2nd Grade Infographics with Google Drawings

This is a overdue follow-up on my “Infographics Two Ways” post. Late last year I decided to eschew Canva in lieu of Google Drawings based on the success my students found in their Immigration Poster project. My first test was with the second grade and they did a bang up job creating non-fiction infographic posters in Drawings.

I worked closely with my school Librarian, Kate Byrnes, to help acquaint our second grade students to the infographic genre. She immersed them in National Geographic Kids magazines and books, primarily using animal focused examples. Kate also found the Discovery Kids “Find Out” site. This is a gem, and one that I hope stays free. I like how it takes advantage of the digital medium by incorporating video, sound, and other interactive features into the infographics. This could be an interesting way to push future projects.

Like the 5th grade Interview project, students started with a drawing template. They chose a format from the side bar and scaled it to fit their canvas. After selecting a format, I recommend that students delete the other formats. I found that the alignment guides get annoying if you keep the extra shapes on the side. All the “false positives” can get in the way of the important function of the guides.

Different classes approached the project in different ways. Mrs. Iasiello wanted to compare amphibians and reptiles so we created a wide format poster. This allowed students to pick two formats, for the left and right of the poster. Mrs. Chueng’s class featured mammals, so the students picked a single format using the vertical format. An element that I loved on Mrs. Chueng’s infographics were the hand drawn pictures of the mammals. Students used callouts in Google Drawing to label them. It was authentic and beautiful.

This project is a keeper and I can’t wait to see how it evolves this year. It provides a context to discuss audience, clarity, and creating a design that augments your information. Students had to be careful about image placement, scale, font choice, and color. Each student was successful and created something they made them proud. Maybe this year we can build in some of those interactive features found in DK Find Out. Let me know if you have any questions or if you use these templates!

What if the Founding Fathers had Facebook?

It’s Founderbook time again! During this unit, our 5th grade students use a Google Site to take on the persona of one of the founding fathers, create a facebook-like profile, and then blog from the perspective of the founder. This time I’ve got a new Google Site template with improvements based on what we learned last year.

This year my fifth grade teachers added to the instructions page. The instructions page offers a nice reference while students are working independently. One addition that I liked a lot was the “Speak like a Founding Father” section. The kids really enjoyed using these tips to get into character.

Adding information to the Founderbook page is just the beginning.  The real fun comes when the children use the announcement pages to blog in the first person about their founding father’s experience at the Constitutional Convention. At the end of the unit, students come to school dressed in period clothes, read each other’s posts, and leave comments on their friends blogs, all while staying in character.

Next year I’d like to take better advantage of this anachronistic Colonial Day. The students do a great job dressing as their founder and I’d like to leverage that more effectively. How great would it be if the students used Google Hangouts to stage and record Constitutional Convention debates?

All in all, this continues to be a great unit. Students really get into researching their founder and writing from a historical perspective. Let me know if you use our template or if you have questions in the comments.

Turning Google Docs into eBooks with Flipsnack

Sue Luft, one of our ELA helping teachers, challenged me to find a way to improve the “ebookiness” of our Google Doc nonfiction books. I admit, Google docs are unsatisfying to read as an ebook. After some Saturday surfing, I stumbled upon Flipsnack.

Flipsnack’s edu version follows a freemium model and is easy to use.  I love the gratifying page flip and it presents a beautiful full screen view. Pages are represented as thumbnails at the bottom of the screen for easy navigation. The backgrounds are also configurable - I like the nice wood grain. All of our nonfiction books were saved into PDFs and processed with Flipsnack.

The edu version allows you to set up a classroom with student accounts. This isn’t a feature I’ve taken advantage of yet but I can see it being really useful with my older grades. I started with 2nd grade work so I publish the books for our digital library myself. However, I could see our 4th grade students doing this in the future.

When student self publish they will also be able to submit their books to our school’s digital work library themselves. This be more sustainable for me and will allow students to take advantage of Flipsnack’s hyperlink and button features - bringing hypertext into the ebook genre. This is something that I think is appropriate to introduce in 4th grade.

Next weekend I will blog about our ebook shelves and discuss how to make them. I’m excited by the publishing potential of the Docs, Flipsnack, and the digital book shelves combination. Students will be content producers to a real audience from start to finish. Let me know if you have any questions in the comments!

2nd Grade Nonfiction Books Using Google Docs

The 3rd grade nonfiction template that I blogged about earlier in the year went really well. Student books like about Pythons and Michael Jordan are evidence that the template provided valuable scaffolding and did not overwhelm student agency. The success of the third grade books inspired us to adapt a version for the second grade. Our second grade students are new to docs and their first research project (ever) is a bird unit.  The newness of both Docs and online research meant that the template had to be simpler and more guided. Teachers had a choice between two template formats: a comparison between two birds and a focused book on one bird.

Like the 3rd grade templates, the second grade file relies on Google Drawings for text features. Instead of having students choose the features that support the text, the second grade book has diagrams in place for simplicity. Other elements like the dedication and copyright page are also removed to streamline the book.

The books came out terrific. Students created hand drawn illustrations which were scanned in for use in the diagrams. Students had a field day using drawings to creatively design their books, I personally love the life cycle drawings. Although the second grade templates are more structured than the third grade, students were still able to make them their own. I guess that’s my litmus test for a template - whether or not students have room for ownership. Take a look at our galleries below. Leave a comment or question for our authors if the mood strikes you!

Mrs. Iasiello’s Bird Comparison Books

Mrs. Cheung’s Bird Research Books

A 3-5 Non-Fiction Google Template with Text Features

This week I am rebuilding a 3rd grade non-fiction book Doc that I created last year. I've learned some important lessons and I think I've made it much easier for students to create killer books. The biggest lesson revolves around how Google Drawings are used.

Last year my template was simple and included a cover page, a copyright page, a dedication, and a Table of Contents. Non-fiction text features were supported with a Google Sites page that linked to Google Drawing templates. It worked fairly well. The students created beautiful books and were deservedly proud of their work. Using Google Drawings for Nonfiction text features was easy, except when it came to inserting them into Docs. Unfortunately, Docs doesn’t allow a student to insert a Google Drawing file created from Drive. Students needed to save the drawing as an image file and then insert the image into the Doc. Not only does this create an awkward step, it also makes revising the text feature a chore. I’m sure Google will smooth this out sooner or later, but for right now, I don’t want to relive the process.

My Non-Fiction file for 2015-16 is completely built in a Doc. The text feature templates are added at the end of the doc; no more sending students to the web page. When students need a text feature, they scroll to the bottom and copy/paste one of the templates (or create their own using the “insert -> drawing” menu.) As far as I can tell, the only difference between a Doc Drawing and a Drive Drawing are tables: Drive Drawings have them and Docs Drawings don’t (please let me know if there are other differences.) Other changes to the original template include a “Glossary” page and an “About the Author” page.

Students are instructed to start writing on the first chapter page (page 4, not including the cover) and create new chapters as necessary. The “Hand” graphic organizer at the top of the first chapter is also a Google Drawing and will help students with planning. This can be copy/pasted into each new chapter.

We have some time until this unit happens and I’m sure the file will be revised before it’s used. I’m looking forward to collaborting with my third grade team and our ELA Helping Teachers. Let me know if you use the Doc and please share it back out if you make it better!

Additional Resources for Google Drawings in the Classroom:

• Ditch that Text Book Resources
• John Sowash’s work
• Alice Keeler’s Infographic Tutorial
• The Google Drawing Infographic Toolbox

Finally, Google Docs Speech Recognition

I’ve been looking for a free speech recognition tool to use with Google Docs since the unveiling of Chrome extensions. The time has finally come with the Docs Add-on “Speech Recognition.” I’ve used the tool with several 8 and 9 year old students and have found it easy to operate and remarkably accurate.

Speech Recognition appears in the Add-on menu after being installed from the Gallery.  Once started, a speech recognition sidebar opens that allows the user to specify the language being spoken. In addition to handling English well, I’ve heard from my World Language colleagues that the Spanish recognition is quite good. The Add-on begins to work with the click of a start button and stops by using the same button. Punctuation is included when the user verbally declares where it should be (edit: some folks have reported that punctuation is a weakness, see the comments...)

Accuracy has often been a challenge for speech recognition tools that aren’t trained to understand the speaker, such as the capable Dragon Naturally Speaking. Accuracy is also a challenge when the speaker has a young voice or doesn’t project well. I found neither to be the case with this add-on.  One soft-spoken young lady was having trouble typing the non-fiction book that she was working on. She was able to clear through three chapters after using “Speech Recognition.”

Students often do not verbalize the punctuation, so it is necessary for them to reread and make edits where necessary. Mumbling can also be misunderstood. I actually consider both of these deficits a feature and enjoyed watching our young writers reread their work and revise.

At the risk of being hyper-critical, I would love to see this add-on utilize keyboard shortcuts. I do not know what kind of technical challenge that presents, but it would be highly beneficial for users who have trouble manipulating a mouse. So far, this is my only criticism of this capable and user-friendly tool.

This has been cross-posted at the Chrome Toolbox.

A Rebuild of the Moderated Twitter Form

A few months ago I blogged about a system that would allow students to tweet to a class Twitter feed after teacher moderation. Since that post, the good folks at the +New Visions for Public Schools Cloud Lab rebuilt Form Mule (an important component in the system) to work in the new Google Sheets. This post will explain how to build the Twitter Moderator system using the New Sheets, which I highly recommend you use. A few teachers asked for a video tutorial. I like a tutorial that I can read so I created both. I hope it's helpful!

This recipe has five components:

• A simple Google Form linked to a Google spreadsheet
• The FormMule Addon from New Visions for Public Schools
• A Gmail account created specifically for this process
• An If This Then That recipe
• A classroom Twitter account

First, create a simple Google form with a paragraph text question for the exit ticket. This PDF from Classroomfreebies was the inspiration. I used data validation to set the maximum character count of the question to 140 (this is a simple but important step.) Click “Require [Your Domain] to view this form” and “Automatically collect respondents username” if you are using this with students. Now, click “view responses” at the top of the form edit window to open the Spreadsheet attached to the form.

Then, add a column labeled “Moderated” to the responses sheet and install the New Visions FormMule Addon. Click “addons” in the menu bar, then “formMule”, then “Launch.” Once launched, select the Form Responses sheet for the source of merge data. Then, activate the time based trigger switch and set the trigger to run every hour. Click “Next: Templates and Send Conditions.”

We are only going to be sending one type of email. Change the send condition to point to the “Moderated” column. I usually use “Not Null.” This means that anything typed in the “Moderated” column will send the corresponding tweet to your Twitter account. If you want to be more specific, use a command like “yes.” Then, click “Next: edit templates.”

The email template is very simple. Click into the “To:*” field and add the GMail address that you created for this project. Click into the “subject” field and set this as well. Personally, I like using the Timestamp as the subject. You may also want to use the username. Then click into the “body:” field and then click the “What would you like to tweet about today?” tag. Finally, click “Preview and send all.” The Google side of the system is now done! Now we need to set If This This Than That (IFTTT) to send moderated tweets to Twitter.

Log into IFTTT, your new GMail account, and your class Twitter feed. Return to IFTTT and open this recipe. Once you add the recipe you will need to connect IFTTT to the Twitter and GMail accounts. Once the recipe is activated, scroll down on the edit window to the trigger and set the address to be the same GMail account you used in formMule. Click “Update” and you are done!

There you have it - the updated Twitter moderation feed using the new Google Sheets and formMule Addon. As before, let me know if you use it in your classroom! If you think of a way to make it better, let me know about that, too!

Student Book Review Database W/ formMule & formRanger

One of our teachers, +Shoshana Cooper, had a great idea during our summer Chromebook orientation day. She wanted to create a moderated book review site for students that was powered by a Google Form. This post is the result of that conversation.  With the help of +Andrew Stillman's add-ons and +Romain Vialard's Awesome Table, this project is able to do quite a lot. I’ll start by showing what it looks like, explain what the system actually does, and then explain how to use the demo files step by step.

How it looks

The book review site is based on Romain Vialard 's Awesome Table gadget. This aptly-named gadget creates a sortable list from a Google Sheet and looks really slick. I add the gadget and the review form to a stripped down Google Site and embed the site using an iframe on any teacher’s webpage.  This almost effortlessly enhances the web presence for the class site and increases teacher buy-in. The gadget and form can be added in the regular way if a teacher has a Google Site. This modularity is important and will allow us put the same form in multiple spots to power a book review database for each of the five elementary schools!

What it does

The form is set to record the user ID to keep submissions accountable (this has to be turned on if you copy the form, the demo files are in the wild and don’t have this option.) The system uses Andrew Stillman's formMule Add-On to email the classroom teacher and a designated point person for each building in a district (the point person in my building is our librarian.) The email includes a copy of the student’s review and a link to the moderation Google Sheet. The first column of the moderation sheet is the moderation column - adding a “1” moderates the review and adds it to the site. Each review can also be edited using the “Form Response” sheet before moderation.

The review keeps the child’s name concealed when a when a review is written, saying instead, “The reviewer is XX years old from XYZ building.” When a teacher reviews a book, the review declares the teacher’s name. Each review has those cool graphic stars indicating the rating and can also display the book cover. The book cover is optional and requires the moderator to add a link on the moderation site to the cover graphic. To make this easier, the moderation sheet automagically links to the book’s page on Librarything. The moderator can visit the link and copy/paste the book cover image URL.

Students can also recommend a book for a type or reader (such as Kids who like scary stories, etc.) The “Type of reader” list on the form is updated via another Andrew Stillman gift, the formRanger Add-On. When a student comes up with a new type of reader it is automatically added to the form.  More on that later.

How to set it up

Don’t let all the stuff going on in this project dissuade you from trying it yourself, the complicated parts are taken care of by the add-ons and functions prepared in the sheet.  What is left to do is list the variables unique to your school, install the add-ons, and add the interface to your website. Lets find out how.

Add the variables

Copy the Moderation Google Sheet and Form. The sheet is already prepared with protected ranges on the moderation page to keep teachers from accidentally deleting formulas.  All of the variables for the form (teacher names, buildings, emails, etc.) are controlled from the “fromRanger” sheet. Navigate to this sheet and add the teachers, teacher emails, and buildings for the participating classes (delete the demo names first!)

In addition to the classroom teacher, each building has a point person to help moderate reviews. The point person in my building is our librarian. Determine who the the point person is for each building and update the emails in the “Point person for moderation” column. Finally, add any genres that you wish to include on the form. Hold off on the “Who would like this book” column, we’ll get to that is a bit.

How to install the add-ons

Installing and configuring add-ons is a little easier than working with scripts on the old Google sheets. We are going to install two add-ons to make this project work: formMule and formRanger. We will install and configure formRanger first.

formRanger

FormRanger is a form add-on and requires you install from the form. Navigate to the “Edit Form” window (from the spreadsheet Form > Edit Form) and click on Add-ons > Get Add-ons. Search for “formRanger” by New Visions Cloud Lab and install. Now formRanger will appear when you click the “Add-ons” menu item. Do this and click “Start.”

The formRanger sidebar will display when you click “Start” and every question on the form will be represented there. Each column from the “formRanger List” sheet needs to be set to update the appropriate question on the form. For example, under “School:” in the sidebar, check the box next to “Populate from values list.” Then click the “Select” menu and choose “New Values List.” You need to point the add-on to the book review Google sheet and specify the “Building List” column of the “formRanger Lists” sheet.  Repeat this action for the “Genre” and “Who would you recommend this book to?” questions.

The "Who would you recommend this book to?" column is updated by student submissions. Submit the form yourself a few times to add a some choices in order to get the list started. Consider items such as "Kids who like funny books." or "Kids who like suspense."

formMule

Unlike formRanger, formMule is a spreadsheet add-on. Install formMule by clicking “Add-ons > Get Add-ons” from the Book Review Google Sheet and search for formMule.  Once installed, click “Add-ons > formMule > Set-up > Choose Source Data and Set Merge Type.” Set the “Moderation” sheet to contain your email addresses and merge source data. Then turn on the time-based trigger to fire every hour. Click next to build your email templates.

The current system has two emails. One is sent to the classroom teacher and the building point person when a student submits a review. Another is sent to the same stakeholders after a review has been moderated. Both of these templates are pre-set if you name the templates correctly. Template 1 should be named “Teacher Notification” and set to trigger when the Timestamp is “NOT NULL.” Template 2 should be named “Moderation Notification” and set to trigger when “Type 1 to Moderate…” equals “1.” You can see these templates and edit them when you click “Next: Edit Templates.” When the templates are edited to your satisfaction, click “Build / preview templates” and formMule is ready!

Using Awesome Table as an interface

The system is ready, all you need is an interface. The spreadsheet is pre-configured to work with the awesome table gadget from Romain Vialard. This gadget is easily embedded in any Google site, making the system highly extensible. The “Awesome Table” sheet must be published for the gadget to work. From the Google Sheet, click “File > Publish to the web” and select “Awesome Table” from the drop down menu. Then copy the link that appears. After you copy the published link, use this tutorial to help you install the Awesome Gadget into a Google Site. Romain Vialard has also composed a comprehensive guide.

Yup. That’s it.

Thanks for making it this far! I’m excited to see if this project gets traction with our students and teachers. Towards that effort, I am helping our fourth grade teachers install the system during their next grade-level meeting. Future plans include gamifying the review process and including a badge system. Please let me know if you use this project - especially if you think of a way to make it better!

The Google Site FounderBook

My fifth grade classes are studying the Founders and the Constitutional Convention.  There are lots of fun ways to redefine the traditional essay project with this rich subject matter. I really appreciate the work that many have done using social media parodies, like these examples of Historical Fakebook projects.  I wanted to leverage these ideas, too, but using Google Apps - Sites in particular.  

I wanted to build a Google Site that capitalized on the efforts of the class by building social interaction into the project.  What's the point of building a FounderBook page if the founder can't interact with his contemporaries?  

So, this is my first attempt.  It's a good start, but I'm sure I've missed an opportunity or two. This template allows students to build a profile for a Founder, blog from his perspective, and perhaps leave comments on the pages of the other founders. Announcement pages and page templates make Sites well suited for this task.  I built two convention pages to accommodate a class of twenty-plus students.  There is a founder template page ready if you need to add personalities to the list.  The respective convention home pages feature announcement gadgets to display the running blogs for each founder.  

If you're interested in using the template with your class, simply follow the directions below:

1. Create your site by clicking “Use this Template” on the top of the template linked here: https://sites.google.com/site/usfounderbook/

2. Edit the Homepage of your FounderBook by clicking the pencil icon on the top right.

3. Assign Founders to the students in your class by replacing the placeholder names in “Convention 1” and “Convention 2”

4. Click the blue “Share” button and give the students in your class edit access to the site. 

5. This site will now appear on the Students' Sites pages, located at http://sites.google.com. You can also copy and paste the site address into a Google Doc that is shared with your class.

6. The "Instructions Page" assumes that your class has already done research on their Founders and gives a step by step guide to complete the project.

I have several classes using the template and it's going well so far.  Let me know if you improve on the template and/or try it out!