A Beginner's Guide to Google Apps for Education

At a recent parent forum, we had requests for a workshop on Google Apps, so parents can understand what their child is doing at school and support them at home.

We focused on Google Docs, Google Drive and GMail. You can see a summary of what we spoke about in the presentation below.

We used the context of Favourite Restaurants in Singapore to show some of the features of docs. Check it out!

For more self-directed learning with Google Apps, try the Google Apps Learning Centre.

Digital Bytes 6th June 2016

	Google Drive Templates - Because Caring is Sharing Who doesn’t love a good template? Erifili Davis has collated a post full of excellent Google Drive Templates, including the FakeBook one shown here. Check out her suggestions on timelines, presentations, written projects and social media templates.
	What Students Feel Learning in a State of Flow “Flow,” is a state of being where one is completely engaged and absorbed by what they are doing. Jackie Gerstein believes that one of the roles of educators today is to help set up conditions so learners achieve a state of flow. Read more about Gerstein’s suggestions for how to make this happen.
	3 End of Year Reflection Strategies for Students As the academic year comes to a close, many teachers are considering options for reflection so as to celebrate and highlight growth in learning. Rebecca Alber has put together some strategies that will engage students, rather than turn them off. Check them out!

Leaving Well with Google - updated!

[Editor note: We have updated this very important post from our previous 2013 version! The information below is current as of 6 May 2016.]

This is always a difficult time of year as we say "see ya later" to colleagues, students and families who are leaving our school. To make the transition a little easier, here are some ideas on taking your Google items with you.

The first step to make the transition is to create a personal Google account for yourself. This will become the new home for all the things you'd like to transfer from your account at UWCSEA.

To take things with you, we will use Google Takeout, but first it's important to separate the things you want to leave behind from the things you want to take with you.

Google Drive

If you have any items you need to leave behind because they are needed by colleagues or friends, you'll need to make sure that your department account is added as an editor of the document. An easy way to do this is to create a new folder and add the department account as editor to the folder. Then, Add (hold down Option+drag) documents to this folder. They will automatically be editable by the department account.

For really important documents, you might consider transferring ownership over to the department account.

You'll also need to think about those files that you will want to take with you when you leave. One systematic way to do this is to create a separate folder in your My Drive where you collect these files (e.g. "Take Out" folder). As you go through documents in other parts of your Drive, add them to this "Take Out" folder -- be sure you add and not move by holding down the Option key when you drag to your new folder.

Cleaning your digital debris can be a daunting task, but it's necessary to make sure documents are left with those who depend on them, and that you have the documents you need when you depart.

Gmail

Just like with Drive, you should take this opportunity to sort through your email. If there are emails that people in your department or team need that they have not been cc'd on, please take some time to filter these and forward them to the relevant people.

Similar to how you organized your Drive, in GMail you can create a label for all the email you intend to take with you. When you go to use Google Takeout later, you can then choose if you want to bundle all of your email into that archive, or if you'd just like to take email with a particular label.

Sites

Before you leave, it's important to make sure that the Google Sites you've created for UWCSEA that need to remain behind -- e.g. event sites, curriculum pages, etc. -- have ownership changed to your department account. 

1. Go to the site you wish to transfer and click the Settings icon, then choose "Manage Site."
2. Click "Sharing and Permissions" and add the department account an "owner" of the site (you can have multiple owners of a site). Click "OK."

You may want to preserve some of the Google Sites you've created in the college and keep copies for yourself later. To do this, the steps are similar: 

1. Go to the site you wish to transfer and click the Settings icon, then choose "Manage Site."

2. Click on "Sharing and Permissions" and make your personal Google account an "owner" of the site.

3. Log in to your personal Google account and go to the address of the site you're transferring. Again, go to "Manage Site" and from the "General" section, press the "Copy this Site" button. 

This will make a copy of your UWCSEA site in your personal Google account space. 

WARNING: linked or embedded assets like YouTube videos, Google Drive content, or images may be broken and need to be re-linked, embedded or uploaded.

GMail, Blogger, Photos, YouTube, Google Drive, and more

Content from a variety of Google services can be transferred using Google Takeout. This utility allows you to select what services you'd like to take data from and bundles them into open and portable formats that you can then transfer to your personal Google account. 

For example, Takeout lets you download the original video from things you've uploaded to YouTube.
Takeout allows you to specify folders you'd like to export from your Google Drive (you don't have to take the whole thing). Note that you cannot export folders and documents from Drive where you are not the owner.

Once you've selected all the services and specific data, you can click "Next" and Google will tell you it is preparing your archive and will email you when it is ready. It might take a few hours or a few days, depending on how much data you have, but eventually you will get a .zip folder with all of the files.  Double click the downloaded .zip folder to uncompress them. Using Google Chrome, log into your personal Google account and upload the entire folder to your new account.

If you want more detail about this archive, or have questions about how to use Google Takeout, see this useful site from Google's Data Liberation Front.

We're sad to see you go, but wish you all the best. Hopefully this will make it a little easier to enjoy your last few moments here and not worry so much about your Google goodies.

Digital Bytes June 8th, 2015

This week's Digital Bytes has a number of great articles.

There are a set of great templates for Google Slides presentations that include icons that can be manipulated in terms of size and colour. 

Kick off your summer reading with 13 great Minecraft books for yourself and your students. 

Finally, there is a fantastic article by Kristin Zeimke about the importance of digital reading. 

Bling up your Google Forms with Images and Fonts

Google have updated forms with some great custom options for Google Forms. You can read about the update on their blog.

This is really exciting news for those of us who use forms a lot as the standard themes had become a little tired looking. The now you can select from a wide variety of fresh new themes.


But, there's a lot more available than just the new themes. For any theme you select, you can customize the theme by adding your own header image, changing the font, color, size and style for all the different text classes.

Digital Portfolios - Organising your Google Drive Folders

At UWCSEA East, we are using Digital Portfolios for Grades 3-5. These take the form of Google Sites.

One technique we are using is embedding Google Drive folders in their sites, so content can be populated automatically.

Students already have folders set up in their Google Drive (via Hapara, or Teacher Dashboard), so the following tutorial shows how students set up their folders ready for embedding in their sites.

Folder Structure in Google Drive for Digital Portfolios from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.

Changes to Tabs in Student Google Sites

A couple of changes need to be made to Primary student Google Sites so they can work more effectively.

1. The literacy tab needs to be renamed Reading Workshop.
2. A new page needs to be added to Writing Workshop.

See the video below for details:

Student Google Site Page Changes from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.

Adding a Page to your Class Google Site

This tutorial will take you through the process of adding a resources page to your class Google Site

 

Adding a Resources Page to Class Google Site from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.

Email, Spam, YouTube Subscriptions and Snopes

One of the many wonderful things about having Google Apps at our school is that our students are able to have GMail accounts. This really does enable them to have the functionality we adults enjoy with having an email, with the added bonus of learning to use it in a supportive school environment. It allows teachers to play a role in helping guide them in appropriate use.

In Grade 5, some students expressed their frustration at the many emails they were being sent by YouTube to their school accounts. Some were puzzled as to how this happened in the first place, so we set about addressing the issue.

While logged in to their school GMail account, some students had (deliberately or inadvertently) subscribed to some YouTube channels. This most likely happened at home, where other family members share the same computer. Daily notifications were coming to their Inbox, alerting them to new content.

The quickest way to solve this problem was to show students where they can manage their subscriptions, and remove subscriptions that they weren't interested in, or might distract from their learning.

We explored how to unsubscribe from other emails too, e.g. marketing or other spam emails, using the unsubscribe link at the bottom of such emails. Other options include reporting the email as spam (the exclamation point in the circle above the email), or creating a filter to delete unwanted emails.

The subject of chain-mail or stories that employ scare tactics to get users to forward the email on to others, was another topic of discussion.

Frequently, students recognise that an email might be chain-mail and untrue, although they forward it on just in case, thus perpetuating the problem. Snopes.com is a great website to check the validity of emails they receive. Simply type the keywords into the search box, and you will find out whether it is true or false, when it originated and how it has been spreading.

Our aim is that students learn the skills to effectively manage their school email accounts, which will help them manage any other email accounts they may have.

Customizing your Class Google Site Banner

You can customize your class Google Site banner to personalize your site for your class.

Here you will find instructions as to how to customize your banner using a Keynote template, or using iPhoto.

Here's how to use the Keynote template.

Follow these steps to customize your site banner using iPhoto 

Getting Started with your Class Google Site

This year, each class has been set up with its own Google Site. The purpose is to keep our parents informed about specific goings on in each class, and to host weekly homework.

Below is a screencast showing how to navigate to and get started with your class Google Site.

Each grade has been set up with a grade level page accessible from the school website (www.uwcsea.edu.sg).

1.  Log in to the school website and click on the East Learning (Note: The left hand side of the icon)

2. Select Infant or Junior as needed

3. Select your grade level

4. This will take you to your grade level page which the parents of your students will see. (Here is an example from grade 3)

5. In the sidebar on the left there are links to information about your grade (Academics, Activities, Outdoor education, Personal and Social Education, Service and Announcements).

6. To go to your personal page, click on your picture.

7. Once in your personal page click on "New Post"

8. Change the Title of the post from "Untitled Post" to the week and date of your post (eg. Week 1 - August 19-23)

*NOTE - at this moment when you type in the title of the post, you can't see what you type. To work around this, type the title you would like in the body of the post and copy and paste it in the title. See the video at the top of this page for an example.

9.  Write what you would like to share with the parents in the space below your title.

10. If you would like to add pictures into your post, put your cursor where you would like to put your picture and select Insert > Image from the menu bar.

11. Click on Choose File.

12. Find your image and select Open.

13. Another dialogue box will open. Click on the picture so it is highlighted and select Ok.

14. The image may display in your post as a different size than you would like it to be. 

To change the size, locate the popover display bar. To the right of the word "Image" you have options to place your image left, center or right of your page. 

Beside that you can select the size of the image as small (S), medium (M) or large (L). Select the size that you would like for your post.

Sharing Student Work on Google Sites

At UWCSEA we use digital tools frequently for student learning. Grade 3-5 students have a Google Site which they are using to house their digital content. Below are some workflows for sharing student work to Google Sites easily.

From Pages/Keynote

Google Sites does not integrate easily with .pages or .key files, but there is a work around. Follow these steps to get your Pages/Keynote documents onto Google Sites

1. Open your Pages Document and click on File -> Export -> PDF

2. Click Next

3. Save to your desktop

4. Open Google Drive

5. Click on Upload -> Files and select PDF to upload (or, simply drag PDF into Google Drive)

6. Click on Share, and make your document viewable to anyone at UWC with the link, or Public on the web

7. Click on File -> Embed this PDF File

8. Copy the HTML Code

9. Go to your Google Sites, and start a new post for the work you want to share.

10. Click on the HTML button

11. Paste the HTML code and click Update

12. Your document will be visible once you press Save.

Here's a quick video to show the process if you prefer.



How to Embed a PDF into a Google Site from UWC South East Asia on Vimeo.

Movies

Google Drive can help you embed your movies, if they are in .mov or .mp4 or .m4v format. Follow these steps:

1. Open Google Drive

2. Click on Upload -> Files and select Movie to upload (or, simply drag Movie into Google Drive)

3. Click on Share, and make your document viewable to anyone at UWC with the link, or Public on the web

4. Go to your Google Sites, and start a new post for the work you want to share.

5. Click on Insert -> Video -> Google Docs Video

6. Search for the video you wish to include by typing its title.

7. Click on the video and press Select 

8. Deselect Include Title, and press Save

9. Choose how you want it aligned on the page. When you are ready, click on Save or Save Draft to see the embedded video.

Google Docs

Google Docs are the easiest to embed in a Google site. Follow these steps:

1. Go to your Google Sites, and start a new post for the work you want to share.

2. Click on Insert -> Document

3. Type in the title of the Doc you want to insert. Tick the Doc you want and click Select.

4. Deselect Include Title and click Save

5. Choose the alignment you would like. When you are ready, click on Save or Save Draft to see the embedded document.

An Introduction to Google Docs

We make extensive use of Google Docs here at school and think it may be a great tool for our Class Parents to use, especially when there is a lot of organizing to do.  

This video 'Google Docs in Plain English' by commoncraft explains why we use Google Docs:

What is a Google Doc? 

Google Docs is a free, Web-based word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, form, and data storage service offered by Google. It allows users to create and edit documents online while collaborating in real-time with other users. (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_docs)

Why do we use Google Docs? 

These applications can be accessed and used by a number of people simultaneously. Since the information is stored on the Internet and not tied to a single computer, it becomes easier to share information. Working on a document simultaneously also saves time when undertaking large projects or collaborating across long distances. (http://curiosity.discovery.com/)

How do I use my Google Docs? 

We have put together a Google Presentation that works through the basics of using Google Docs. 

These are the things we talked about in our mini-workshop:

1) When you are in your Google Drive you can choose to 'Create' a document or 'Upload' a document. We recommend Creating, as sometimes formatting can get mixed up.

2) Think carefully about the name of your document so it is easy to find using the search function in your Google Drive

3) Think about your share settings - public on the web, anyone with the link or private

4) Think about editing rights - can edit, can comment, can view

5) You can share the document from your Drive in the share settings by adding email addresses and a message - or you can copy the link and put it in your own email. 

6) Revision history is a great tool:

Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides have a revision history pane that allows you to view at a glance all changes made to a document by each collaborator. While it may not work exactly like a track changes tool, the revision history tool lets you view and revert to earlier versions of your document, spreadsheet, presentation, or drawing and see which collaborators made edits to any of these versions. (support.google.com)

7) Using the 'Comments' can also be helpful:

Comments are a handy way of adding notes to your documents, spreadsheets, and presentations that are visible to viewers and collaborators. These can be invaluable for communicating with collaborators about specific parts of the document, as well as making notes about changes you've made or would like to make. (support.google.com)

And that is the basics of using Google Docs. We will be offering a workshop in the new year that continues on from here and explores using Google Forms and Google Spreadsheets.