Take the 2014 Speak Up Survey!

The Speak Up Survey is a national initiative of Project Tomorrow. Who is Project Tomorrow?

"The nations leading education nonprofit organization dedicated to ensuring that today’s students are well prepared to be tomorrow’s innovators, leaders and engaged citizens of the world."

 The data collected represents the largest collection of authentic and unfiltered input from perspectives of Teachers, Students, Parents, & Community members. Your voice is important!

Indiana relies on the data to drive decisions for using technology in the education of our young people. Please take 10 minutes to share your voice by taking the survey.

2014 Speak Up Survey

Tell your friends!

Parent Access to MBC at GCS Now Available!

Google Calendar of Upcoming Edtech PD at GCS

Attention Greensburg Pirate Educators! 

October is Connected Educator Month!

Interested in meaningful, collaborative, and entertaining EdTech PD? Here are just a few upcoming opportunities to consider. 

You can bookmark the calendar here

The first set of opportunities will focus on what the SAMR model is and why it will help navigate the technology integration seas with greater comfort and confidence. Matt Miller is a Hoosier Spanish Teacher with an amazing blog illustrating his experience exploring how best to integrate technology into his class and curriculum. His post regarding his first exposure to the SAMR model is a good primer for what we'll explore throughout those opportunities.

All of the opportunities are voluntary and you can stay as long as you like. The TechTime sessions after school are open to anybody from any building. We will rotate the host building with each session so be sure to check the details of the event!

This is a very exciting year but I have found myself repeating a saying that I heard at a conference, and that is, "when  eating an elephant you still do it one bite at a time".  To put a a movie reference with it, I am reminded of "The Old 96er" from The Great Outdoors. I do love a good comedy.

Regardless of the reference the mindset applies to the daunting task ahead of us, and together we'll take it one bite at a time.

Too many passwords?

Google, My Big Campus, Twitter, Email.... the list of sites that require you to manage a username & password is never ending and continually growing. So what is the solution? Write them down? Choose not to use the site or service? Use the same password you always use? Make one up and then rely on 'forgot password'?

How about remembering one password and letting a password manager, such as LastPass take it from there.

The image below was created using Thinglink which is a great web service allowing interactive content to be embedded into photos and / or videos. Use the image to learn more about LastPass!

Interactive Image embedded with more information regarding LastPass

Something Fun

Thank you teachers! You all make a difference! Have an epic 2014-15! 

Pirate Pride.

And now something fun to start the new school year that is quickly approaching.

Here is a link to the full size image: PiratEdTech

After you have the file downloaded, Windows users can right-click on the file and select 'Set As Desktop Background'.

GCS Specific: Mobile Filter Resolution!

Have you experienced failed connectivity and / or crashing?

We have been working diligently with the folks at Lightspeed over the past couple weeks to pinpoint and resolve issues with the mobile filter that is running on all laptops. The problem behaviors include Google pages failing to load, Google Drive not connecting, lack of connectivity, and / or freezing & crashing of Windows. 

We believe we have reached a stable and consistent solution which will be automatically applied once you connect your laptop to the schools network – e.g. Connecting to GCS wireless. 

As it turns out, the issues stemmed from our Anti-virus software and the way it interacted with the mobile filter.

The antivirus will need to update itself to receive the new policy (aka the resolution). The update process will be automatically initiated after a few minutes of connectivity so you will want to stay logged into your laptop for 10 – 15 minutes. Please note,  the policy is only downloaded when the laptop is connected to GCS Wireless.

So, in summary once you and your laptop return to school the fix will be applied automatically. If you do not have your laptop yet, check your email for deployment dates / times.

Stay Positive.

You Should Get This Chrome Extension

Previously, one of the annoyances of Google Drive was the absence of ability to work with MS Office files directly from the web interface. Editing Word, Excel, or PowerPoint files basically consisted of downloading the file, editing in the appropriate Office software, then uploading the file again to Google Drive.

Google recently released an update that changes that scenario and makes editing Office files possible from Drive. Here is what you need to do to take advantage of the update:

ChromeBook: Nothing! It has been integrated for you.

Chrome Browser: Install this Chrome Extension

Mobile Apps: Nothing! It is automatically rolled out to Android and iOS.


*** Update 7/11/14 ***

It appears that the full functionality of this feature is not available until the Google Drive update is also released. Here is a youtube preview of that update. That update will be rolled out later this summer. If you have successfully used the Chrome browser extension to edit Office files please let me know in the comments!


Stay Positive!

In the Palm of Your Hands

I saw this briefly on the news the other morning while I was bustling around getting around for work and I thought to myself, man I need to check that out. Well I am sure glad I remembered to do so - which by itself is accomplishment to celebrate!

The news segment was reporting on the global patterns of Great White Sharks and how a team was gaining new insights into said research through tracking devices. That alone is interesting to me but what I discovered next was just awesome.

The website is OCEARCH.org and the "team" is a non-profit organization founded by Chris Fischer. From the 'About Us' section:

"...OCEARCH enables leading researchers and institutions to generate previously unattainable data on the movement, biology and health of sharks to protect their future while enhancing public safety and education." 

And...

"OCEARCH is a leader in open source research, sharing data in near-real time for free through the Global Shark Tracker, enabling students and the public to learn alongside PhDs. The Landry’s-developed STEM Education Curriculum, based on the Global Shark Tracker and Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS), is being launched for grades 6-8 in the fall of 2013 nationwide. "

So not only are they gathering data that was previously unattainable but they are sharing it with the world for analysis as it happens and providing curriculum ideas for educators! What an amazing time to be on the planet.

STEM educators, and educators in general, take a minute check out the site / the curriculum then spend a few more minutes creatively thinking about how a resource such as this could find a way into your world.

Stay Positive.

Rollout Form for GCS Faculty

Sometimes You Can Blame Google

I was home for lunch yesterday when Jennifer asked me what she was doing wrong because Google Drive was not allowing her to successful create a new Sheet. I sat down to take a look while she clicked through the normal process and sure enough, failure. The only indication was :

Google App that has lost Internet connectivity

Something was causing the connection to drop! We opened up another tab and surfed to a few websites to confirm that the Internet connection was indeed alive and well. The next thing we did gets to the heart of this post and illustrates something we all should be aware of, the Google Apps Status Dashboard. 

The Google Apps Status dashboard solved the mystery as there was indeed an orange dot representing a service disruption at that specific day / time. 

The colored dots are clickable and give more details as to the nature of the problem and status of the solution. 

So the next time you think you might be crazy due to the way a Google service is behavior, or misbehaving as the case may be swing by the Apps Status Dashboard. It may just save a lot of time and frustration! 

Stay Positive!

The Future is Now!

I wanted to share this promotional video we made to spotlight the growing digital initiative at GCS! It is an exciting time to be a Pirate! Go Big Blue!

Your GCS Google Account Explained

My what?! account?

I know we have faculty at various levels of exposure to Google and their Google account, so in an attempt to build the foundation. The following post occurred...

So a few years ago everyone employed at GCS had a Greensburg Domain Google Account created for them and for a couple years or more they just kind of sat dormant. The reason for the inactivity was in part due to the Google Services being early in their development and thus were basic and sometimes buggy. Secondarily they (Google online services) just didn't fill a need yet.

Google has since put a lot of time and effort into building it's presence in the Education world. The Google suite of online services, such as Docs, Slides, and Sheets has grown into a robust set of collaborative tools perfect for the classroom.

Your GCS Google account is your school administered Google account for accessing all of that and more and consists of your email address and a password. It differs from a personal Google account in that it is owned and controlled by the school system which allows some services to be available while others are disabled. For instance, Gmail is currently disabled while Youtube is enabled. 

Docs, Slides, Sheets and What else?

Docs, Slides, and Sheets are Google's free alternatives to Microsoft's Word, PowerPoint, and Excel respectively and they exist in your online storage Google Drive. For more information on Google Docs, Slides, and / or Sheets click here. While at times they lack the power features you may rely on MS Office for the Google Apps are rock stars in the world of online collaboration and leveraging the power of the Internet. (Aspects we hope to highlight and promote in the coming months / year through multifaceted PD opportunities!)

Your GCS Google account also provides you access to your school based Google Plus account, Youtube channel, Google Site, Blogger pager, Google Hangouts, and more. They are all just tools in the toolbox! 

What else? Well last but not least is access to the Chrome store to further customize and add functionality to Google Chrome. 

Drive.

Drive is your online storage space, similar to your U drive here at GCS only much higher capacity; 30 GB's worth or more than 30X the space of your U drive! You can upload existing files to drive or create new ones using Docs, Slides, etc... but they are all accessible to you from any location with Internet access!

Files in Drive are immediately ready to be shared with anyone you invite and depending on the filetype they are immediately ready to be edited and commented on by people you invite. 

Here is quick demo of one way to login to Drive:

Since Drive is a Google service logging into it also logs you into Google.

Lastly, when you log in you may be prompted to "link data" and that is something you generally are going to want to do. Linking data will synchronize your bookmarks, settings, extensions, etc... to that Chrome profile. It erases the problems of missing bookmarks because you are not at "your" computer.


Stay Positive.

2048

The popular tile-based puzzle game

I kept seeing this on computer screens as I worked in classrooms at the High School. I could tell it was a game of sorts but that was about it. Honestly, I didn't think to much about it until I was watching the filter statistics and saw repeated searches for "2048". I thought to myself, "that is an odd year to search for..." but come to find out it was the game they were searching for!

I did a quick investigation to discover that it is game written by a 19-year old Italian man in his weekend spare time! He drew inspiration from an existing game, 3's which is conceptually the same. After playing for a short time I can see why people enjoy this game. It is like the game Othello; simple and complicated at the same time.

Here are some things I find appealing about all of this:

• A motivated, self taught, young adult created and published this (own your education!)
• It was built upon inspiration drawn from an existing App / Game (tinker!)
• The number of young people I see engaged in a puzzle based elegant game (data analysis!)
• A world-wide audience is connected to a "weekend project"(International potential!)

It is an amazing time to be alive! Next time you see a student playing this game take the opportunity to give it the Paul Harvey treatment and "tell the rest of the story". 

Stay Positive! 

Summer eLearning Opportunities Across Indiana

Indiana Department of Education Office of eLearning is sponsoring schools around the state who are offering amazing professional development opportunities this summer. The conferences are geared specifically for those educators wanting to integrate technology into their curriculum. From the educator just beginning to learn how technology can redefine their pedagogy to the flipped classroom pioneer the conferences offer something for everyone. 

All of the conferences offer outstanding Keynote speakers to build around, like Matt Miller whom I had the pleasure of speaking with at the Google Apps for Education Summit held in Evansville back in Feb. Matt is an amazing educator and tech enthusiast who excels in finding innovative ways to collaborate with Google. Throw in informative concurrent sessions, peer networking, collaboration, close proximity to home, and very reasonable registration fees and it is hard to find a reason not to attend! 

Here are a few that I am interested in: 

• Making a Splash with Digital Learning - Keynotes: Leslie Fisher & Yancy Unger. Things I am looking forward to: iPads in the classroom, MyBigCampus usage, and Internet Safety!  
• June 24 & 25

• eRevolution - Keynotes: Adora Svitak & Angela Maiers. Things I am looking forward to: EVERYTHING! If you have not had the chance to attend an event hosted by the EVSC ICATS team, you are missing out! 
• July 8, 9, & 10

• Digipalooza - Keynotes: John Spencer & Matt Miller. Things I am looking forward to: Effective Evaluations; Rubrics & Rigor, Pivot; data driven instruction, and all things collaborative / PBL! 
• July 23 & 24

• WeLearn - Keynotes: George Couros. Things I am looking forward to: iPads in Special Education, Parents guide to teaching Digital Citizenship / Internet Safety, and Technology Integration Frameworks (SAMR / TPACK)
• June 11 & 12

That quick highlight is just the tip of the preverbal iceberg! The IDOE Office of eLearning has done a remarkable job working with districts to provide top notch content to all corners of the state (List of Conferences) at accessible prices! Kudos to all involved! 

Follow me on Twitter: @gcsedtech and hopefully we will get a chance to meet up at one of the sessions over the summer! 

Fun Google Trick

And just for fun, here is just one of many Google "tricks"; at the search box (www.google.com) type google gravity then click the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button. Enjoy! 

Stay Positive.

Chrome's Synchronizing Ways and Why You Should Care

As mentioned in the previous post, Google Chrome is a very good browser that offers compelling reasons to make it your browser of choice. There is however an aspect of the synchronizing process that you should be mindful of and that is the synchronizing of the history, passwords, & open tabs.

Let me share why you might want to disable the synchronization of the history, passwords, and open tabs. You may find yourself in a situation similar to where I am and that is juggling a chrome profile for personal use and one for professional use. Managing 2 profiles in and of itself is no problem, Chrome handles multiple user accounts quite well by adding users at the Settings page (shown below).

The piece that becomes difficult to remember is that it is up to the user to keep track of what account is being used, especially at home and make the appropriate adjustment. 

For instance, I maybe sitting down at home to research some information for an upcoming lesson so I switch to my school managed Google account / Chrome profile. After the normal life interruptions and passage of time I remember that I need to pay some bills online and without hesitation (or thought) go straight to logging into my bank and paying bills. This subtle shift from work to personal affairs might not be a big deal unless you go between multiple computers, particularly ones that are dedicated specific roles; a laptop at home and a desktop at work for instance. 

Now, due to the default sync settings, the history of your banking and bill pay activities and potentially the username / passwords for each are on all of your computers and could potentially give unintended individuals more information than they need with the convenience of auto-fill! 

The scenario I described is very basic but does get to the root of the issue as many of us remained logged into our work computers throughout the day even when we are away from our desks or rooms. (A good time to point out that the keyboard shortcut for locking your Windows computer is Win+L)

The purpose of this post is to bring awareness to how convenience can have unintended outcomes, especially when our personal and professional lives intersect.   

Thanks for reading!

Stay Positive :)

Why you should consider using the Chrome browser

Coke or Pepsi, Puffs or Kleenex, and of course Internet Explorer (IE) or Chrome (no offense Firefox, Opera, or Safari) different names for basically the same product. In the case of IE or Chrome we are referring to web browsers. Hopefully we are familiar with that term but just to be sure web browsers are relatively small pieces of software that allow you to browse the World Wide Web.

Many of us use Internet Explorer because it is what we are used to or because it has been the only option but if you had another option, would you still use it? I want to present some hopefully compelling options as to why you should consider moving over to Chrome.

1. Google Web Store - Chrome is a Google product and as such is very customizable using Apps and Extensions that are found in the Google Web Store. The functionality of Chrome can extend far beyond simply browsing the web to include cloud based services such as photo editing, video creation, organizational tools, and so much more! 
2. Google Drive / Apps - Google Drive is your cloud based storage giving you 30 GB of space to store nearly any filetype you choose. The Google suite of Apps (Slides, Docs, Sheets, & Drawings) tie directly into Google Drive and facilitate collaboration and sharing in an extremely intuitive manner. While both Drive and the suite of Apps are accessible in other browsers the best and most stable experience is when used with the Chrome browser. Each member of the GCS community has a Google Drive / Apps account so if you are not using it contact a member of the Technology Team to find out how! 
3. Synchronization - Chrome is capable of keeping your browsing experience fully synchronized across multiple computers. As long as you sign into Chrome and link your data when prompted your browser pulls your settings from the cloud delivering your Chrome experience. What do I mean when I say settings? 

As you can see from the image you also have the ability to prevent the synchronization of specific aspects. 

As you might be able to guess by now, I am a Chrome person. I like the way it operates and generally it makes the things I do on the World Wide Web easier and more efficient but that doesn't mean it will for you and that's OK!

Regardless of your favorite browser it is a very good idea to have both installed and be comfortable working in each. By doing so you are modeling an important, yet often overlooked aspect of educational technology which is confident flexibility. Confidence in yourself that you know what both are and flexibility by understanding that sometimes a website or service might exhibit odd behaviors in Internet Explorer but work perfectly in Chrome (or vice versa), so trying both is critical.

In the middle of a lesson and things aren't going as you expect with a particular webpage? Don't let frustration derail the momentum, relax, breathe, and know that your first action should be to try the same webpage in a different browser. It might just solve the problem and your students can observe you dealing with a tech obstacle in a positive manner.

To clarify my use of a service

I like to go back and review my post after a little time has passed just to be sure I am happy with the content, tone, look and feel. After completing that process a few minutes ago it occurred to me that my use of a particular service could be misconstrued. If you followed any of my example links you may have noticed that I used a website titled "Let Me Google That For You" or lmgtfy.com.
The site was created as a sarcastic response to users that might ask a question of another user whom they perceive as more savvy. Often times the more savvy user would run a Google search and provide the results to the original inquisitor, thus lmgtfy.com was born.
Hear me loud and clear when I say:

This is not the reason I use lmgtfy! I will never use it in a sarcastic manner, either on this blog or any other format. I will however "use the force for good" and take advantage of a great tool for sharing random search techniques within Google.

Stay positive!

Jason

Advanced Google Searching for the Classroom

I am confident that you the reader, are comfortable using Google to complete a general search on a given topic or idea. What I want to share with this post are some ways to refine your searches and tune Google to bring you exactly what you are looking for on the first try.

Search operators consist of words or symbols that are used to restrict your results to a given parameter. For instance, you could use the 'filetype:' operator to specify that only a certain type of file be returned.

Here are some common search operators and how that might fit into classroom use:

• filetype: - when used with a search it will limit the results to those that also match the specified format. Here is an example of its' use. Common file types are:
• Audio - mp3, vorbis, aac, wma, flac, aup (audacity project file), band (Garageband music)
• Video - avi, mpeg, mp4, mov, flv (flash video), f4v (flash video)
• Video Editing Projects - wlmp (Windows Live Movie Maker), imovieproj, fcp (Final Cut Pro)
• Documents - doc, docx, rtf, pdf, odt, wpd, 
• Images - png, jpg, bmp, gif, tiff,
• Presentations - ppt, pptx, gslides, odp, otp (template), key,
• Spreadsheets - xls, xlsx, ods, ots (template), csv, gsheet, numbers, 
• Archive / Compression - zip, rar, 7z, dmg, iso, 

This is by no means a comprehensive list! For more complete, and overwhelming list check the wikipedia entry here. 

• site: - when used in combination with a specific URL the results are restricted to only that site. Here is an example of its' use. This could be used to help direct students to specific sites on a broader level or contain the search to known resources. Either way some preparation on the part of the instructor might be needed to curate what site is used. Current event searches directly into a specific new site (cnn.com or msnbc.com) could be an example activity. 

• .. - this one is subtle but used to establish a range. For example "celtics 1983..1984" or "fender $350..$1000". 

• related: - when used in combination with a specific URL the results are other URLs that contain similar content. Here is an example of its use. This operator is useful for both students and teachers alike who may know of one specific site but need similar to reference for a lesson or project.

• * - the asterisk can be used in place of the unknown. It is used to represent a wildcard in this instance and many others related to computing. It can be especially useful when searching for partial phrases and should be used in conjunction with quotations. For example, "it was * times *worst"

In summary, there are many different ways to refine your search and make Google work more efficiently hopefully I have shed some light on some that were previously unknown. If I failed to mention your favorite search operator please feel free to add to the conversation with a comment. 

Stay positive. 

Jason

Unknown Potential

The first step is always the hardest. A cliche statement but not one that lacks in truth. For me opening this blog has been, and is, a scary step but one that is essential to achieving the goals I have for digital learning in my district.

My hope for this blog is for it to become a place of reflection and sharing of all things related to technology in education. From tips and tricks, integration ideas, fixes, and all things in between and across a variety of platforms I hope you find something useful while you are here. I don't proclaim to be a writer of any sort so I apologize in advance for poor transitions and the occasional run on sentence. I will do my best to share what I know in an entertaining and understandable fashion. Comments are always welcome so feel free to join the conversation!

Without further hesitation, let's push away from dock and set a course into the unknown.

“Oh, yesterdays are over my shoulder,
So I can't look back for too long.
There's just too much to see waiting in front of me,
and I know that I just can't go wrong.”  

-- Jimmy Buffett, "Changes in Latitudes, Changes in Attitudes"

Cheers,

Jason