Top 8 from the 8 Blog for 2011

As the year comes to an end, I thought I’d get in the “Tops of 2011″ spirit.  Instead of sharing the top movies or songs of the year as often happens, I decided to share the 8 most viewed posts from the 8 Blog for this calendar year.  2011 was a great year for the 8 Blog.  The site had over 13,000 views from people around the world.  I continue to be humbled by the response to this blog and I wish all of the 8 Blog readers a Happy 2012!

1.  Nine copyright-friendly sites for student multimedia projects

2.  Turn your iPad into an Interactive Whiteboard

3.  Capture lessons on your iPad and flip your classroom

4.  Sites for students to create their own comics

5.  Exploring group video conferencing option

6.  Public domain images for student projects

7.  Find and download images easily from Microsoft Clip Art Online

8.  Telling stories digitally

Google Docs introduces stock photos

Google Docs just keeps getting better!  For those of you who have used Google Docs, I’m sure you already appreciate its ability to allow real-time collaboration in online word processing documents, presentations and spreadsheets.  Used in educational settings, Google Docs can be a tremendous tool to help groups of students work together on projects and to allow them to edit the work of their peers.

One of the challenges with Google Docs, however, is that there is no real clip art or image library. I know this may seem like a minor feature, but for many educators, this is a deal breaker.  If students are using Microsoft Office applications, for instance, they have access to a full library of copyright-free images to support their work.  If they are developing a document, they can easily incorporate images without searching the web or worrying about determining the copyright status of an image they’ve obtained.  Until recently, Google Docs did not offer the same functionality.  To incorporate an image, a student needed to upload one of their own or search through Google Images to find one, which could expose students to undesirable material.  Google Docs has alleviated these challenges by incorporating stock photos into their Office suite.  Now, students can search through an online library to find appropriate images that relate to their topic and simply click to include them.  It really couldn’t be any easier.  To access the stock photography features, however, be sure that you’re using the new version of Google Docs.  That’s one of the best parts of using a service like Google Docs.  New features are constantly being added without the need to purchase anything.  In the current economic climate that many schools face, free educational tools that offer a wide range of services are critical.

Backchanneling with TodaysMeet

As class sizes continue to grow, educators are exploring new ways to connect with students and engage them in classroom discussions.  For instance, “clickers” are becoming more popular as assessment tools in classrooms.  Clickers function like game show response systems and can provide real time data on what students understand and what they are struggling with.  When used effectively, clickers can be great tools to interact with a large class of students.   One of my reservations about clickers, however, is that the system is fundamentally built upon the educator asking questions (usually of the multiple choice variety) and students responding.  While this type of classroom discourse can be beneficial for students, I feel we need to create more opportunities to dialogue with students in large classes, allowing to students to ask their questions and contribute to the discussion.

One technology-based solution is called a “backchannel.”  A backchannel is the practice of having an online conversation alongside a face-to-face presentation.  Backchannels are hardly new but the tools are becoming easier to use and more mobile.  For instance, I’ve attended a handful of presentations recently that used TodaysMeet to allow attendees to discuss concepts and to ask questions during the presentation.  TodaysMeet is easy to set up and works with smartphones, laptops and iPads.  Simply name your backchannel room, select how long you want the room to be active and you’re ready to go.  Once the link is shared with students, they can begin contributing to the backchannel during a classroom lesson after they’ve created a backchannel alias.

While the backchannel is a viable solution for creating discussions in large classes, I want to caution educators who may want to jump into the backchanneling world.  Many students are not used to this type of communication and may struggle at first with how to use the tool effectively.  Although it may be easy to technically participate in a backchannel, using the space for real productive dialogue may take some time to develop.  Educators may want to outline some basic ground rules beforehand to help guide students to use the backchannel appropriately.  Once these ground rules are set, however, students may respond positively to the backchannel platform and may find having an “alias” liberating.  The backchannel may free them to ask questions they may be less comfortable asking in the face-to-face environment, especially when they’re sitting a big classroom with a large group of students.

More communication options with extras in Google Hangouts

Google continues to develop it’s social networking platform (Google+) by adding a bunch of new features to make the tool more social and collaborative.  This week, I thought I’d outline some of the new features and how the features can be used in education.  While some people may be happy to hear that Google has recently added games like Angry Birds to the Google+ plaform, I’m really excited that they’ve incorporated more communication and collaboration options in Hangouts.  For those of you who might not know, Hangouts is Google+’s collaboration commons area.  With this tool, a Google+ user can create a Hangout and invite some friends.  Inside the Hangout, the group can chat, video chat and watch Youtube videos together.  A Hangout can support up to 10 friends simultaneously, which rivals sites like Skype.  When Google+ first came out, I thought the Hangouts feature was really promising and hoped they would expand its collaboration ability by adding connectivity to Google Docs.  I figured it was a natural progression to the site and would allow the Hangout to be more work related and less of a place to …. hang out.

Google+ has added Google Docs connectivity (and several other features) be releasing a “Hangouts with Extras” option which can expand the ways we interact with another and with our students.  Imagine you want to meet with a group of students online.  If all of the students are on Google+, you can invite them to a Hangout, open a file from Google Docs and the group can edit the document together.  This would be great for groups who are writing a paper together or collaborating on a group project.  A teacher could also use this feature to lead small group lessons by pulling presentation slides from Google Docs.  The teacher could also let students give their presentations to the rest of the group in the Hangout or use the slides as a means for displaying artwork for critique.

My only real reservation with the Google Docs feature is that individual users control what they see in their Hangout. Even though  I can share a presentation with an entire group of students in a Hangout, each student individually would need to view the presentation and advance the slides on their own.  This is hardly ideal and would create some confusion with students undoubtedly being on different slides or advancing the presentation at different rates. I was, however, able to use another new feature (screen sharing) to conduct a presentation that was a little more pedagogically sound.  With screen sharing, a user can replace their video feed with any window on their computer.  This would be great for demonstrating some computer function, showing some website, walking through manipulating some file or for conducting a presentation.  To show a presentation, I opened a Google Doc slideshow in a new window and then chose “screen sharing” which displayed the presentation to everyone in the Hangout.  While they could no longer see me (my video feed was replaced by the presentation), they could still hear me as I advanced through the slides.  While this functionality is certainly available in a bunch of commercial course tools (Eluminate, Wimba, etc), Google+ is a free resource and is available to a wider audience.  In fact, Google+ has appropriated some other features from commercial synchronous course tools that would be helpful.  For instance, you can now invite people into a Hangout by calling their phone number, which would be great for bringing guest speakers into an online class or for involving students in an online discussion who might not be near a computer.  Besides these features, Hangouts also offers a collaborative Sketchpad and a Notes page.  All of these extra options are only available when you click “Hangouts with extras” when you log in.  Used in concert, however, these “extra” Hangout tools can allow us to create productive learning environments for our students, even when we interact and teach online.