Tag-Archive for ◊ Google Apps For Education ◊

Google Apps + BrainPop = Happiness
Thursday, January 19th, 2012 | Author:

One thing that I found out at BETT is that Brainpop is now available as a service through our Google Apps login. This means that if you have both Google Apps and Brainpop, you can link the two to make it easier for children to access the resources. Fabulous!

So how do you do it?

Find your admin dashboard e.g. www.google.com/a/yourdomain.com and then visit the Marketplace. Search for Brainpop UK (US is already available) and click ‘Add’.

You then add your Brainpop details and the accounts become linked. So along your Google toolbar you now have Mail/Documents etc and then under ‘more’ you will see Brainpop.

Wonderful. Free too (providing you already subscribe to BrainPOP).

edit – also, another cool feature is the fact that if a child completes a quiz, they can enter their teachers email address and it will send the results to their google docs account. Quite nice :-)

One day all software will talk to each other in this way…

Here’s a quick step-by-step guide (PDF) if you want to add BrainPOP to your account.

For Brainpop’s blog post, click here.

Category: General Thoughts  | Tags: , ,  | Leave a Comment
Certified (Part 1)
Friday, December 09th, 2011 | Author:

This is a post I probably should’ve written a few months back but it’s only today (with a bit of a blog tidy up) that I have got round to it.

After attending the Google Teacher Academy in July 2010, we launched Google Apps in our school and I have blogged many times about the different ways in which we have used Google at school but one thing was mentioned at the Academy that I thought could be useful. The Google Apps Exams. These are a set of six exams on things like Mail, Docs or Calendar which help teachers along the Google Apps road. Now once you have completed the exams you can submit a video and an application form to Google and become a Google Apps for Education Certified Trainer. Which is exactly what I have done.

At the time of writing there are three of us in the UK and I have now been involved with 6 or 7 training days across the country. These training sessions have ranged from complete beginners to more advanced users too.  I have also taken part in webinars to help show people some of the other aspects of Google Apps.

So if your school is thinking about using Google Apps or would like some training, please get in touch.

Category: General Thoughts  | Tags: , ,  | Leave a Comment
Feeling Disappointed
Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 | Author:

Google Docs have been updated today and on the Presentation tool you can now add slide transitions! You can add animations! You can even add Word Art!

I’m gutted. I really am.

I love Google Docs and I share their use a lot. One of the things I loved was that the children were forced to use one of 15 templates and couldn’t add any animation or ‘PowerPoint nonsense’. We’ve all seen presentations with too many effects and animations and Google Docs didn’t let you do this. It meant children could make a presentation and focus on the content rather than the look and transitions. These can be important but surely content (and delivery) of a presentation is key.

But today, extra features have been added to Google Docs. These are nice features, but they’re not really new because they already exist in PowerPoint which most people have anyway.

So now it seems to be just like PowerPoint but with collaboration. Obviously this is a massive benefit, but the distinction between the tools is blurring.  I wonder what the children will make of it?

Feel free to share why I am wrong. I have only played with it for ten minutes or so and I might be missing the killer feature, but I loved the simplicity that was there before.

Category: General Thoughts  | Tags: , ,  | 4 Comments
Free software!
Wednesday, June 22nd, 2011 | Author:

Ok, so the heading was meant to grab your attention, but I had a play with some free stuff today. I installed it in less than 10 seconds and children were able to do the same. What am I talking about? The Chrome Webstore.

The webstore is available here: https://chrome.google.com/webstore?hl=en-US

I recently installed Google Chrome at school as we are doing so much on Google Apps at the moment that we needed something better than Internet Explorer. IE had the problem that it couldn’t keep up with our typing speeds on Google Docs and it didn’t always load the full screen, we had to keep refreshing and Google Squared doesn’t work in IE very well.

I’d looked at the webstore a few months ago but mainly because I saw Tweetdeck worked online and I thought it’d be interesting to play with. But today I looked with different eyes. I tested it with a child’s login and they could install anything from the webstore in (around 5) seconds. A huge amount of the apps are free too. It must be said that you need a Google login, but our children have those. I have also enabled the Chromestore for them in our Google Apps domain.

Luckily it was raining today so I showed 6 children the webstore and set them to finding ‘stuff I could use across the school’ and they found some maths games, a planetarium and Brainpop resources too.

So what now?

I could provide shortcuts to the relevant apps, pupils then just login with their Google Apps accounts and install the software they need. No admin logins required.

I found apps for organising thinking (like wallwisher etc), mindmapping, creating artisitc masterpieces, mixing music, creating maps and throwing birds at pigs (I had to have a go…) I also found a fantastic one called Kido’z tv which had classic Tom and Jerry cartoons, how to make… videos and clips from Lion King, Toy Story and Bug’s Life.

I know this is all moving towards Google’s vision of a completely online Operating System, but it is definitely looking possible. Even without an online OS, the thought of how I could use some of these tools is quite exciting. I will definitely be spending more time playing in the store in the coming weeks.

What’s your favourite app in the store?

Category: General Thoughts  | Tags: , , , ,  | One Comment
Google Apps Workshop
Saturday, May 28th, 2011 | Author:

I am delighted to announce that we will be hosting 2 Google Apps workshops at my school in July. These workshops are aimed at people who are maybe thinking of using Google Apps within their school and want to get an overview of the tools available. Even if you are not interested in using Google Apps in your school, we will give a great overview of the tools available for everyone to freely use including Gmail, Sites and Documents.

I will also talk about the ways in which we are using Google Apps within my school and will showcase some examples of children’s work using Google Sites and talk about the changes we have made to the online learning at my school.

The workshop is being hosted by both myself and Zoe Ross (@Zoeross19). Zoe is a Google Certified Trainer so it should be a great session. If you are interested in attending, please have a look at the flyer below and contact Zoe using the details below.

Category: Conferences / BETT  | Tags: , ,  | Leave a Comment
Updating Google Apps
Saturday, May 07th, 2011 | Author:

Just a quick post about updates really. It’s weird, I spent two years training teachers to use the VLE in Hampshire and we had to test updates thoroughly, schedule them to happen during holidays just in case something went wrong. We also had to update all documentation and training guides to ensure people knew what was happening and what had been updated.

How things change.

I have lost count of the number of updates that have happened to Google Apps since we started using it (properly) at the end of February. How have I been informed about them? Almost by chance.

Updates have probably fallen into one of a few categories:

  • I saw a blog post about a feature coming soon (follow @gappsupdates on Twitter)
  • I noticed it on the calendar (which also tells you how to enable/disable it)
  • I accidentally found it
  • I missed it totally

How has this changed my experience? It’s mostly been very useful as the updates have been great improvements. This includes the ability to upload folders to Google Docs or have separate pages in a document. Generally you only find out about a new update a week or so before it goes live (if that!).

The nicest update recently? The ability to granulate the level of admin control. Once you have gone into Organization and Users, you can select a user and assign different privileges. Previously giving someone admin control meant that they had full admin control and could change anything and everything. Now, I can let me teachers change the password of the children in the school, but not change domain settings. Very useful. Especially as it means they don’t need to ask me to reset passwords!

I do like this way of managing updates but it does make me wonder how it would work across an entire authority. Training guides are also difficult as things change and update regularly. Children seem unaffected, but how would teachers cope with constant change? Should I update staff every now and again to tell them about the useful updates?

Category: ICT Co-ordinator Stuff  | Tags: ,  | One Comment
How to get started with Google Apps for Education
Friday, April 29th, 2011 | Author:

I’ve discussed my use of Google Apps a few times and my children really enjoy using the various tools that Google has to offer. We started using it (properly) just 2 months ago and already we have had 180 children creating websites about their topics, staff moving all planning onto Google Docs and the Calendar in use on our school website. I see that we will continue to grow and grow with ways that we use it.

With this, others started asking how to do this or how to do that, so I thought I’d make a guide.the idea is that this guide will take you from nothing to being setup in a few hours (taken at a leisurely pace with a cup of tea and some biscuits).

Someone joked that this would be on www.undertenminutes.com but there is no way. It is a biggie. It has taken most of today to plan, write, screenshot and edit. I am very happy with it though. However it doesn’t even begin to discuss how to use any of the tools, that can be for the second edition!

So here it is. Thanks to @kvnmcl and @primarypete_ for checking it and thanks to all of the people on the last page for helping me along the way. I really hope that this is useful and it starts you on the journey to using Google in your school.

If you do have any questions, please email them to me or comment below. I will add updates to a later edition of the guide.

The guide is embedded (and downloadable) below or can be found at http://www.bit.ly/googleappsguide

 

 

Category: General Thoughts  | Tags: , , , ,  | 5 Comments
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