Hangouts Post II: Connecting to the World

The world is quickly becoming smaller, more connected, and eager to share.  Google Hangouts lets us bring that world into our classrooms and professional lives like never before!  Here are a few simple ideas for using Hangouts to broaden the horizons of your classroom.

Hangouts Post I: Connect with a Colleague

For our first in a series of posts on the value of using Google Hangouts in your work, I want to walk you through how to set up your first communication with a colleague in our district.  Topics in this post will include…

• Accessing Hangouts for the first time
• Searching for colleagues
• Starting a text based chat
• Doing your first video chat
• Sharing your screen with you colleagues

Computer Science Education Week Recap

You may not know it, but this week (12.7) is Computer Science Education week.  This also coincides with an emphasis on the Hour of Code project, which promotes the language of computer code to students (and adults) of all ages.  Here are a few blog posts and sites from around the web that can help you get started with incorporating computer science into your classroom (yes, anyone can do it in any subject!).

Learning in New Dimensions with Google Classroom and GeoGebra

Originally Posted by Mark Kaercher, Shaker High School Math Teacher to the Google Apps for Education blog.

Editor's note:Mark Kaercher teaches mathematics at Shaker High School in Latham, New York. He is also one of his school district’s Instructional Technology Resource Teachers. Here, Mark shares his experience with using Google Apps for Education alongside GeoGebra, available as an app for Chrome and now as a native Android phone app. 

Every so often, over the course of a long teaching career, we find a special tool or resource that makes us wonder how we ever taught without it. Personally, I’ve had a lot of success with GeoGebra, a free mathematics program for teachers and students. GeoGebra lets me build and share interactive worksheets that demonstrate geometry and algebra concepts. Along with relying on it myself, I’ve helped other educators use GeoGebra by creating how-to videos and leading training sessions.

Video Conference with Google Hangouts

Hangouts have arrived for teachers through our district Google Apps for Education (GAFE) accounts.  This is a wonderful resource that can be used to bring a variety of educational opportunities in our classrooms.

• Create teacher groups (grade level, teams, departments, etc...) and keep in touch through text messages


• Conduct video conferences to streamline cross district PLC meetings


• Connect with teachers/groups outside of the district for professional learning opportunities


• Share your screen with other teachers/coaches to help troubleshoot problems


• Connect your classroom to classes around the world for exciting learning opportunities


• And much more!

To start using Hangouts, navigate to https://hangouts.google.com or download the app on your personal devices.  Once you login with your district Google account, you will be all set to start finding others and starting the collaboration!

We will be releasing a series of Teacher's Corner posts that highlights these different uses.  Check back each week for new information, and if you want to dive in headfirst, contact your instructional technology coach!

Sean Mullins | Instructional Technology Coach

Embed Video in Mastery Manager Questions!

Has there ever been a quick clip that you wanted to embed in your Mastery Manager assessment?  Does your class contain many visual elements that would benefit from videos in your assessments?  Would you like to model questions for your students in a format that will appear on the PARCC exam?  All of these things are now possible with the ability to embed video into your Mastery Manager assessments!

Imagine this scenario.  You are a PE teacher leading a unit on Dance.  For part of your assessment you want your students to view examples of dance that were conducted by yourself or other students, and pick out techniques, mechanics, and more!  This system is wonderful for any assessment that involves process rather than simple recall.  So how do you do it?

Google Drive Video Sharing

When a video is added to your district Google Drive account, you have the option to set its sharing permissions to "On - Anyone with the link".  You'll also want to make sure that the permissions are set to "Can view".



Now accessing this video does not require signing into a Google account.  The next step is to find a way to embed the video into a Mastery Manager question.

Embed Code in Google

To find the embed code for your video, you'll want to follow these steps.

1. Open your video in Google Drive.


2. Click on the Pop-Out icon in the upper right of the window.


3. In the new window that opens, click on the three-dots icon and choose "Embed item..."  This will open a popup window that contains the embed code that you need for Mastery Manager.  Copy this code (Ctrl+C).
   

Putting it Together in Mastery Manager

Now that we have the code, we can open a Mastery Manager item bank and create a new question (question type does not matter).  Click on the Source button and then paste your embed code into the response box.  You can adjust the size of the embedded video by changing the height and width values in the embed code.



When you are finished, click on the Source button again and scroll to the bottom and click Save.  The video will not preview correctly in your Layout screen, so for a preview of what it will really look like, jump over to the Preview menu.  If you do not like the size of the video, you can go back to your Layout screen, click the Source button, and adjust the height and width values until you are happy!



To see a very simple example live and in action, click here and use the test code K2ZPW, followed by any random set of numbers as your "student ID".  Let your instructional technology coach know how you would like to use this resource and we would love to sit down and work with you!

Sean Mullins | Instructional Technology Coach