Google Boot Camp and Updated Comic Resources

This week I spent two days at the Genesee ISD for their Google Boot Camp. I presented a session on using Drawings and Slides to create comics.

I also taught a group how to make narrated slideshows using Slides and WeVideo.

There were a lot of great ideas shared. As always, the best and most lasting benefits will be the connections we made with other passionate, innovative educators.

If you want to follow the hashtag on Twitter, it was #gisdcamp15. You'll find several good people to follow there.

All my resources are at these two sites:

• Creative Comics - I updated the presentation and included new information about the improved Slides app.
• Narrated Slideshows

And many other presenters shared their resources on this page.

If you found this post helpful you might also want to see:

• Tips for Chromebook basics
• How to capture and Mark Up Images with a Chromebook
• Google Apps Tutorials - Summer PD from 2014

How to Capture and Mark Up Images on a Chromebook

I recently posted some tips for Chromebook basics and referred to a process I have used for annotating on screen captures using the devices. Below you'll find a video tutorial that shows the process.

Note that the first part of the video requires you to capture a part of the screen by pressing the shortcut keys:

ctrl-shift-Show all windows

The Show all windows key is the 6th key from the left in the top row. At least that's where it has been on all the Chromebooks I've used. It looks like this:

The general steps are:

• Capture an area of the screen with the above method.
• Copy the capture to the clipboard.
• Paste it in a Google Drawing.
• Mark it up using the tools available in Google Drawings.
• Capture the image again using the above method.
• Copy it and paste it where needed.

By the way, I know the SnagIt app and extension will allow you to do this. I prefer my method because it gives me more options for how I mark up the image. I love the SnagIt app (which I used to record the video above), but sometimes when I capture images and add arrows it takes too long to show up in my Drive as an image.

If you found this post helpful you might also want to see:

• Using a Chromebook to Make a Narrated Slideshow
• Google Apps Tutorials - Summer PD from 2014

How to use the Google Slides mobile app to make comics from real life photos

A lot of teachers have been using my process for creating comics with Google tools. I was thrilled to find it can now be easily done using the Slides mobile app! The best part of this is now you can bring in the real world pictures very easily.

If you haven't seen the general process and possible final products, you can read all about it on this page from my Education On Air presentation from a few weeks ago.

That process starts on a Chromebook or a computer and it uses either Google Drawings or Slides.

Now you can start in the Slides mobile app. I did this on an iPad, but the Android app will be similar.

First, start a new Slides presentation.

On a blank slide, click the + sign and select Image.

Choose to get the image From Photos or From Camera. Notice that if you use the camera, this is an amazingly simple way to immediately bring the real world into your creations!

Crop, resize and move the image as necessary.

To add comic elements, click the + again and select Shape this time.

Select Callouts and scroll down to the three comic elements. Choose the one you want.

From there, it's just a matter of placing the thought or word bubble, dragging the point to the character who is speaking or thinking and then entering the text. Here's my sample taken from a game I was playing with my son.

A few things to consider:

• While the tools are easy to use on the app, you might prefer to just use the app to bring the pictures into the Slides presentation. Then you (and any collaborators) can open that presentation on a Chromebook or computer for easy editing. 
• See my two-minute tutorial on creating the comics using a computer. The first steps are now replaced by the import process above, but the rest of the video shows the details of adding and editing the comic elements.
• You can change the background color of the slides by editing the presentation on a computer or Chromebook at any time.
• See the Projects page of my website for possible end products we make such as PDFs, virtual books or videos.

miGoogle presentation for Comics and Creativity Games with Google Tools

This week I had to privilege of presenting at the miGoogle conference in Brighton, Michigan, along with dozens of great educators from around the state.

My topic was a very simple one--how to make comics by combining real life pictures with a few tools from Google Drawings or Slides.

Here's the website with all my resources, including:

• My presentation slides
• An example comic we started during the session
• Related tutorials
• Our sample project, including how to turn the comics into ebooks and videos
• Information on my creativity games

I shared many of these resources throughout other posts on this blog, but this one place to find them all as well as additional things I shared only at the conference.

If you want to see the sample comic we started during the session, it's here:

Comic Assignment with Google Drawings, Slides, WeVideo and Flipsnack

This week I continued our comic assignment with two more parts. (Click here to see how we started the project.)

First, students used Google Slides to convert their comics to a PDF. Then that was uploaded at Flipsnack to turn it into a virtual book.

For the final step, we are converting those same comic images into a video using WeVideo.

The assignments sheets are here:

• Comic Assignment 2 - Creating an eBook
• Comic Assignment 3 - Turning Your Comic into a Video

Here's an example (just four pages) of how these ebooks look on Flipsnack.

And below is the tutorial I created that shows how to use WeVideo to make a simple video slideshow. As explained in assignment 3, there is no audio. Also, there is a table of contents that makes it easy to jump to just the short parts you need based on the steps of the assignment.

Comic Assignment with Google Drawings

Back in April I posted about using Google Drawings to make comics. Since then, I've had a chance to use it in a couple settings. Below I'm linking to the latest assignment I created for our high school Digital Media class.

First, here's the outline:

• We took pictures of two students who posed with a few emotions.
• The pictures were uploaded to a shared Google Drive folder where students could access them.
• The rest of the class looked at the pictures and planned their original stories.
• Using the process shown in a video tutorial, students added word bubbles and thought bubbles to make comics.

You can view a copy of the assignment here. It has a link in the assignment to the shared folder of pictures and the video tutorial.

Follow-up assignments will show the students how to turn the images into an ebook and a video version of their stories. Those additional steps will appear here on the blog after we use them in class.

The Tutorial

If you want to see the video tutorial that shows how to create the comics, it's here. Note that this was for our students, so I refer to the teacher by name in one part. If you're using it in class, just explain your students would share it with you.

Using Google Drawings for Comic Creation

I was reminded recently that Google Drawings has Callouts in the shapes of speech and thought bubbles. Used in conjunction with the app on a mobile device, this makes a great tool for collaborative comic creation.

I put together this quick sample using a few pictures I had on my iPad from a PD day in our district. Ideally the pictures would be of actors or maybe toys or other objects set up according to a script.

Here's the process:
1)  Take pictures of the actors or objects for the comic. You could draw these on paper and take pictures or make them in a graphics program too.

2)  Upload the pictures to Google Drive using the app (if using a mobile device) or with the computer (if you created them in a graphics program on a computer).

3)  Using a computer, create a new Drawing in Google Drive. Share it with anyone who will be working on the same project.

4)  Set the background color.

5)  Add each picture and edit/arrange them. I found this order worked best overall. You'd repeat this for each frame of your comic on the page:

• Import the picture.
• Crop it with the crop tool.
• Resize it as necessary.
• Set the line width and color if you want borders.
• Move it to the correct place.
• Add the Callouts from the Object dropdown. You'll see speech bubbles in a few shapes and a thought bubble. 

• "Draw" the speech or thought bubble on your picture. 
• Drag the "tail" of it to the person talking or thinking.
• Type the text in the speech or thought bubble(s).
• Resize and move the bubble and text as necessary.

6)  Add any other text boxes or text to the Drawing.

7)  Download as a jpg image and share with others if necessary.

8)  Copy or import the image file into a shared Google Document. There it can be a page of a book made up of a series of such pages/images. You could put it in a Google Presentation too if it's more likely to be displayed that way.

Teach anything with just three apps?

I am a minimalist. I love finding ways to do more with a lot less. I hope someone speaks at my funeral about how I touched the world in a significant way using only what fits with me in the casket. It could make a great visual.  If nothing else, I’ll be clutching my iPad.

I was recently musing about what’s the least a teacher would need to teach anything. I tweeted this and it got a little bit of attention:

I think I could teach anything-CCSS, 4 C's, etc-using only an iPad with browser, 30 Hands and iMovie. Kids supply the ideas and style.
— Mike Petty (@mpetty39) August 21, 2013

I was exaggerating somewhat, mostly because I didn’t really go through all the CCSS and I had to fit it in 140 characters. I would certainly need a few other apps, even if just for recording notes while working. I’ll give a slightly longer list of the bare necessities below, but first here was my main thought behind this.

As I’ve written elsewhere, I think all learning should be posed as a creative problem solving activity involving three steps: find information, process it and present the solution.

Elaborating a little more, students need to

• research the problem at hand and gather resources or information that they already know. 
• process all that, getting their brains around it, synthesizing seemingly unrelated ideas, adding in their own thoughts. 
• present it in a way that suits the people who need to hear the solution.

So my tweet assumed that the iPad has a browser and the learner can access the Internet. That can help a lot with the “find it” stage.

30 Hands and iMovie are my favorite apps for narrated slideshows or videos, respectively. They’d be used for the presentation piece.

Being a little more realistic, I’d need some apps that would let them store the things they find. They also would need to process it all. I gave it more thought and made this list of suggested apps. I’m including the two I already mentioned, just to give more detail.

30 Hands - This is a great free tool for slideshows and I have a demo and review about it here. You can use your pictures as backgrounds, add text and draw on the slides. It is very simple to record narration for each slide, then it exports as a movie to the Camera Roll. I love it!

iMovie - I don’t usually by apps that cost $4.99, but this app feels like it’s worth so much more. You can easily add pan and zoom effects to pictures you’ve taken and edit videos you recorded (or even those slideshows you made with 30 Hands). It is also simple to add narration, transitions and titles. It’s a portable video studio.

Google Drive - Information gathered in research and your own thoughts could easily be taken in the Notes app that comes with the iPad. But Google Drive is free, so why not add this to the list? Sure, it’s limited compared to the version you’d have on your desktop computer, but I’m still amazed with how useful it is for productivity.

Doodle Buddy or SketchBook Express - Both of these drawing apps are free. These would be mostly for the presentation part of the process. We use them in school for titles and other graphics. Doodle Buddy is extremely simple. SketchBook has layers and some very good drawing tools making it promising, but possibly more complex than you’d need for most projects.

Inkflow - I haven’t paid for the Plus version of this yet, so for me this is like a stack of paper and a black marker. I love it for flow charts and visual thinking, so it’s definitely a tool for the processing stage of the learning process. You can also export the drawings and notes as jpg or PDF to use them in presentations too. (Side note: When talking at the coffee shop, this app becomes the proverbial napkin on which I illustrate my ramblings.)

Voice Record Pro - This audio recording app is incredibly versatile because of all the apps you can export it to. Files also can be opened in iMovie as the background track. So presentations can be recorded as a speech or conversation, then in iMovie you can add pictures or images you drew using any of the above apps. It also converts to mp3 so you can send it to others in a flexible format. (Bonus: I’m not including Video Star as a “must have”, but if you record yourself playing live music with Voice Record Pro it exports to Video Star so you can lip sync. Fun!) I wish Voice Record Pro had better tools for editing, but for free it is great.

GarageBand - I debated about including this app because original music is usually not necessary in a presentation. Still, there will be some topics where such a projects will be greatly enhanced because of the possibilities of this app. (And for some students it can make all the difference.) Like iMovie, it is $4.99, but whenever I use it I find myself sticking it in people’s faces, raving about how much it does for that small price. All the virtual and Smart instruments are outstanding.  For the basics, it is very intuitive to record and edit tracks.  As with Voice Record Pro, you could use this for any audio recordings. It certainly has more editing capabilities than that app, though sometimes I need iTunes on my computer to get the files where I need them.

So there you have it. I’m going to give my minimalist approach a try this school year as much as possible. I’ll edit this as necessary.

What am I overlooking? Are there any other apps you consider to be the bare necessities?