Saturday, September 6, 2008

Shared Sheets: Survey, Classroom Assessment, or Form

Take an online survey - built in pvLearners Shared Sheets.

See "live" results from the above survey - also in pvLearners Shared Sheets.

All results are provided, but on Sheet 2 Tab (upper left link), you'll also find a live graph showing answers for the the "Scale Question" (Where do you place your computer integration use?).

Note the description text at the start of the survey regarding classroom management, and how a teacher could use this for automatically-scoring a classroom assessment and linking the results/answers to individual students.

Making a survey/assessment:
  • Create new sheet.
  • Give it a Title and then "Share" tab.
  • Click on Invite People to "fill out a form".
  • Click on "Preview and send form".
  • Don't send the invite yet, so click on "Cancel".
  • Enter your test/survey/form questions.
  • - note the little edit, trash icons and "Add Question", "View Responses" buttons
  • - come back to this screen later to see the automatically scored responses
  • Once questions have been entered you can click on "Email this form" - copy and paste the invitees, or you can just give the participants the URL another way.
  • Might want to read the intro of the survey to see how you could manage a classroom taking this as an assessment and automatically have the results tied to each students (cool....).

If you want detailed graphical analysis like the below, go back into the survey and click on "View Responses" (see above).



Enjoy....;-)

Saturday, August 23, 2008

Seven Steps to a Flat Classroom - Atomic Learning

Think REACH as you experience this series of online videos by an award-winning teacher on;


use the PVUSD username/password to log on (see your STR if you don't know it).

Web 2.0 Workshop - Atomic Learning

Good tutorial on Web 2.0, which is what pvLearners is all about.


use the PVUSD username/password to access (see your STR if you don't know it).

Friday, June 27, 2008

wiziq.com

Someone from the July Plug and Play Camp posted an item about this site:

http://www.wiziq.com/

It looks very cool for virtual and online classroom instruction.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Current GenYes Schools

GenYes and pvLearners are a match for each other....;-)

Current GenYes Schools (July '08)

Monday, June 16, 2008

Blogs in Plain English

What's a blog? Check out the simple video Blogs in Plain English pointed out courtesy of Tony Vincent in his recent Goldrush Web 2.0 class in PVUSD.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Blabberize - blabberize.com

An interesting tool, where you make your mouth move to a recorded statement - Jeff Talking at Blabberize.com.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Countdown Widget

TeacherTube on Second Life

Widget Clock

Google Talk is Going Green!!

Another evolutionary theme to Literacy???  Environmental reasons to bag pulp - environmental reasons to streamline serial-based communication, like writing.  There is a "bot" to help the transition and evolution.  Can we honestly say how these kids are going to communicate in 2028?  Hmmmh.....

Friday, June 13, 2008

Learn IM Speak

LOL - Laughing Out Loud
CUL8R - See you later

Well, now you can have your own language translation "bot" in your iChat (PVLEARNERS) or web browser PVLEARNERS.  Enter your sentence(s) and it will be converted to IM Speak, or enter the IM Speak (of your kids and students) and it will be converted to English.  Want to learn how to do do "bots" - see the posting below on "Goggle Talk Turned On".  Or, if you know how to use "bots" in Instant Messaging, just add "en2im@bot.talk.google.com" as a buddy to your PVLEARNERS account in iChat, and start converting.....enjoy......

Google Talk is Turned On!!!


Google Talk - instant messaging within PVLEARNERS is now on.  That means every student and teacher now have the ability to instant message or chat within their PVLEARNERS account.  The tool is accessible right beneath your email account (see picture to right for what Google Talk looks like in web browser - click picture).  So, let the communications begin.

Your Contact List (buddy, friend, etc.) shows who is accessible through Google Talk in the web browser.  You can set certain users up to "Always" show in the web Buddy List, or access new buddies through the interface.  You can have group chats, chats can be archived and pulled up for later use, "go off the record", etc..  The chat client is built right into the web browser, or (see below).

Two very interesting benefits are noted:


First, teachers (or students) can also use the iChat client to connect with PVLEARNERS users who are using the web client, or teachers and students can use iChat configured for a PVLEARNERS account (see picture to left to for a view of this window in iChat - click the picture).  "jbillings1" is another "Billings", not me.....;-)

Open your iChat client up and go to iChat/Preferences, create a new account using your PVLEARNERS account information - "username@pvlearners.net", filling in with pvlearners password and using the server name of "talk.google.com" - notes on configuring iChat in Tiger for Google Talk (pvlearners) is provided at this link.  Leopard OS version of iChat is very similar, but see below picture (click the picture) for example of how you and students would set the account up in Leopard.


So, if you already have your pCHAT (Jabber - pvschools.net) account open to chat with other PV employees, you can also have your PVLEARNERS (GoogleTalk) account open (Window menu and select pvlearners account option)  to be available and chat with students and others on pvlearners - your online status will show up in both pCHAT and PVLEARNERS.  If students are using the iChat application (instead of the browser), then yes, you can have A/V chats as well - cool - all done off the Google servers and PVLEARNERS account structure.  (Note -text chatting works always, and the A/V works from home to home and from school to school, but we haven't quite figured out how to easily translate the IP's from school to home to do A/V......but stay tuned).

Second - Google has released some 26 different "bots" to provide machine translation services through Google Talk - can anyone say World Languages and project REACH?  Connect and try to communicate in real time with someone chatting in a different language, using a translator "bot" open at the same time to translate words from the "live" person chat - see the second picture above of my PVLEARNERS account in iChat for example of "bots" in English to Chinese and vice versa.  Check out this link which explains how to implement language bots in Goggle Talk.  Adding "bots" as a buddy in your PVLEARNERS account is actually very easy - an English to Spanish "bot" would be added as a buddy using the account "en2es@bot.talk.google.com", an English to French would be "en2fr@bot.talk.google.com".  BTW, by adding the "bot" as a buddy in your PVLEARNERS window, you always have these services available for immediate translation.

This stuff is getting absolutely wild!!!  I know machine translation "ain't" perfect (yet), but it sure can help to begin bridging barriers of space, time, culture and language.  Imagine 3 years from now......


PDF files in PVLEARNERS

PDF files in shared documents - you can now upload, store, decide who can see, PDF files in pvlearners.  Check it out....

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Gadgets in Sheets are Getting Powerful

Making charts and graphs is powerful in Shared Sheets.  Easy to "Insert" and share with the world.  We're evaluating if we can mash these tools up with pDAT to bring it to a teacher/principal login - cool......;-)






Another Example of Gadgets in Sheets

Mashing up data and leveraging the Google API's.......




Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Have your kids add this to their Google/pvlearners "Site"


Online Math Equation Editor



Saturday, May 31, 2008

10 new languages to Google Translation

jbillings@pvlearners.net sent you a link to the following content:

Google Translate adds 10 new languages...
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/05/google-translate-adds-10-new-languages.html

The sender also included this note:

new languages

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Google Notifier

I think I'm going to have the kids set this up on their laptops for mail next fall. Alerts for email, calendar additions without browser open....

Google Notifier


Other cool stuff:

http://google.com/mac

Deb

Friday, May 23, 2008

Spreadsheet Form in Google Docs

I have started a survey to use with my students next year. I hope to assess their level of computer ability. I would welcome any additions to it from you folks. It is saved as a google spreadsheet. Anyone on pvlearners should be able to edit it from this link. Just choose the "edit" option and it should take you from the spreadsheet to the page where you can add questions. Thanks for any ideas you have in advance.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/a/pvlearners.net/ccc?key=pvbjoVL8vuoEnewYt0I22QA&hl=en

Sunday, May 18, 2008

21st Century Pedagogy



Learning to Change



Fwd: Sketch Up

I've been picking up a lot of chatter on RSS Feeds and Blogs about Google's "Sketchup" being used by Professionals and by Autistic Children, who are spatially gifted.  I know my daughter also likes this tool, but it's not used "yet" in the traditional classroom, so she doesn't pursue it as much as I would like (...sigh...).  

I'm not really sure where these types of tools fall in the overall Curricular, Instructional, and Services structure, hence, I'm cc'ing all of you - sorry.  But, lots of good chatter out there and the tool is absolutely wild.  It gets really interesting when one overlays their design onto Google Earth, like their back yard, or under developed area, or downtown Phoenix (called a "Mashup").  Talk about authentic learning and engagement by kids.....;-)

Video on projects created by Autistic Children at;

Business is starting to use SketchUp because of it's design power (see below link as an example tutorial on the "Section" tool), the price (free to cheap), it's multi-platform, you don't need a specialized and very potent/expensive computer to run it (TCO), but really because of where the world is heading in IT, and that's sharing and Mashup's - the ability to interface your creations with data bases and other tools and other people, thereby creating a whole 'nuther perspective into Web 2.0.  As an example of business use, our Transportation Department just procured our first-ever "mashed up" application using GPS sensors for our buses, and Google Maps for real time routing location and traffic flow.  Businesses are going to exploit these tools during the next 10 years - so should we.

Example video on how to use the "Section" tool;

Link to the SketchUp 3D Warehouse, consisting of designs shared by users all over the world (Web 2.0):


We can continue to pay licensing fees and support commercial software, but we can also push towards what the
PVUSD Technology Plan calls for - Open Source solutions, wherever possible and appropriate.  I believe network centricity is going to be critical over the next many years - technology solutions that don't interface with other tools and data on the internet are locked in, and will have a high probability of fading into obsolescence.


Jeff.....

Google and Web 2.0 Tools in Plain English

Short videos on Google Tools, but nice for understanding concepts....

Docs and Shared Docs in Plain English

RSS in Plain English

Twitter in Plain English


Wikis in Plain English

Podcasting in Plain English

Blogs in Plain English

Online Photo Sharing in Plain English

Social Bookmarking in Plain English


Google Tools for the Classroom

Useful tool - tools, tips, posters and classroom activities to get you started

Google Tools for your Classroom....

pvlearners in pTUNES

Want some video snippets on using pvlearners - go for it, compliments of pTUNES.....;-)

pvlearners SmartCard

A pvlearners SmartCard can be found here....

Best Practices

1. Use of pvlearners is for communication and collaboration among students and teachers in PVUSD for school activities and educational goals.

2. Students are expected to be self-motivated and responsible with their pvlearners accounts. This includes following the expectations outlined for student behavior per the PVUSD student handbook.

3. Users of pvlearners need to be aware of the following:
  • Keep your personal information private (including photos, profiles, emails, blogs, wikis, web pages, etc.)
  • Keep personal information of others private
  • Treat others with respect
  • Be aware that published content is viewable by all users of the Internet

4. Activities conducted with pvlearners accounts should be legal, educational, nondisruptive, and adhere to the PVUSD acceptable use policy for Electronic Information Services.

5. Students' Start Pages are to be created and maintained appropriately per the teacher's guidelines.

6. Parental permission/notification is required before pvlearners accounts can be used by students.

7. pvlearners accounts have been established through Google Services and are subject to the terms and conditions of Google.

What is pvlearners?

"pvlearners.net" is an internet domain registered under PVUSD that enables all employees and students to have Google accounts for email, calendars, shared docs/spreadsheets/presentations, blogs, wikis, groups, RSS feeds, and web pages. Please note that these accounts are full, internet, resources and tool enabled. Consequently, understanding and practicing appropriate online use is important for all users, and this practice can not be underscored enough. Concepts such as identity theft, scams, spam, cyberpals, ethics, not disclosing personal information, digital stranger danger, advertising, etc., should be taught, discussed and understood by all users. The Technology Department stands ready to help you present information on these or any topic, should you so desire.

"pvlearners" was created for three reasons:
  • to prepare students for their future,
  • to meet state and national technology standards,
  • and to keep our practice current.

We currently have the capability for 40,000 accounts that are maintained by our district. At this time we have over 19,000 accounts activated for general communication, many entire schools activated, and many teachers (k-12) actively exploring 21st-century, online collaboration and learning (beyond email) with their students.

You can view the start page for "pvlearners" at http://mail.pvlearners.net.

Additional information is available at the "pvlearners" blog, http://pvlearners.blogspot.com. Training movies are being developed in pTUNES (http://ptunes.pvschools.net), under the Information Technology link, and our subscription to Atomic Learning (http://www.atomiclearning.com) provides online tutorials on use of Google documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.

For information on voluntarily getting your school, teachers and students participating in rich, online communication and collaboration, please contact Jill Felty (jfelty@pvschools.net). Principal approval is required and we are now only acception entire schools, or a one time activation of entire grade levels - sorry, no more one, tow or three teachers. Parental notification/permission is required per Board policy. Please note that not all teachers at a school have to participate with the tools, but at least they can get student homework/communication sent from a known/trusted email address (pvlearners.net), instead of "whatever@yahoo.com", "cooldude@msn.com", etc. Teachers can also have the option to set up their pvlearners account to automatically forward email to their ConnectMe account, simplifying email management. Additionally, student usernames/passwords are set with PVUSD's external model, which teachers have access to through "My Roster" in pDAT (http://pdat.pvschools.net).

Please note that there is a reasonable probability that next year, pvlearners accounts will be available to all students. It's 2008, and moving from analog to digital is upon us all, throughout the world.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Edit Google Spreadsheet With Everyone

 
 

Sent to you by Jeff via Google Reader:

 
 

via Google Blogoscoped by Philipp Lenssen on 5/14/08

Ionut Alex. Chitu reports you can now edit a spreadsheet with anyone who knows the URL, as an option, and not just people with a Google account which you invite. To set this up, start at Google Docs and click New Spreadsheet. Prepare your data and hit the Share tab; now configure the "Anyone can [edit] this without logging in" box, and share the URL Google provides you with. Ionut says, "your spreadsheet becomes a wiki."

For sample purposes, you can now edit along the History of Google Releases spreadsheet.

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: Edit Google Spreadsheet With Everyone | Comments]


[Advertisement] Want to advertise here? Your ad will show in the blog and feed.

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

Google Docs adds mobile access support



 
 

Sent to you by Jeff via Google Reader:

 
 

via The official update feed from the Google Apps team by Google Apps Team on 3/11/08


Users can now sign in and view documents and spreadsheets from their mobile devices, including the iPhone.

Editions impacted:
Standard, Premier, Education and Partner Editions

Languages impacted:
US English

How to access what's new:
From your mobile phone's browser, sign in to Google Docs at docs.google.com/a/your.domain/m.

For more information:
http://docs.google.com/support/spreadsheets/bin/answer.py?answer=77428

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

Google Spreadsheets adds gadgets, revision notifications and more



 
 

Sent to you by Jeff via Google Reader:

 
 

via The official update feed from the Google Apps team by Google Apps Team on 3/19/08


Spreadsheet gadgets let you visualize your data in interesting, intuitive ways. For example, you can see addresses on an interactive map, or create dynamic time series charts that let you zoom in and scroll through a graph.

Revision notifications let you set up alerts so you know when someone makes changes to a spreadsheet.

Other new features include the ability to select cells for formulas with arrow keys, an expanded color palette, text auto-complete from other cells in the same column, a new function auto-complete feature, and new sort(), filter() and unique() functions.

Editions impacted:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages impacted:
US English

How to access what's new:
Sign in to Google Docs, open a spreadsheet, and click the 'Add' button in the toolbar. (The icon looks like a bar chart.) Then select "Gadget..." to see all the gadget options.

See links below for other feature access instructions.

For more information:
http://documents.google.com/support/spreadsheets/bin/topic.py?topic=14187
http://documents.google.com/support/spreadsheets/bin/answer.py?answer=91588
http://documents.google.com/support/spreadsheets/bin/answer.py?answer=92022

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

Google Presentations adds speaker notes and YouTube video embedding

Sweet.....

 
 

Sent to you by Jeff via Google Reader:

 
 

via The official update feed from the Google Apps team by Google Apps Team on 4/28/08


You can now add speaker notes and embed YouTube videos in Google Presentations.

Editions impacted:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages impacted:
US English

How to access what's new:
Sign in to Google Docs, open a presentation and click the speaker notes icon at the bottom right of the screen to add speaker notes. Click 'Start presentation' and then click 'View speaker notes' to see your notes.

To embed a video in a presentation, open a presentation for editing, click 'Insert video' and search for the video you want to embed.

For more information:
http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/users/dands.html

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

Google Docs allows CSS customization for documents

Getting better and better ways to make it look polished.

 
 

Sent to you by Jeff via Google Reader:

 
 

via The official update feed from the Google Apps team by Google Apps Team on 5/9/08


Users can now customize the cascading style sheet (CSS) for their documents. This provides advanced controls for page design, layout and formatting.

Editions impacted:
Standard, Premier, Education, Team and Partner Editions

Languages impacted:
US English

How to access what's new:
Sign in to Google Docs and open a document. Then click 'Edit' from the menu bar and then 'Edit CSS...' to open the CSS editing window.

For more information:
http://documents.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=94168

 
 

Things you can do from here:

 
 

Sunday, May 11, 2008

Site now with Google Reader, RSS Feed....

In the upper left hand corner, you'll note that this site is now participating in RSS feed.  Go to "More" (Google Apps) when logged in and set up your Google Reader (RSS Aggregator) to get web information collected for you.  If anyone is interested in how to make your/student/class an RSS feed site, so Google Reader can be used, let me know.  I see it as powerful for teachers letting their students update their "Site" and all the information comes to the teacher in one nice Reader application.....;-)

It's kind of dweeby to set up the first time, but once you get it, powerful tool......

Use Google "Sites" as Wikis

You can use Google Sites as Wikis.  Check out a pbwiki site, I just ported over for Tom Warner.


Drill down into Science and Animal Reports to see student work - wow - 4th graders!!!!

Just add your students in Contacts as a Group (good thing to have for getting going with this stuff), after you create a site, then add the student Group as "Collaborators" when you share.  Students get an invite to the Site through their email, they click on the invite.  The next time they log in, they will be able to edit, as a Collaborator.

Because the integration of Sites with all the other Google Apps is so easy, the porting was easy.  Tom was having some trouble with the integration in pbwiki of other Google documents, like Presentations.  You can integrate, docs, sheets, etc. in Sites.  Plus, accounts are already created.


Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Access all Google Docs features from Safari

If you enable the Develop menu in Safari, as covered in this hint, you can fix the problems Safari has with Google Docs. After enabling the menu, just select Develop » User Agent , and select one of the Firefox entries (2.0.x Mac, for instance), you will find that all features are enabled.

What are your thoughts about making this modification to the Big CATS Project new laptops for teachers?

This post from macosxhints.com

Tuesday, May 6, 2008

Using Google Docs in the classroom: Simple as ABC

Click on the link http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dcdn7mjg_72nh25vq to view a great resource from Google where you will find ideas for using Google Docs in the classroom. There are also steps for getting started . . . although you can skip the section about creating Google accounts since teachers already have pvlearners accounts that should be used for Google Docs.  Information is included on how to create, share, edit and organize Google Docs.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Surveys and Assessments in Shared Sheets

Compliments of GenYes blog, Google has added a new feature to "shared sheets". You can now conduct and compile results from an online survey, online assessment, etc.. Can anyone say automatically-graded formative assessments, or students collecting project data, or in the spirit of GenYes, have the students create, compile, collaborate, on survey/feedback/assessment generation.....;-)

All students and teachers (K-12) will have pvlearners accounts at the start of next school year - current accounts are at 18,000.

GenYes survey announcement:

http://blog.genyes.com/index.php/2008/02/12/google-strikes-again-surveys-collect-data-into-shareable-spreadsheets/

Draper on survey features:

http://drapestakes.blogspot.com/2008/02/surveys-via-google-spreadsheets.html

Detailed survey instructions, including sheet formulas to compile the results, are provided at;

http://howto.xphi.org/survey/

I've also posted this on the pvlearners blog at;

http://pvelearners.blogspot.com

Jeff.....

Thursday, February 28, 2008

pvlearners: Enabled Sites

Google has just released a new product called Google Sites, and we've enabled it for you to use.

What is Google Sites?
It's an online application that makes creating a team web site as easy as editing a document. You can quickly gather a variety of information in one place -- including videos, calendars, presentations, and attachments -- and easily share it for viewing or editing with a small group, our entire organization, or the world.

• Anyone can do it -- Building a site is as simple as editing a document, and you don't need anyone's help to get started.
• Share from one place -- Create a single place to bring together all the information your team needs to share, including docs, videos, photos, calendars and attachments.
• Work together -- Invite co-workers, classmates, or your entire organization to edit your site with you to keep it fresh and up-to-date. And let as many or few people view your site as you want.

Take a look at some example sites to see how you might use Google Sites:
• Team project -- http://sites.google.com/a/altostrat.com/project-eggplant/Home
• Employee profile -- http://sites.google.com/a/altostrat.com/jkraus/Home
• Classroom -- http://sites.google.com/a/googleclassrooms.org/mrs-richau/Home
• Student club -- http://sites.google.com/a/googleuniversity.org/ski-club/Home

I've enabled Google Sites, so you can start creating your own Google Sites now (might take 24 hours from this email to actually activate).

To start using Google Sites, go to http://sites.google.com/a/pvlearners.net

If you have questions, visit the Google Sites Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/sites.


Jeff.....

Disabled Start Page

We've had some "issues" with inappropriate gadgets showing up in "New Stuff". As I believe the power of pvlearners is more in shared sheets, docs, presentations, etc.., I have disabled the Start Page. Consequently, to access mail, sheets, docs, etc., you will need to access pvlearners (without gadgets), at;

http://mail.pvlearners.net

Start page is no longer functional. Let's see if this works better......Let me know...

Jeff......

Friday, January 18, 2008

virtual space and NASA's future

The US space agency is exploring the possibility of developing a massively multiplayer online (MMO) game.

you can read more here
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7195718.stm

PVUSD IS! preparing students for future ......