tend to encourage the use of blogging platforms specifically designed for education with younger students.  Kidblog and Edublogs are two such options.  Because of its simple design and more extensive free features, I prefer Kidblog, but both are worth consideration. The comparison chart below may help you choose for yourself.  Both offer more extensive features (such as the abililty to login with a GAFE account or integrate with Google Drive) available through upgraded paid subscriptions.

Free Features	Kidblog	Edublogs
Intended for Education	✔	✔
Ad-free	✔	✔
Privacy options	✔	✔
Post & comment moderations	✔
Use Google Apps for Education accounts to sign up and log in
Unlimited Classes (Organize students in multiple class sections	✔
Write Posts and create pages	✔	✔
Embed videos and HTML	✔
Personalized student themes		✔
Student management	✔
Integration with Google Drive
Student blog storage limit	32Mb	32Mb
Class size limit (for moderated classes)	40	N/A