Professional Learning Networks

Director of

  • Tech Savvy Girls (TM)
  • Tech Savvy Kids (TM)

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    June 30, 2009

    Google Teaching Theater

    Book Buddy Lesson Using Google Presentation from

    http://edu.googleapps.com/

    along with



    Tux Paint Workshop: Turning Tux Paint Into a Classroom Tool

    NECC Workshop - Redesigning Assignments with Social Bookmarking

    BET07 Delicious Research: Redesign Assignments with Social Bookmarking
     
    Lucie deLaBruere, St. Albans City School
    Tuesday, 6/30/2009, 12:30pm–1:30pm WWCC 151 A

    Redesign research assignments for students, increase critical thinking, and maximize your own productivity by managing online information using social bookmarking tools, such as Delicious.


     Delicious : Workshop Session Description and  Outline:

     

     

    June 29, 2009

    NECC Presentation - Google Apps for Your Domain

    Working with Vinnie Vtrony on a 3 hour workshop introducing participants to Google Apps for Your Domain

    http://sites.google.com/site/21cdigitallocker/Home

    June 26, 2009

    21st Century Teaching - Google Day

    Today's day-long session working with Diane Lemieux introduced participants of her course, 21st Century Teacher, to a variety of Google tools and ways to use them for teaching and learning. 

    http://sites.google.com/site/learningwithlucie/google-day---june-24


    June 23, 2009

    Google Workshop (UVM Grad Class) June 23

    Two hour workshop introducing educators enrolled in UVM Graduate Course with John Downes and Ken Reissig on latest Google Tools for Educators

    http://sites.google.com/site/learningwithlucie/Home/june23

    Introducing I-Pods and Flip Cams to Migrant Education Program

    Mobile learning tools like I-Pods and Flip Video Cams make the ideal teaching and learning tool for Franklin Country's Migrant Education Program. 



    June 22, 2009

    Southern New Hamphsire Course - Google Workshop

    Welcome to the educators enrolled in a Dimensions in Technology and Learning with Ed Bianchi from Southern New Hampshire College.  Our learning resources for today can be found at

    http://sites.google.com/site/learningwithlucie/Home/june22

    and will help you prepare for using Google Tools when working with today's students.



    June 18, 2009

    St. Albans City School 7th and 8th grade PD

    Teachers from St. Albans City School's 7th and 8th grade teams closed the year by upgrading their technology toolkit to include collaborative tools that would help them continue their learning community work throughout the summer from different locations.  The two day training started with a tech infused agenda that included delicious and Google Apps.

    By bookmarking resources using delicious.com they can compile and share thematic resources.  By using Google Apps, they will be able to create, edit, and revise documents and organize them using the Grade 7 & 8 Google Site.
    You will notice the new slideshows they created about their learning community  and some of their theme work really coming together.  The day ended with conversations about how to use these tools to start planning  Electronic Portfolios.


    May 22, 2009

    Google Panel at State Pizza Conference

    Working with Google and some progressive network admins in Vermont to offer a panel on Google Apps for Education at the state's annual Tech Pizza Conference.

    Googlepizzagroupjl~1 Googlepizzagroup~1

    [Jeff Keltner from Google and Google Apps administrators from Vermont schools, Lucie deLaBruere, Eric Hall, Katie Dugan,  Rick Armitage, and BJ Behrendt fielding questions about implementing Google Apps for Education in K12 environment]

    We set up a Google Moderator site to collect questions participants would like addressed at this panel.

    You can access the Moderator site at tinyurl.com/googlepizza

    If you have teachers who are interested integrating Google products in their classroom, check out this summer professional development opportunity

    TEACHING THE GOOGLE GENERATION
    St. Albans City School w/ Lucie deLaBruere, Google Certified Educator - August 10-14

    (With Orientation Session on June 1 - followed by 3 hours online prior to intitute.
    Register: http://cvedc.champlain.edu/event.view.php?vid=1237906525

    Learn how to use the extensive suite of free Google Tools in your Classroom to support 21st century learning. Gain access to hundreds of resources and lesson plans from Google Teachers Academy. Tools such as Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Docs, Google Video, Google Sites, Custom Search Engine, Google Reader, and more are changing the way today's students learn. Use them to change the way you teach and the learning culture in your classroom.

    Reporting back after the Panel:

    Lucie deLaBruere started the session by announcing that applications are currently open for the next Google Teachers Academy and encouraged folks to apply.  She then introduced the panel.

    Jeff Keltner from Google provided a quick demo of  Google Apps. A panel of Google Apps admins from Vermont Schools briefly introduced how they use Google Apps in their school including Rick Armitage, Eric Hall,  Katie Duggan, BJ Behrendt

    We then introduced the questions participants had submitted to the Google Moderator site set up for this session. www.tinyurl.com/googlepizza

    Jeff answered some of the questions posted on the Google Moderator and also fielded questions from staff.

    Although we did not get a chance to answer all  the questions,  the panel agreed to post some input to the questions we did not get to. 

    Lucie closed up the session by inviting teachers who want professionial development in Google Apps and other Google products in education to consider her class "Teaching The Google Generation" this summer.

    http://lucie.typepad.com/blog/2009/04/what-im-teaching-this-summer.html

    Here are some highlights from the panel session.

    ---------------------------------------------------------------

    Jeff reminded folks that Google Apps has several benefits for schools, included no advertisement.  The one thing  that changed his life was able able to use 'search'  instead of organizing his life.  It takes a while to accept that the world does not need to be organized, when  you can  the world  when you can just search. 

    Jeff highlighted the benefits of 'chat',  video communication, and calendar, Google Docs, real time collaboration, Google forms, google sites, and free tech support.

    The panel then highlighted some of the Google Apps implementation at their schools which included curriculum mapping, student sharing documents,  7th and 8th grade, secretarial staff.

    Everyone's implementation seemed to evolve from trying to solve a problem, (i.e. shared calendaring, increased student access at hoome,  collaborating with parents, needing to chat. student writing project, curriculum mapping, live web calendaring, needing private video sharing. 

    Google releases new code every 2 weeks.  New features are constantly being added.  The goal is not to add every feature requested, but to be responsive for features requested. 

    Question:  How responsive is Google to bug request.  Very responsive,  go to Help button,

    http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/request.py?contact_type=suggest

    Jeff got applause from the panel as he listed some of the features coming up (soon) including group and user management, distribution list,

    Question: Does Google Apps work with subdomains.  What are best practice to get users across different domains collaborating.

    Jeff suggested not to go down the subdomain group and felt that one domain was a better scenario.  He announced a coming ability to create groups and change permission based on membership in groups.  (applause from panel)

    Jeff continued to address questions about being able to disable  and enable feature and being able to restrict what students can do w/ the tools.

    The panel jumped in and commented that Google Apps has helped them address ethics and safety in real time (not just theory).  The group questioned the wisdom of using technology to avoid conversation and opportunity to have those conversation. 

    Question:  How can we address needs for archiving.

    Jeff mentined that Google does not provide free email archiving, but they do partner with Postini and offer discounted e-discovery services school for archiving and that it can be down on a user basis.  The challenge with addressing archiving is that different lawyers have different interpretations.  Some believe that you need to archive all, others believe that you just need a policy that tells folks to not delete certain types of message,  or to CC a copy messages that need archiving to an archive account.

    Google honors privacy but keeps everything until a user deletes it; if empty trash bin, then its gone forever.

    Google is currently working with to offer filtering to schools for free.  Expected launch will be June 1. The system will filter email  differently for different users in your domain on content and have options such as delivered/ flagged. 

    Jeff mentioned that Google Moderator is now available to Google Apps. He then demonstrated Google Moderator (which was used by President Obama in a recent town meeting forum)

    Help File for adding Moderator to Google Apps:

    http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?answer=114246&ctx=sibling

    Question: Can you add aliases.  Yes, you can add as many domain to a single domain as you would like.  When you set them up as one domain, you can share across subdomains.

    Questions:  What is the impact on bandwidth.

    Bandwidth can vary.  Panel responded that their bandwidth issues were more from other application such as You Tube than Google Apps.  Some panel members said that their bandwidth use went down.

    Question:  What are some of the issues you ran into in implementation:

    Panel: 

    • If you have younger kids,  log in for the first time ahead of time, because the "captcha" is a hurdle, especially for little kids.
    • Provide training in advance
    • Give the tools to teachers first
    • Give the tools to students first and let them lead.
    • Demo new features often; don't assume people know all the cool features or are using them.Train on deleting emails vs. conversation...
    • Some users were losing emails because they didn't know they were deleting the whole conversation. or better yet, (use archive...you nolonger need to delete anything)Give the kids home access.  Think about who should be involved in the decision.
    • Let go of some of the need to control.
    • Consider putting tools in the hands of kids even if you can't track it all.
    • Develop digital citizens.
    • Google Apps can now provide differentiated levels of access for students. At current the share is available on document basis. Coming soon: share a folder, distribution list, google sites, and video.
    • Help folks understand DELETE. Understand that delete forever, means its gone. Delete is  forever for privacy purposes..delete document that is shared gives you options about deleting share or document.
    • Some panel members found revision history useful to tell who did what work in a project. Others saw that revision doesn't work anywhere need at the level as tracking.

    Questions: Does Google plan to offer cloud storage for all kinds of files.

    Answer: It currently uploads pdf in the doc dashboard.  You can also use google sites (page type called file cabinet) to put files in the cloud. Files are searchable in google sites and has some files  management capacity that allows it to be used like a storage cabinet with  document repository

    Quetion: Do you have to add a new team member to shared document.

    Yes at this time.  Google Sites allows search across all the sites which can store up to 100 gigabyte per domain...

    Time ran out, but the the Google Panel has been kind enough to include some of answers to the questions that did not get addressed in the Google moderator.   They have also offered to help others by answering other questions, allowing visits,  or even doing training.  Lucie is currently working on a 3 hour hands on workshop for NECC that helps first time Google Apps administrator understand the possibilities and options for administrating a domain. 

    Thanks to Jeff and the Vermont ed tech panel for helping out with this workshop at Vemont's annual techies conference for School IT staff.


    May 14, 2009

    Dynamic Landscapes 2009

    Dynamic Landscapes 2009
    Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century
    Champlain College - May 15, 2009

    1) Creative Teaching with Google Earth

    David Davidson/ Lucie deLaBruere

    Google Earth is more than attention-grabbing program for finding your way around our planet. The tools built into this service give you and your students the opportunity to create original maps filled with your content. We will use two elementary school projects to demonstrate how Google Earth can be used to dramatically display original student work on aerial views of the Earth.

    http://sites.google.com/site/geinvtclassrooms/Home/dl-2009


    2) Collaborating with Google Docs in Education- Hands-on – Double Session

    Lucie deLaBruere (Google Certified Educator)

    This hands-on workshop will have you collaborating with other participants by collecting data using Google Forms; turning data into information using Google Spreadsheet; presenting the information using Google presentation, and writing a collaborative reflection using Google docs... and we have lots of fun doing it!!


    http://sites.google.com/site/learningwithlucie/Home/dynamic-landscape