Thursday, September 20, 2012

Save Time with Google Templates

Like most of  you, I do not have time to create a lot of my own materials.  Lucky for us, the web is full of materials created by other innovative individuals who freely share.  Did you know that you have access to thousands of awesome teaching resources just through Google Docs?  Google has an amazing template gallery with docs, forms, and presentations created by individuals who have made their work public.  Here's how to find free templates that you can save in your own Google space:

1.  Go to Google Drive.  Click "Create" in the left corner and then choose "From template" at the bottom of the list.

2.  Choose the "Public templates" option.  Now search for your topic of interest.


3.  Be amazed at what you find!

My search for "book reports" resulted in 30 different forms and docs that students could instantly save and use.  The best part: it only took me minutes to access.

Below is an example of one of my favorite Docs templates created by Derrick Waddell.  It's a fake Facebook profile page students complete after researching a historical figure.  This is just a small sampling of the great ideas available instantly to you.


Thursday, September 13, 2012

Vialogues: Videos and conversation in one space

I can't wait to try Vialogues with my students.  We all have those moments during the viewing of a video when we need to hit the pause button to add additional thoughts or clarification.  Often there are moments when it would be great to just stop the video all together and begin a meaningful discussion.  Or, a student may have a great comment during a specific segment, but once the opportunity for discussion is available, that thought has long been forgotten.  Vialogues is one solution to these dilemmas. 

The purpose of Vialogues is to create "meaningful conversations" around videos.  These conversations can occur not only in the classroom during the playing of the video, but also at home, the library, or through another web-enabled device.  Here's how it works: after signing up for your free account, upload your own video, choose one from Vialogues' collection, or add a YouTube URL.  You can then invite people to view your video and add to the conversation.  Invitations can be sent through email or by providing a link.  You can also create surveys and embed the vialogue into your own website. 

In addition, after students have access to the vialogue, they can watch videos and carry on the discussion outside of the classroom.  You could even invite other classrooms or parents to join in the conversation.  There is so much potential to create meaningful learning experiences!

Here is a link to my vialogue to get an idea of how it works.