Simple Formative Assessment

I am always looking for an easy way to digitally complete formative assessment for teachers.  It seems like there are always so many different hoops to jump through to get to the actual assessment piece and so when my friend Tim Childers tweeted out about Formative, a great tool for collecting live formative results from students, I investigated.  (Actually, for most people who know Tim, we all listen when he Tweets, posts or otherwise makes his digital mark.  It is always good and you should all follow him here @tchilders.)

Formative assessment is loosely defined as assessment used to collect feedback that guide the lesson, and learning for the students.  Generally they are low stakes assessments that help personalize and support the flow of the instruction.  With that in mind, Formative is a tool for collecting information that helps the teacher better know what students need.

One unique feature of Formative is that it allows for personal responses in the form of written responses, drawings or even through the submission of an image.  With the ability for a student to submit an image or drawing it opens opportunity for creative unique responses that are otherwise hard to collect. A sample of the tutorial drawn responses is shown below.

With Formative teachers will be able to view live results of the students as they work in class.  Another great feature is the ability to share an assessment with other teachers.
Upon logging in as a teacher you are presented with the Formative dashboard and a tutorial and sample assessments to help you get going.  Formative also has this great Google Doc to walk you through their product.  Formative has a channel on YouTube full of various topics in which you can learn all you need to know.  They are very well done and brief enough to allow you to select only those that you need to get going.  The introductory video is here and should give you a great overview.

Formative's claim is that the tool works on any platform.  I have not tried it on all devices but I would guess that some forms of entry, such as drawing a response, would be easier on a tablet device than a Chromebook or computer.  Additionally, it is important to know that Formative's Privacy Policy requests that if a child in under the age of 13 that consent is obtained by a parent or guardian.

I am really excited to see how Formative can be used in various classrooms.  Please share or comment if you are or have used it!

PowToon That!

PowToon announced today that they are giving away $10 Million of classroom accounts for the school year!  How cool is that?  Wondering what PowToon is and why you might want to sign up?  Read on....

PowToon allows you to create great animated lesson plans and presentations that are fun and engaging.  All the animation tools are right there in the dashboard to get you started in creating great videos.  The dashboard will guide you through the process of creating the videos.  Once you finish you can download the video to keep forever or push the video to YouTube.  PowToon is a great alternative to PowerPoint or traditional slides.  Give it a try!

With this great FREE gift from PowToon you will get:

• The Complete Slides pro package
• 24/7 premium support
• HD video for teachers
• Up to 60 students having access for free
• up to 15 minute videos + presentations
• Royalty free styles, tunes + images

As I know it always comes up, the statement below indicates that they are COPPA compliant.
Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Compliance
We are in complete compliance with the requirements of COPPA (Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act). We do not collect any information from anyone under 13 years of age. Our website, products, and services are all directed to people who are at least 13 years or older.

Booktrack Classroom

Reading on a digital device is what you make of it, but reading on a digital devices that has an enhanced effects is really fun!  That is what Booktrack Classroom is all about.  This great site allows a teacher to create a book or essay to be published  for students with enhancements in the form of a movie-style soundtrack and sound effects.  Studies cited on the website indicate that there is a significant increase in comprehension and engagement for those students who read using Booktrack.  Booktrack is an app in the Google Chrome Webstore!

Creating an account, class and students seems to be simple.  See blow for information on Terms of Service.  I am excited to see how this can be used with text from a site such as Newsela with the added soundtrack enhancements to engage students with text right at their level.  Another really great tool natural to reading text using Booktrack is that you can adjust the pace of the track to provide the reader with a more successful pace of reading.  Students that create and publish their own writing through this site can then add a soundtrack to their own work, adding interest and excitement.  

The Terms of Service on this site indicate you cannot create and account for kids under 13 although that is unclear as the teacher blogs are very clear about its use with kids at the elementary level.  I have written the help desk for clarification to see if that only applies for the creation studio or if it apples to all around use.  I'll update this post if I hear back.  

Here's a great video that will give you an idea of how this tool works: 

One Stop Page for Student Learning Online

Blendspace is another resource (Similar to Been for Edu) that I am really excited to see used in a designated device environment. Using Blendspace a teacher can collect resources from various locations online for a class or lesson topic and share them out for learning by sharing just one URL to the class.  I love this resource as it will allow you to share media and resources from all areas.  You can share videos from YouTube, those that you have created yourself or from Educreations, a video creation resource.  Presentations, documents, links, images, and the ability to bring information directly from your Google Drive, make it possible to easily focus the attention of the students on a topic or idea.  In addition this tool would be very helpful in pulling together Flipped learning resources per unit in a class or course.  Students are given a code used to get to the Blendspace class that you have created.  There are ways to use quizzes within the resource, track students progress and easily adjust resources to meet the needs of the class. 

Check out how to use Blendspace here:

81 Dash ~ Back Channel for Kids

My greatest take-away from this summer is 81 Dash.  After an incident in which some students (aged within the Terms of Service for the back channel they were using) launched their own back channel and used it to log into the room as other students and bully, I had sworn off back channels for younger students.  If we could not keep the environment safe for kids, I was not interested.  Then I learned of 81 Dash at the Discovery Educator Network Summer Institute from Carlos Fernandez, the creator.

81 Dash is a resource created to provide a safe, communication tool for kids in which the teachers have control over the space.  This tool allows students to chat in real time, share files, take notes collaboratively all while keeping them in a safe environment controlled by the teacher. The use of 81 Dash requires that anyone under the age of 18 have parent consent before creating an account.  I would not see any reason not to give this communication tool a spin in the classroom.  To watch a great tutorial and overview of 81 Dash, check out this amazing video created by another great educator Tim Childers.  Some ideas for use might include:

• Allow students to collaboratively note take during a lesson
• Allow for students to chat and collaborate as they watch a video, then use the chat to spark discussion live after the video.
• Assign a moderator to keep track of the discussions and have students discuss as they learn through an online webinar.
• Encourage an outside resource to hold a classroom discussion with your students through 81 Dash.
• During a classroom read aloud, have students discussion the content of the book to sharpen listening skills.
• Keep a "room" of discussion open through the year for quick feedback and exit ticket responses to the classroom work on a regular basis.
• Use 81 Dash in a staff meeting to capture thoughts, questions, and ideas while keeping the side chatter down.
• Use 81 Dash before a lesson to capture "I Wonder" thoughts, during the lesson for the "I Never Knew" and after the lesson to have students share a document in which they summarize the learning.

There are so many ways to use this tool.  I cannot wait for school to start to see the results of learning with 81 Dash!

Grammar Interactively!

Several times over the last week I have seen Tweets and posts about the site Quill.  I finally have had some time to look it over and I am pretty excited about it.  This site, with a portal for student or teacher, provides students with work in learning english grammar skills in an interactive format.  The set up and use of the site is pretty intuitive but I will walk through the basics:

1. Once a teacher creates a class, Common Core aligned lessons appear of which the teacher can select.  You can view each lesson and the CC standards of which it applies.
2. Upon selecting a lesson, a due date can be decided upon.  Lessons can be assigned to the whole class or not.  
3. Once lessons are determined, the teacher can either manually add the students or a class code can be offered to the students.
4. Teachers can edit student accounts as well

Quill has an introductory video with student reactions and an great explanation on how the program works on the student side.  It is very complete and definitely worth watching.  It can be found here:

Boost Engagement with EverySlide

PowerPoints, Keynote and Google Presentations are not necessarily my favorite choice for sharing information with large groups of people, but sometimes they are just what is needed.  If you are going to use a presentation, why not make it viewable and available for each student as the information is presented?  It gets even better as you can also add interactivity to run a quick poll of the group using the information on the slide itself! Everyslide is super simple to use and does not require any type of install for you or the students.

It works like this:

1. Upload any presentation you have already created to your free educator Everyslide account.
2. Click "present".
3. A unique code will be generated of which you can share with the class.
4. Ask for feedback or run a poll as you present.
5. Students will be prompted to enter their email addresses at the end of the presentation, if you want to collect data on the class.  Information about the responses and students will be downloaded to a spreadsheet.  

Check out the introductory video:

Get Voice!

Edudemic, a blog I read frequently posted recently on How to Use Google Voice in Education.  As a Google Voice user, I read and enjoyed the article.  I think I even Tweeted out this well-written post.  I found it was one of those posts that I just kept thinking more and more about.  Not because I disagreed with it, but it made me realize that the idea of using Voice in the classroom had only really been touched on.  As I thought about the post, I realized that there were so many other ideas and I kept considering different classroom teachers I knew that I couldn't wait to share the ideas with. As I mentioned, the post is really complete and explains the basics pretty well.  While I will give a quick summary follow the links and get an idea and then read on for my thoughts...

Google Voice seems intimidating, but really it's not too complicated.  It is a phone number that you clim through the use of your Google account that allows you to send and receive calls through your computer and other phones you have.  You can actually set up Google voice to ring other phone lines that you have and interestingly, you can set that up based on the time of day.  Google voice can also be set up to ring no phones but only to notify you on your computer of a call.  I have a Google voice number on both my personal and work Google accounts.  As I travel throughout the day to different buildings, it helps for people to be able to connect with me wherever I happen to be.  I have it set so that my computer will alert me to a call and if I do not answer the call, I receive an alert that I have a message and the message is transcribed to text for me to read.  If I am in a meeting, teaching or otherwise unable to talk, I can still be made aware of the contents of the call without disrupting others.  I have been walking through a hallway and received and answered a call on my computer from Google Voice.  Setting it up is simple and accessed through Google.com/voice.  

What does this all look like in a classroom setting?  Here a just a few ideas I had:

1. Communication - This seems like an easy one.  This number offered to parents with boundaries could be a means of communication for families.  By boundaries I mean I will not pick up calls between the hours of 9-3 (or whatever you are willing to offer) but I do value the communication, so please leave me a message and I will return the call.  
2. Texting - While there are texting services out there that are fantastic, www.remind101.com, Google voice does have a text feature that would allow you to text a student and with Voice, a student could text you back.   Students could text a response to you as an exit slip response before leaving class.  You have a digital record on your computer that could be saved of the text.
3. For Assessment - I have students working in the Innovation Center each week that are a part of an online foreign language class.  These kids have to send recordings to their teacher of verbal responses in Spanish to assignments given by the teacher.  Another teacher in my district records using iPods in the hallways.  With Google Voice, students could call in their work to the Google voice number.  The teacher would have recordings in the Google Voice Message center that are also date and time stamped.  The message left can be downloaded and saved.
4. For projects - While there are other tools out there that allow students to record voice, it is another tool that could be used to record a student's voice for projects in class as you can then save each recording.
5. Transcripts - In collecting student work verbally, you have a transcript of the message that is left that is editable and also save-able. If Google does not transcribe properly, you can edit so that it is correct, and then save it.  
6. Portfolio - As I have used this with my children I sometimes smile as I listen to an older message from my children.  As younger children work on fluency in the classroom, a teacher could be calling their own Voice number and recording the student reading aloud several times a year and saving the recordings as a portfolio sample of fluency.  How precious for parents to also have these files!
7. Accountability - Teachers are always working with students to at least let them know if there is something that they are unable to complete for class rather than to show up and claim they didn't understand something.  Have students leave you a Google Voice message if they are confused with an assignment or homework.  You have a record of the date and time the call came in as well as recording of their issue.  For some kids it is hard to put into an email why they are struggling but being able to tell you in a call might make the difference.
8. Assistive Technology - We all now that there are times when you have a student with a disability, injury or need that requires them to be able to submit work differently.  If they can read something to you, leave a response, text the answer, Google Voice might just be the answer for them.  A vision impaired student might really benefit from the ability to leave a voice response.

I am excited to explore even more ideas for this tool in classrooms.  I would love to hear other ideas for Google Voice.  

Clean up your Resources Easily with Clean Print and Save Extension

I am not a fan of printing especially in an age of digital learning.  However, I do think there are just so may good resources out on the web to teach current, relevant, engaging information to students that teachers choose not to use for a variety of reasons.  Sometimes the article or webpage contains so much information that the important information is hard to focus upon, sometimes it contains information within the text that is too technical or difficult for students, other times a teacher indicates that they just cannot get it to print or save the way that they want it without ads, other information, etc.  That is where Clean Print and Clean Save come into play.  This extension for Google Chrome allows you not only to exclude information on the page with the click of a button, but it also allows you to change the font size to make the information readable to all students. You can add notes, grayscale text, and the frame offers a realtime page estimate on your editing so that you can always determine the length of the article you are preparing.  Once you are finished, simply save to PDF, Google Docs, Dropbox, print or even share through social media and email.  Super simple and super useful in the classroom!  Great tutorial to give you an idea of how easy this is to use:

Kaizena Voice Comments

Kaizena, the voice comment app for Google Docs makes it simple to add voice comments to a student's work.  I first encountered and shared this app when it was called Voice Comments.  It has been through a name change and some great improvements.  In my recent DEN STAR Ambassador meeting with teachers we looked at Flipped Classroom Resources.  At the end one of the teachers shared that he was using screen casting apps as a way of adding voice comments for a student on work they do in his high school class.  I asked if he had seen Kaizena.  It is a perfect tool for putting a personal touch on grading for students.  As he mentioned, his parents will even play his love feedback on the papers that he sends back to students.  AWESOME! Anytime we can engage students and parents to come around improvement and feedback we are definitely doing something right.  Wouldn't this be a great tool to keep a record of students in the elementary school doing a read aloud and sharing with parents?  It's a perfect addition to an online portfolio!

To get Kaizena navigate to this link in the Google Webstore.  This demo video will help you get an idea of how it works.

Movenote - 10 Reasons I love it!

A few weeks ago some good friends shared Movenote with me at the ICE conference in IL.  I was thrilled with the tool and have been trying to find the time to get a blog post out about it.  Then Movenote was featured in the DEN March Madness set and again, I thought, "I have really got to share this one".  Today is the day!
Movenote is a tool that can be added to Chrome, used online or even through gmail that allows you to capture and record and instructional video with inset video from your webcam.  Movenote is awesome for many reasons.  Here are my top 10...

1. It is FREE!  It is a simple process to get signed up.
2. The tutorial videos are short, sweet and easy to follow as you can see from the 40 second intro video here.
3. Another reason I love Movenote is that it can be used on a Chromebook with students! In fact, Movenote also has a great video on this that would be great for students.  The video is linked here (See what I mean in #2 ?).  
4. Movenote will access Google Drive to load content.  This makes it easy to make a video from anywhere!
5. Movenote assists with that challenging "Allow" microphone and webcam access request that many kids miss when trying to use a tool.  Movenote's page actually shows a large red arrow pointing to the toolbar.  Great thinking!  
   
6. Movenote can be added to Gmail making it super easy to send a Movenote video right from your email window.  This is so cool!
7. Movenote allows you to add annotations to the slides you present.  
   
8. You can share a Movenote through email but also on a website, SMS, Google Drive, Facebook, etc.  The Gmail feature is super cool. Check it out here.
9. Using Movenote with students a teacher could easily create a quick tutorial for a task that students might need to review multiple times, send instructions to a substitute, or engage students in a fun lesson starter.
10. Using Movenote as a student the possibilities are endless!  Students could create a video to demonstrate understanding.  Students could share a video to help other students understand a process.  Students could share a video to demonstrate ability to speak another language  in a foreign language class.  The possibilities here are endless!

Give Movenote  a try!

Stormboard - Realtime Collaboration and Brainstorming

If your school is a Google school then Stormboard might be an interesting way to add collaboration and communication among working groups in your classroom.  This service, available to students who are 13 and up, has an education portal for teachers that gives an educator an upgrade to their account.  Stormboard creates an online whiteboard in which  collaborators can create and add sticky notes, images, videos, sketches, documents and more.  This upgrade allows for unlimited users, one administrator and unlimited storms or brainstorming sessions. This is available until the end of July when Stormboard will be coming out with their education packages formally.  Create an account with Stormboard here, then upgrade the account to an Edu account here.
Stormboard has a great tutorial on their site as well as this great video.

"Been" Looking for Something Like This!

Several months ago I read a post about Been, a way of gathering bookmarks socially.  As I explored Been I got very excited because, unlike other social bookmarking sites, this one integrated with the browser and was very image based.  It just seemed to shout, "education".  I sent an email to the contact at the bottom of the page as inquired about access to Been for an educator or in an educational setting. Very quickly I was contacted by the developers of Been.  Sang and Dave created Been and wanted to talk more about Been for Edu.  It seems they were already exploring it.  I have been in communication with them since then and had early access to Been for Edu.  These guys are very in-tune to the challenges of a teacher and have really made a great product.  I am super excited about Been for Edu as it will allow kids of any ages to bookmark, explore the web, and communicate all in a safe walled environment.  Teacher have the ability to create accounts for kids, take them along on a surfing session or guide them through a stalk of pre-defined and explained sites.  I did a quick video tour of Been for education below.  Check it out and request access to Been for Edu for your class here.

Engage kids with a Spotlight on Strategies from Discovery Education!

I am frequently told by teachers that they love the Discovery Education content and the video segments provide for quick hit media which engages students in the content in a form that they enjoy.  While short videos are great, even they can become "just the average part of the lesson" when used often.  Did you know there there are many other forms of media available in the Discovery Education service available to you?  In addition, there is an entire series of lesson plans to introduce you to different instructional strategies for using this media.  These ideas will help you keep the spark and interest in the media that you choose for the curriculum with which you are working.
After logging into Discovery Education, navigate to the feature section called, "Spotlight on Strategies".  This section includes strategy ideas in lesson format with easy to use instruction for many types of media.  Give the lesson, Sound Check a try to integrate the use of the many sound effects into a lesson to add interest and trigger memory for students.  Or, try the Table Top Texting lesson for a time when you are showing a longer clip to keep students engaged in the media for a longer period of time.  These are just a few of the many strategies you can find in the SOS section.  Each one contains a downloadable PDF that if full of ideas and extensions for the great ideas.  You can even download a folder that contains the whole batch.  If you are interested in trying one or more out, let me know as I would love to team teach it with you!  Check them out and check back often as this is a frequently added to section in your Discovery Education subscription!
Check out of the samples included below:

Flippity - Digital Flash Cards

Flash Cards have their merit as a study tool.  There are many times where a student just needs to have basic recall of information.  Digital Flashcards are great as they are always available, don't get lost or damaged, and can be shared widely with groups of people.
Flippity is a service that allows you to create and share digital flashcards through a Google Spreadsheet.  There are many advantages to using a Google Spreadsheet as the content holder for the flashcards.  Flippity makes use of them all.  While it would be easy for a teacher to setup and fill the content of the course for the spreadsheet, it also could be collaboratively created by students in the class.  The creation of several spreadsheets for a study tool might be something that groups who finish work early complete, then share with a teacher who creates a Flippity card set for the rest of the class.  In addition to the ability to create the content easily, Flippity allows the creator to add media such as YouTube and images to the card deck. Here's an example of a few cards created using the Spanish word for "Cat" and a picture of a cat.

Side 1

Side 2

I've created a quick tutorial on YouTube of this resource to show you how easy it is to create a Flippity deck.

Olympics Theme - DEN Connects

As the world tunes into the Olympic Games this week, a group of fantastic STAR Discovery Educators has been working on the DEN Connects site to build an Olympics theme that will assist you in making better use of the resources found in the Discovery Education subscriptions you have while learning about the Olympics.  There is an added bonus to this site as you can "connect" with other classrooms across the country to share learning.  The DEN Connects site is broken into several easy to read and navigate parts.   You will find:

• Mini-lessons - based on a 20-30 minute instructional time rich with media and integration strategies.
• Student Digital Dives -  A scavenger hunt prepared using Discovery media and focused on the topic of the month (Olympics).
• Content Creation Challenge - A challenge to inspire you to try something new with your students.   This month it is a Paper Slide Video which many of you have worked to complete in other areas in the past.  I'd love to help with these! 
• Class-to-Class Connections - This part of the Den Connects site give you an avenue to make a connection with another class and share learning ideas and experiences.  Make use of the Google Hangout feature and make a new classroom friend!  

If you want to plan ahead, there is a new DEN Connect theme each month and you can count on these amazing DEN STAR Educators to come through with awesome content and ideas for you to use. Upcoming themes will include Habitats, and Weather/Natural Disasters.

Interested in doing any of these activities or need help with adjusting any of these ideas to your classroom curriculum?  Let me know!  I would love to help.

Interested in being a STAR Discovery Educator?  I can help with that too!

The Power of a Voice though Google Forms

In educational circles and many meetings I have been involved in lately I keep hearing statements about the number of surveys we are asked to fill out.  With the use of Google Apps for Education in the district we are seeing even more as we become familiar with the ease of use of Google Forms.  I got to wondering about Forms and Surveys in general.  Some questions came up in my mind like:

• Isn't it good to ask an opinion, give people a safer way to share their thoughts or be a part of a conversation?
• Is a survey or form a digitized worksheet?
• What do we gain from gathering opinions if we don't then use the results?
• Why do people get upset by filling out a form?
• Do students and adults feel the same about filling out a form?
• If students are more willing to fill out forms, why is that?
• Why do people like to create and send a form to others as a means of gaining opinions or information?

I am not sure I have answers to these questions nor do I think the answers would be easy to find, but I do know some the answers to some and specifically the last one.  Creating a Google Form is a great way to gather feedback from a sometimes unwilling participant (think middle school kids).  A Form will allow a student to take risks, have purpose when using the Internet, and most importantly, allows the respondent to respond in their thinking time frame as opposed to the time frame allowable in class.  On the receiving end of the data and information that is collected through the form, it becomes easily manipulated, sharable and easy to read.
I wonder if we underestimate how exciting Forms are for students.  I think they enjoy them a lot more than we do.  If the feedback is explored, analyzed (possibly to plan for future lessons or improvement) or used to develop interest in the classroom, then I don't think forms are just a digital worksheet.  I think forms are an underused tool in our classrooms.

A great tour of Google Forms is here:  

Some great Google Form Ideas might be: (Links below are from the Template Gallery)

A survey of the effectiveness of group work after a project is completed.
A personal reflection on a book, project or field trip.
An exit survey after an important lesson (perhaps a kid review notes to complete it - Even better!)
To collect science observations and then work with class data when complete.
As a parent information collection at the beginning of the school year.
As a Book Log for the year.
As a Parent Communication Database
A Book Report

Google and Images for Student Projects

Having a network of colleagues to mull over ideas and talk through strategies for the classroom is one resource I value.  Not to gloat, but I do have a fantastic Professional Learning Network and this week they did not let me down.  While participating in a Glide video chat with them, my friend Howard Martin mentioned the idea of using a shared Google folder with students to direct them to better, pre-selected content.  I loved it so much I asked if I could feature it on this blog.  So, thanks for sharing Howard!  Your the best!

Finding images for student projects can be a tricky adventure.  Many elements become cause for concern.  Copyright, citations, the appropriateness of the image itself or the security of the search process.  While there are many banks of images that schools supply (our district has a few really great resources), sometimes it is just easier to provide students with an image collection with which they can select from as they create their project.  This eliminates (ton name only a few problems) students spending endless classroom time searching for the correct image, the possibility that a seemingly innocent search query leads to something that cannot be unseen, or the student argument that even though they have found the BEST image ever, if it does not meet with copyright restrictions, they still cannot use it in in the project.  So, as Howard mentioned this week, use Google's shared folders for streamlining this process.


If students were presenting or researching on Hurricanes and Tornadoes and you wanted them to have focused accurate, and appropriate sources and information as well as proper citations but you did not have the class time to devote to the instruction of safe searching, citation building, etc., you might go about it this way.  This would also be a great alternative for the student that has proven themselves to be less than trustworthy in searching on their own or is perhaps too young to handle the magnitude of content on the web.

Here the process:

1. Create a new Folder in Google Drive with permissions to share with your student using the "share" setting of the folder so that the folder is shared with the students in your class.  (Be careful that students know that moving a document in a shared folder is a move and not a copy.  I always create a copy of the folder so that if someone wipes out all my content I have a backup.)
2. Load that folder with content!  I started mine with a Google Document.  I titled the Document "Citations" and you will see why as we continue.  Under "Tools" select "research".
   
3. On the Doc page, a side menu opens that allows you to research and collect Images, articles, links, quotations, etc.  If you sort for only copyright safe images as shown, you know you are using images that students can use in their work.  Change the citation format to the type you would want them to use.
   
4. As you select content, and drop it on the page, it collects not only a copy of the image, but also the citation in the format you selected at the bottom of the page.  Since this document is in the folder, kids should have no trouble copying and pasting the citation. As my page was being built it looked like this:
   
5. Then, for each image added to this citation Document I added the image to the folder.  I carefully named and numbered the image so that it had the same number as the citation in the citation list as shown above. You may also note that there is a webpage link on "Hurricane Katrina" because I thought it might be interesting to see that this would also be a way of showing how you could share out on certain links with students.
6. When my shared folder was done it appeared like this:
   

Depending on the age and digital comfort of the students, I might provide them with written instructions on how to access the shared folder, how to download files from the folder and specifications for their use.  While I realize this process puts more work on the teachers to collect the information for the students rather than instructing students on how to find it themselves, there are situations and reasons why this might be worthwhile.

Again, thanks Howard and my fantastic PLN!

SnagIt Extension for Chrome

TechSmith, the company that brings you the full screen recording and editing solution Camtasia, also makes Snagit, a smaller version of Camtasia that is great for smaller screen casting and collaborating.  What is really exciting is that TechSmith has come out with an app and extension that will allow Chromebook users to use Snagit and make it easier for all of us to enjoy the benefits of this great tool from the ease of a Google App or extension.  The app and extension can be found in the Chrome WebStore. TechSmith also has a great video about Snagit added below.

Clip Better Extension

Yesterday I shared a tool that would help you manage the many great extensions out there for Google Chrome.  Therefore today I don't feel guilty for suggesting yet another great extension that you can add to the toolbar because you can use yesterday's tool to manage it all!  This morning I came across a resource that shared the extension Clip Better.  This handy extension allows you to share a link within an email visually.  Traditionally when we share a link within an email we offer the recipient the raw URL in the body of the email.  Clip Better allows you to share a visual representation of the website.
As you can see below, it will create a preview that includes the image, title, summary and other information about the page you are wanting to share.  You can even edit and customize the title and summary in the review, add a personalized comment or note and then send within your Gmail with a single click or select Copy to Clip and it will save the preview on the computer clipboard to be used in another way digitally such as Google Docs.

As I got to thinking about the classroom use for this tool I wondered if you couldn't create a clip for each of the research tools you wanted kids to use to complete a project.  I also wondered about students using this tool as a digital, annotated bibliography of web research.  However, after trying to create an example, I found that it often copied and pasted into Google Docs and Word with some poor formatting issues.  Using in email seems to work best.  So, unless they make changes to their formatting, I would use this in the classroom as a tool to share a visual representation of a URL that includes your personal comments, instructions or ideas.  Might also be a great communication tool for parents.
If you find any other uses in the classroom, please share as I would love to see this tool in use.