My Apologies

If you are anything like me, you experienced a wide range of emotions yesterday when the news spread that Google Slides was FINALLY available for the iPad.  But first, before I walk through my range of emotions yesterday.  I feel that I should apologize.  To all those people over the years that I've told, "Be patient.  Google is working on Slides for the iPad.  They have to be.  They are just waiting to release it until they have it right."  To all of you, all I can say is, I was wrong and I'm sorry.

I've been using iPads in an educational setting since the iPad2 was released and have always worked under the idea that you can do anything on your iPad that you can do on your computer, you just may have to approach it a little differently.  And then Google for Education gained momentum and even before the release of the Google apps I said you could do anything on your iPad that you could do with Google on your computer.  It may not be fun, but you could do it.  Just this time there was one little exception, Google Slides.

For years I've been telling people that Google Slides was coming for the iPad.  I occasionally lost hope, thinking that it was never going to happen. But I knew better!  I knew that Google was working on it. I told people they were working on it, they just weren't going to release it until they had done it right.

So yesterday, they clouds parted and rays of sunshine covered the Earth as Google Slides was finally released for the iPad! I was excited, giddy almost with a touch of vindication.  My patience and faith in Google had paid off.  Slides was here!

Now, in hindsight there were a few things I should have been concerned about.  Google Slides had been released for Android for a few weeks before it was released for the iPad, but I never saw a lot about it after it was released.  I know that school hadn't started and Android isn't as popular in the schools as iPads so I just assumed that it wasn't really on my radar.  The other thing that should have started me wondering, why didn't it pop up easily in an App Store search?  Why did it seem like it was hidden and I had to use a tweeted link to download it?  But I paid no attention to those nagging thoughts!  I gleefully downloaded the new app.

And then I used it.  The excitement and vindication I felt earlier in the day drained away and instead feelings of disillusionment and betrayal took their place.  No backgrounds?  Ok, I could see that.  That could be a coding nightmare.  I get it.  I can deal with that.  I can work around.  I'll create an image and use that as the background.  Wait a minute.  No way to insert images?!?  You have to be kidding me! Who makes presentations with just text and white backgrounds?

And to top it all off.  I can't access my Google Drive through my browser anymore.  It just keeps spinning and spinning and spinning so all of the work arounds that I used to have with my browser are no longer available.  No more Forms, no more Sites, no more Research Tool.  Google is less useful on the iPad, than it was before the Slides app was released.  To be honest, I'm not sure what to do with this.

Now this morning I am in a happier place than I was last night.  I'm still feeling a little dejected but it is subsiding. I'm approaching the acceptance stage as I continue to work through my grief.  But I may never get over the hurt.

Here is the link if you still feel like downloading the Google Slides app.

Apps, Extensions, and Add-ons for Students

As the school year gets underway, students can sometimes use some focus when it comes to wading through the Chrome Web Store. Here is a list of Chrome Apps, Extensions, and Google Drive Add-ons aimed at making your students more productive and active in their learning.

Remember that if you have the choice to select an app that is “For Education,” “For Schools,”  or “Edu” pick that one!  

Apps:

Highlighted Apps can be connected to your Google Drive and used from there instead of your App Menu.

Avatar Maker - Create a cool graphical likeness of yourself with a click of a button

Desmos Graphing Calculator - Online graphing calculator.  Create an account and connect to Drive

Fraction Wall - Explore equivalence between fractions, decimals and percentages.

Geogebra - Graphing calculator and much more.

Lucid Chart for Education - Use it for page layout, flow charts, concept maps and more! Tons of graphics built in.

Lucid Press - produce stunning print and digital newsletters, flyers, brochures, photo books and more.

MindMeister - Create concept maps and flowcharts

PicMonkey - Edit images and create collages

Pixlr Editor - Photoshop-like tool.  Manipulate images, create new images, add effects.

Pixlr Express -  crop, resize, and fine-tune any picture

PowToon - Create presentations and animated videos

RealTime Board - Create real time, collaborative graphic organizers.  

Quizlet - Use, create, and share online flashcards for studying.

Save to Drive - Save web content or screen capture directly to Google Drive.

Twisted Wave - Edit audio files and add effects

Typing Club - Learn touch typing and improve your typing speed.

VideoNot.es - Take notes right next to a YouTube video

Voice Note - Opens a notepad that you can record speech to text.

WeVideo - Edit video online

Extensions

Announcify - Have a website read to you

Awesome Screenshot - Capture and annotate screenshots in Chrome

Extensions Manager - Easily turn on and off your extensions, apps, and themes

Eye Dropper - Easily match colors from any web page

Readability - Zap out clutter and junk for easy readability

Save to Drive - Save web content or screen capture directly to Google Drive.

Screen capture, screenshot share/save - Screenshot and annotate webpage, automatically saves the link for you

Select and Speak - Have portions of a web page read to you

SimpleUndoClose - Open the tab you just closed accidently

SpeakIt! - Convert text to speech

TechSmith Snagit - Take a screenshot or screen capture

TLDR - Too Long Didn’t Read will summarize web content in four different forms.

Webpage Screenshot - Screenshot, annotate, or edit a webpage

Word Cloud Website Preview - Makes a word cloud with text from a website with one click

Google Drive Add-ons

Docs

Charts - Build a chart in your Spreadsheet and easily insert it into your Google Doc

Easy Bib Bibliography Creator - Automatically sources by entering in the titles or URLs. Format citations in MLA, APA, and Chicago style.

g(Math) - Create graphs (including plotting points) and write complex math directly in your Google Doc!

Highlighting Tools - Select, Highlight, and Group Content Together for Review and Learning.

Mindmeister - Turn any bullet-point list into a visually appealing mind map and insert it into your Google Document.

Openclipart - Choose from more than 50,000 clipart images

Thesaurus - Explore synonyms, antonyms and more.

Vextab Music Notation - Write music in Google Docs!

Sheets

g(Math) for Sheets - Create graphs (including plotting points) and write complex math directly in your Google Sheet.

More Fonts - Gives you access to more fonts for your Spreadsheets

Styles - Quickly add style to your spreadsheet by highlighting cells and choosing a style from the style viewer.

Here is the original Google Doc to more easily share with others!

Is your favorite missing from the list? This list was created with Middle School students in mind so it might not be there. Please share it and I'll add it to the list.

5 Reasons to Teach Kids to Code

I love infographics! 

And this one is an easy explanation of how students can benefit from learning to code.  This infographic was put together by Kodable as a way to build excitement for the new Kodable Classroom which offers free and paid accounts based on the number of classes and student profiles you want.  

Why Coding in the Classroom?

The deeper I dig into  the idea of teaching coding and robotics, I can’t help but wonder if the true way to conquer the digital divide isn’t to focus on the access to technology,  but rather to focus on the ability to control technology.

Coding is the final leg in the shift to turn students from consumers of technology to true producers of technology.  The idea of teaching children to code is not new, in the book Mindstorms: Children, Computers, and Powerful Ideas, first published in 1980 and again in 1993, Seymour Papert said that typical student computer use consisted of the computer programming the child with the child adapting to the the needs of the computer.  But coding, has the child programming the computer, adapting the computer to suit their needs. And in the book Program or be Programmed: Ten Commands for a Digital Age by Douglas Rushkoff, he compares not knowing how to code to being Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy.  You sit in the backseat, of a windowless car, relying on the driver to take you where you need to go.  Not only does the driver take you where you want to go, but he also provides you with your options.  If the driver doesn’t want to take you somewhere, he can just not tell you it exists.  You are at the driver’s mercy.

Coding Skills:

Coding allows students to hone skills that will serve them outside of the area of coding and technology.  When students learn coding, they use their problem-solving, sequencing, critical-thinking, math, logic, creativity, and structured language skills. They are also provided with a better understanding of how technology and the related programs and apps work and what happens behind the scenes of computer functions.

Shifting from Extracurricular to Curricular:

Coding programs are quickly moving from after-school and extracurricular activities into the mainstream curriculum.  Texas is allowing computer programming to count as a foreign language requirement and other states like Florida, Kentucky, New Mexico are moving to follow suit. This approach may seem extreme, but other areas are taking a similar approaches.  Wisconsin and Alabama have approved allowing computer science courses to satisfy math or science requirements, joining DC and seventeen other states.  While Chicago and New York City are working to make computer science a core high school subject.   England and Estonia have integrated coding in the curriculum with countries like Singapore and Vietnam following suit. Regardless of opinions of these movements, it can’t be ignored that leaders and governments see a need and are striving to fill it.

Need for Coding:

The need for these programs come from job numbers, by 2020 STEM jobs are projected to increase by 26% and for all our focus on improving STEM education, we tend to focus less on coding and computer science than we do on the other STEM areas, roughly 2% of college graduates earn a computer science degree. Those degrees are not enough to fill the current job openings, much less the projected openings in the future.

"Coding as a second language? Kentucky jockeys to be next ..." 2014. 6 Aug. 2014 <http://www.techrepublic.com/article/coding-as-a-second-language-kentucky-jockeys-to-be-next-to-join-the-movement/>
"Computer Science: Not Just an Elective Anymore ..." 2014. 6 Aug. 2014 <http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/02/26/22computer_ep.h33.html>
"Teach Kids How To Code And You Give Them A Skill For Life." 2013. 6 Aug. 2014 <http://www.forbes.com/sites/nickmorrison/2013/12/27/teach-kids-how-to-code-and-you-give-them-a-skill-for-life/>
"Teach them a third language - South China Morning Post." 2014. 6 Aug. 2014 <http://www.scmp.com/lifestyle/family-education/article/1551146/coding-skills-crucial-hong-kong-students-say-tech>
Joe McKendrick. "5 million jobs will go unfilled by 2020, report predicts ..." 2013. 6 Aug. 2014 <http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/bulletin/5-million-jobs-will-go-unfilled-by-2020-report-predicts/>
"Should Coding be the "New Foreign Language ... - Edutopia." 2013. 6 Aug. 2014 <http://www.edutopia.org/blog/coding-new-foreign-language-requirement-helen-mowers>