Transitioning to Google Apps for Education

So, my district has made the decision to switch to Google Apps for Education.  I'm excited about the switch, and I've actually already moved to this platform, so I wanted to talk about this a little.  We're not exactly blazing trails here - there are lots of districts who have already been using GAFE for years, including some close to us in Chicagoland - but I think that lots of teachers still don't have this tool, or have it and don't use it, or don't like it, or don't trust it.  

I have to say at the outset that I started using Gmail several years ago, back when accounts were offered by invitation only.  I heard about the phantom browsing of email data, and how Google would use information from our email to decide what adwords to place on our pages.  I made my peace with that.  This is standard practice with so many sites now that it's almost unnoticeable.  In fact, I've started to appreciate this kind of data collection with sites like Amazon.  I don't always buy the books that Amazon suggests, but I often find copies of these books and learn a great deal from these recommendations.  That never bothered me as much as I thought it would.  And I've rarely had issues with my e-mail account.  It just works.  

From gmail, I began using Google Docs a few years ago.  I enjoyed the simultaneous editing feature, and I really pushed hard for teachers at my school to start using this, even though it wasn't officially sanctioned, for less important work.  I started using Drive only a few months ago, mostly because I had files in too many places and needed somewhere where I could put everything, or at least everything teaching-related.  

Now, my e-mail and calendar data has been migrated to a new Google account managed by my district.  I have uploaded most of my files on my school laptop to my new Google Drive.  And I have tried to focus most of my work on Google Apps.  I try to create new files in Docs instead of Word, and I try to share files with co-workers as much as possible.  

So far, with about three weeks experience using GAFE, here are the things I like:

• Using the Chrome browser with a Google Apps account feels like I'm finally using the right set of tools for the right job.  They work well together.  Prior to this, I switched back and forth a lot between Safari and Firefox, depending on what I was doing, because sometimes one worked better than the other.  Chrome just seems to work for everything now.  
• I LOVE the document sharing feature.  I LOVE the simultaneous collaboration.  We have already noticed a big difference with tasks like note-taking during meetings or creating a plan together.  For the most part, this has allowed more people to be involved in large-group tasks.  It has also allowed us to jigsaw (or "divide and conquer") larger tasks into smaller pieces without having to re-assemble from the pieces later.  
• Docs lacks some features, but it's simple and easy to follow.  There aren't five or six different ways to change your page layout, there's only really one way.  
• Chrome Apps and the "connect more apps" feature - which are really two different things but are related.  I've added a lot of tools that I don't quite understand yet, but I've been playing around a lot with Voice Comments, some different calculator features, templates, and lots of other tools.  
• It's kind of silly, but I like the huge amount of fonts available in Docs.  Some of the names are odd (like not in a good way, such as "covered by your grace" - can't tell if it's trying to be ironic or actually making fun of religious zealots), but I like the variety and most of the cheeky names they have.  
• It's a little overwhelming at first, but there are so many different ways to customize Gmail, and so many different tools, that it's like discovering the Internet over again.  

And, so far, here are the things that I don't like:

• Random or arbitrary limits on storage, seemingly set only to extract more money from users.  While I know that it will be (or already is?) something that can be modified, why are we given 25 gigabytes for mail but only 5 gigabytes for Drive?  
• Some files don't work with Drive.  The most noticeable file type right now is Keynote presentations.  I started using Keynote a lot this year, and encouraged my students to do so too. Now, I have 40-50 Keynote presentations that need to be converted to PowerPoint so that they can be shown in Google Slides.  
• I use a lot of short video, and I would love to be able to upload these files to Drive.  But they take up a lot of space, aren't playable/streamable through our filter at school, and would take a long time to download from Drive even if I chose to upload them all and then download them to play them at school.  
• Sometimes it seems like Google can be fickle about services they provide.  Rumors swirl about Google Groups disappearing, for example.  Some services are just not offered to GAFE users (like Blogger, for instance). 

I'm sure I'll think of more to say about this as the summer progresses.  I'm going to be helping some fellow teachers learn this new platform this summer, and that will help me think about what I like and don't like.  I'd also like to do a bunch more research on what I can use this for.  I have a couple of Chrome apps that I want to try out for creating animations.  I'm still shaky with Forms, but I've used it a few times to great effect.  And the whole world of Google+ seems really cool - though I'm not sure about all of what it does, and I still feel like I don't know how to navigate through it.  

Twitter in the Classroom?

So, I signed up for Twitter a few months ago, and I've become a big fan.  To my surprise, I was also given a school account by my district.  I was at a loss for how to use it at first, but then I thought about the hashtag concept.

If you aren't familiar, the "hashtag" is a way of making your "tweets" - the things you post on Twitter - instantly searchable.  If you tweet something with a hashtag that others are using, people can watch the feed for a specific hashtag, and they will see your contribution pop up as part of a conversation.  For example, a recent hashtag was #5words.  People tweeted a five-word phrase that they considered important or enlightening, and then tagged it.  Then everyone else could search for that hashtag, and follow the tweets as they came out.

So, it occurred to me, why not create a hashtag and use that to have an ongoing, synchronous conversation with another classroom?  I posted something about this on the English Companion Ning, and I had two or three responses almost instantly.  That was cool, but I had no idea what to do about that.  Now that I have the Twitter account, I don't know that I have the time to insert a text or unit that we can collaborate on with another classroom.  (As is usually the case, at this point in the year, I'm dumping cool ideas that I've been putting off, and trying to jam as many cool ideas and new ideas for next year into the classroom as I can before school is over.  Between the required stuff and the stuff I want, I don't have much room left.)

So, since that didn't work, I just started actually using it.  I felt like I had waited too long, and tried too many different propositions, and ended up wasting time.  So, I just started tweeting "cool sentences" on my school Twitter account.  Students volunteered these sentences, and I tweeted them.  I recently tried the #5words hashtag (though I didn't use the actual tag because I didn't want too much unwanted attention drawn to the school account), and that worked really well.

So, with five weeks left of school, I'm thinking about other ways to use this.

I think the goal for the next several weeks is going to be just tweeting as much student work as I can.  It should be - or it seems like it would best serve as - a student publication tool, of very short student texts.  So, I'm going to publish anything and everything that I can, without breaking district rules.

I would love to hear other ideas, if anyone has suggestions.

"And Two Eyes Made Out of Coal"

Frosty the Snowman, with "two eyes made out of coal"

Frosty is supposed to be a kid's outdoor project, right?  The kids use stuff they have at hand to decorate the snowman.  But who has lumps of coal lying around these days?

The answer is, really, no one.  We don't heat our homes with shovelfuls of coal anymore.  Not like we used to.  Gas is cheaper, cleaner, and easier.  Why would you trouble with truckloads of coal anymore?  Unless you live next to a coal mine, it would be a big mess.

Why does Santa bring lumps of coal to naughty kids?  Because coal is messy and the complete opposite of fun.  Not only is it plain and useless (to a kid), it's also commonplace and related to hard work.

But what about charcoal?  Those of us who have charcoal grills would probably not encourage our children to pull out a briquet and stick it on a snowman.  It would also be huge - unless you want a snowman with bug eyes, it's going to look weird.  You could break the chunk into smaller pieces, but it's going to take some kind of tool to make the pieces a usable shape.

This is a nice way to think about the social implications of changes in technology.  We still sing about coal, and maybe talk about lumps of coal in our stockings, but what would we do if we really wanted to put a lump of coal in someone's stocking?  Where would you be able to find a piece of coal - not charcoal?

Art supply stores?