Boomwriter for Engaging Collaborative Writing

Boomwriter is not new, but I hadn't used it with a class until recently. I am presenting a session about collaborative storytelling at the MACUL conference this week, so I asked our middle school Creative Writing teacher if she'd be willing to let me run the activity in her class. After I explained what it is, she was excited to try it.

For those unfamiliar with it, Boomwriter is more or less a game where students write stories one chapter at a time. Everyone writes, then everyone votes on the submissions. The winning submission becomes the official next chapter. The process continues until the story is done.

Overall Thoughts

If this sounds at all interesting, definitely try it out. The students really enjoyed the activity. Due to a number of circumstances, the teacher and I had to rush much of the activity. I'm not thrilled with the quality of the writing that came out of it, but I am looking forward to trying it again. So are the students!

What We Did

Our class had 27 students in it, mostly seventh graders. I divided them randomly into groups of 5 or 6 students. The site allows students to dress up their "Boomer" avatar using Boomer Bucks. More Bucks are earned through writing and winning the votes. I wasn't sure how seventh graders would take to this, but our group was definitely into this feature.

With five groups, that means we had five stories. I provided a single sentence as a story starter. Boomwriter has several initial chapters to choose from and, judging by the ones I saw, they expect the first chapter to provide a lot of detail. I didn't want to give them a long passage to read, so my first "chapter" was just one sentence. For example, one of them was The main character is trapped in a video game. I wanted the students' imagination to drive the direction as much as possible.

I set the length of our stories to five chapters, so that meant we had four rounds of writing and voting. The teacher and I were very impressed with how the students were engaged by the activity. Almost all the chapters they submitted were fairly short, but the teacher provided some feedback on the second round of writing and I saw an improvement.

We had many snow days this semester, so we have been pressed for time in all classes. For this activity we really rushed a few rounds. In a couple class periods we just rapidly went through as many rounds as possible (usually two writings and a vote). This amounted to a lot of frantic clicking on my part as I approved chapters, called for some revisions and moved stories along to the voting stage.

When the stories were almost done, we gave the class a survey about the experience. When asked how they liked Boomwriter for collaborative stories, 68% gave it five stars and 20% gave it four stars. Some were disappointed when we didn't immediately start a second story!

Before we did the activity, I wondered if the voting process would discourage students who didn't get picked. Well I did see some sign of this, only 12% said on the survey that it affected them in this way.

Be aware that Boomwriter hopes you and the students' parents will buy the stories as books when they are done. Because of this, I didn't find any way to view the complete stories. Maybe I missed it, but the only solution I came up with to see the whole story was to copy and paste each winning entry into a single document. (While I'm not against them selling a product and I would consider buying one in the future, this time around our stories were not good enough for that.)

What I'd Do Differently Next Time

We plan to use the activity again next marking period. If we do, I will have larger groups and fewer stories. I was hoping to keep the number of submitted chapters down, so students didn't get tired of reading several. Since there was very little sign of that problem in our class, I am going to aim for about 10 students per group in the future, which means three stories.

This should help with what I considered to be the biggest negative on the site. The students' submissions were organized by story, so I was constantly clicking on a story, then clicking through the submissions to approve them. I had to keep going out of one story and into another to find the students who were ready to be moved along. It would have been much easier if there was another view where I could just approve any student regardless of the story he or she worked on. Having fewer stories will at least make this a little less frantic.

And along those lines, I also hope we will have a lot more time to work on each chapter. My plan would be to use the activity along with other things we are doing in the class. After several days of having the chapter open for writing, we would close it then vote. That way I could send back revisions and raise expectations on what they are submitting (in content, spelling, grammar, etc.).

I'm looking forward to our second attempt with Boomwriter and I hope to share some of the stories next time around!

Beyond Slideshows - Four Alternate Options to Show Off the Learning

In my job in a K - 12 district I am always looking for simple, quick ways for students to show what they've learned. We use Google Apps and Chromebooks in our classrooms.

Recently I updated some resources for our teachers and put everything on one website. I made a public version at the link below. All of the projects on it have shown up on this blog in one form or another, but I hope even my regular readers will find this single location helpful.

These projects range from easy enough for early elementary to something middle school students can create. All of them can also be extended to final products appropriate for high school students.

With each project on the site I include:

• At least one example of the final product
• A video tutorial of how to create it
• A document of directions that a teacher can edit and distribute to the class through Google Classroom - This document also includes links to the example(s) and the tutorial.
• Suggestions for extending the projects

Here's the link to the site. If you find it useful, please share it with others and let me know what you think of it.

When Older Students Write Stories for Younger Students

Do you have a dream project? I've been able to do a few in my career. Here is one that I've done three times now, expanding on it each time. I'll repeat it again soon with another group of students. It has been so successful this year that I believe it will become a regular event in our district. I'm still tweaking many aspects, but I'm excited to share it with you.

Overall Goals

I wanted to make a project that would get younger students excited about reading. I designed a simple routine that requires older students to write short stories for and about younger students. After doing it a few times now, I've found these additional benefits.

• It's very engaging for older students. Even the most unmotivated students write a story.
• We have good conversations about what makes an inspiring story.
• We relate the important theme of finding our gifts and overcoming obstacles to our own lives.
• It can make use of as much or as little tech as the teachers want.
• There are many options for extending the learning.

As you read this lesson idea, keep in mind I have the advantage of working in any building in our district. If you're a classroom teacher doing this project, just think of another teacher you could work with and what each of your roles would be in the activity.

I usually work with an elementary teacher and a middle school teacher, so I'll use that in my explanation. The steps below are usually separate class periods, but but I try to do the first few in consecutive days. The goal is to get the students writing right away. The whole project takes two to three weeks, mostly because the middle school class spends 5 - 7 class periods writing their stories. 

Step 1:  What Makes a Good Story?

I take one class period with a middle school class. I explain that we will be writing stories for elementary students and that requires us to find what makes a good story. Through examples and discussion, we build up to a definition I have written about before, based on Donald Miller's books. He explains that every good story is about...

• A character...
• Who wants something...
• And overcomes conflict to get it.

We look for this pattern in movies and books we like. I also have them (in groups) read one-page biographies of famous people who did something good after overcoming obstacles. I'm still tweaking this part, but some of these people have been Helen Keller, Ben Carson, Louie Zamparini and Phiona Mutesi. We sum up those biographies in terms of the conflict the person overcome and what good they offered the world after that.

By the end of the class, I show them some of the slides I will share with the elementary students. Of course, as I talk about what i will tell the younger ones, I'm really trying to reach them too. I explain:

• I want students to use technology to discover and use their gifts. And we all have a gift.
• We also all have obstacles we face in life. I have referred to these as "walls" or "challenges".
• If we learn to overcome those obstacles, we can discover and use our gifts.

Summing it up, I explain that their stories will be based on how the younger students want to help others (their gifts) and what challenges they face. I explain that we will ask the younger students some questions in a Google Form and I take suggestions from the class about what to ask. 

As you can imagine, I have no problem getting ideas from the class. By now the students are always excited to learn about the younger students.

While the list of suggested questions varies each time, for the most part we get the same types of questions. I always include a few of my own to sharpen the focus of the survey. I'll give examples below. 

And last of all, I take a picture of the class before I leave. The younger students love to see who is writing for them.

Step 2:  Meeting the Younger Students

I usually meet with third grade classes and I try to make this part take about 20 - 30 minutes. It's always such a pleasure to talk with younger students and see their excitement. As I told the older students I would, I begin by explaining my job and how tech can help us discover and share our gifts with others. I talk about one student I worked with a few years ago who started writing and selling her own books on Amazon. 

I explain that we all have gifts that the world needs us to use. I also talk about walls we face in life. I explain how I was voted "most shy" when I was in school and how hard ti was to get in front of a class. I also talk about my wife. She faced abuse as a child, but as an adult has helped many homeless people in our community. 

Then, before I set them loose on the survey, we go through each question that I and the class came up with. 

Speaking of the survey, one big challenge is to include what the middle school students wanted to ask without getting too much information. If I come back to the middle school with too much information, the students try to include everything. Their stories turn into long lists of random events, each revealing some tidbit the young student put on his or her survey.

I want the older students to feel they contributed to the survey, but there are really just a few key things we need to do this right.

The surveys usually are something like this:

• What nickname do you want us to use for you? (We don't use their real names.)
• Are you a boy or a girl?
• Who lives with you? (I explain they don't have to list names, but just things like "two brothers, my grandma", etc.)
• What do you like to do in your free time?
• What is one gift you have that you think you could use to help others? (We talk about some examples, but I have to be careful here or they mostly just tell me things I listed as an example!)
• What is one challenge you face in life?

I use Google Forms for this survey, since it's easier to compile the results in the next step. 

As with the older students, I try to take a picture of this class as they take the surveys. It really inspires the older students to start writing! (Actually, if I have the chance I take a picture of the class before I even meet with the older students. Starting the whole discussion off with the photo puts it in context.)

Step 3:  Compiling the Survey Results

I use Autocrat to compile the students' survey results into a single document. That Google Sheets add-on can be a little intimidating at first, but when it compiles 25 or so surveys in about a minute, it's well worth the investment of setup time.

This is an example of one student's responses compiled in
a table. Notice his "gift" is walking dogs!

I made my template for Autocrat so that it puts each student's answers in a table. I print those, then work with the classroom teacher to decide how we will assign the younger students to the older students. It depends a lot on class size, but so far we have always combined two younger students for each story. Most students will end up in two stories. Sometimes the older students work individually and sometimes we put them in groups.

Note that attendance can be a complicating factor as  you wait for all survey results to be in. You will want all younger students to be represented in the stories, but we've had cases where a student was absent for several days and we had to start writing before we had the results. This requires flexibility. While I haven't had to do it yet, there are times I just moved along with the process and I planned to write a story myself for any student who turned in a survey very late.

Be aware that the younger students do not always understand what I meant by their "gift" and a "challenge". Sometimes they are very literal. Many times instead of writing a significant life challenge, they will write something like doing wheelies on their bike. It's understandable and middle school students often get a kick out of how they interpret the questions! 

Often their challenge will be a school subject they find difficult. We end up with a lot of stories about learning math! Sometimes they are a lot more serious, like dealing with bullying. One time a student even said her challenge in life was dealing with the loss of her mother. Those things can be difficult, but handled gently, they make an important learning experience for all involved.

Step 4:  Starting the Stories

Each page of the story template has space
for an image and some text.

A lot of the details of the writing process are completely up to the classroom teacher, so I am not very involved with this part. I do come in the first day and give some examples of how I would use a student's survey results in a story. I also show the class the simple template we use.

The length of the stories and how long the project takes are all up to the teacher.

A few things to note:

• The teacher I've worked with the most has them write an outline and then a draft, both on paper first. Once approved, they start writing on the Google Slides template.
• While we haven't mastered this yet, we use some guiding questions to help them plan a story that focuses on the students' gifts and the challenges they want to overcome. All the other details they find on the survey results are meant to flesh out that story, not distract from it. 
• None of our students have purposely included inappropriate content, but the teacher and I have redirected a few things here and there. As you would imagine, you will want to have at least a couple points in the process before they turn them in where you can read their stories in detail.
• When the writers are working in pairs, we have one student open the template in Classroom, then share that with his or her partner. So the one student actually never has to use Classroom for the assignment. This is just a simple way for us to monitor their work throughout, as we have access to the stories in Classroom. (And it lets us easily provide the template.)
  
• I come back at a later date and show them  examples of title pages. I don't go into great detail on the features, but I point out how to add Word Art, gradient fills and drop shadows. I don't start with this, because it will distract some of them from the writing.
• As I mentioned earlier, every student has written a story so far in this project. I always see a couple students who are obviously tough cases. I've been warned by the teacher that they might not complete a story. So far no one has dared to make their assigned student go without a story. 

Step 5:  Editing and Compiling the Stories

I have been working with a middle school elective class most often on this. While we've been happy with the students' engagement and effort, stories submitted by middle schoolers are rarely ready to go straight to the younger students. Here's what I do to edit them and prepare the files for the younger students.

I share the stories with the younger
students on a Google Site.

• I open the Drive folder from Classroom and I make a copy of all the completed files. I do this so the teacher can grade the students' stories exactly as they were submitted.
• I then drag those copies into a new folder and share that so everyone in our school can view it if they have the link.
• I read each story carefully and make corrections to spelling, grammar and punctuation. I change some words for young readers if necessary.
• I change the name of the story so it matches what the writers put on the title page and I also include the nicknames of the students it is written to. For example, a story might be The Day at the Park for Anna and Chloe.
• Last of all, I create a Google Site for the project and I add a link from that site to each story. I usually use pictures I've taken to decorate it too, so it's inviting to the younger students. I link to that page from the website the students see when they sign into Chromebooks.
• Last of all, I tell the elementary teacher that the stories are ready.

Step 6:  Students Read Their Stories and Respond

As anyone would expect, it's an exciting time in the classroom when the students read their stories. There's no doubt my goal of hooking them with stories written for and about them has been accomplished. They read their stories as well as stories for their classmates. 

At this point there are many other options to continue the project. One teacher had her class write handwritten thank-you notes back to the middle school students. Another teacher wanted to have the classes meet up through a Google Hangout. Even though the schools are only about eight miles apart and some of the students even knew each other, both classes absolutely loved it.

That teacher also had her students (with their hearty agreement) write stories back to the middle schoolers. We gave a quick paper/pencil survey to the older students. The elementary teacher invited me to join them during their writing hour each day for a week. I taught them some basics of using Google Slides and they had a wonderful time making their stories.

I also have a follow-up reflection survey I like to give the older students. It encourages them to consider their interests in writing stories. Very importantly, it also asks them if the project has helped them think of their own gifts and challenges in life. I'm still perfecting this stage of the project, but I believe the reflection is essential to solidify the most beneficial lessons.

_______________

So that's my dream project. I look forward to developing it more each time we do it. I'll be glad to hear what you'd add to it or what you like best.

A Simple, Powerful Reflection Activity with Google Drawings

For some recent professional development I have been focusing on thinking routines from The Visible Thinking website.  One particularly powerful reflection routine caught my attention, so I created a related template for it in Google Drawings.

The routine requires the learner to complete this statement and explain why:

I used to think _____, but now I think _____.

Of course, this comes best after the students have done something that would have changed their thinking. It could be a lecture, video, book, event or a significant passing of time.

As a tech activity, I made a Google Drawing template (which you can get at the link below). It uses two photos and brief text. Ideally students would edit the template to make it their own, then explain to the class (or other audience) why their thinking changed.

Here's an example I made based on a shift in thinking that happened for me after I left the math classroom to work in ed-tech.

Click here to get a copy of the Google Drawing template.

As this next image shows, students can change the text and replace the images easily. I have a few other tips listed below.

Other tips for this activity:

• There are many ways to get the images. Students can take them themselves or they can use the search feature. I include the word "Pixabay" when I search, so it will use the Pixabay site as a source. Images from there are free to use without attribution. 
• If students use images from other sources, they should be sure they are citing their sources properly.
• I made the text boxes a semi-transparent color to make text easier to read. With some background images you will have to experiment with text and fill colors and possibly font styles to be sure it can be read.
• Remind students this is meant to be a quick tech activity. The thinking that goes into the wording and the explanation of why thinking changed is far more important than getting the right images and fonts. 
• Download the Drawing as a JPEG or PNG file (in the File menu) if you want to post it in a blog, website or on social media.
• This is good reflection activity for teachers too!

A Quick, Simple Google Chrome Extension for Student Video Responses

Here's the most popular tool I showed at the miGoogle conference recently. It's a simple Chrome extension from Alice Keeler called Webcam Record. It records a short video clip from a webcam on a laptop or Chromebook, uploads it to Drive and automatically copies a link to it so you can paste it where you need it*.

So teachers can use this to give simple video directions and students can use it to share their thoughts back to the teacher. See it in action in the tutorial below.

You can get it in the Chrome Web Store here or have your G Suite admin push it out to users. I pushed it to all teachers and all students in grades 5 - 12.

*I do have two important things to watch for.

1. Unfortunately when we've tried to share the video using the link that's automatically copied it doesn't give the user access. I tried sharing the whole folder and it still didn't work. I showed students they can copy a shareable link just by right clicking on the video and clicking Get shareable link. It adds a few clicks to the process, but it's not bad. The tutorial below shows this workaround.
2. Every once in a while we used this on a new device, it didn't upload the first recording properly. I suggest you make a short test recording the first time you use it, just to be sure the file saves to Drive.

Here's a tutorial I made for the teachers and students in my district.

Using Say Whaaat!? in the Classroom

Images from DrawLab Entertainment
and used with permission

My party game Say Whaaat!? will be released this month from DrawLab Entertainment*, but I made the original version long ago. I have had years of experience playing it in different ways with students and as a classroom activity. It has proven to be a fun icebreaker or an engaging warm-up for lessons about opinions, priorities or leadership.

At the heart, this is a game about ranking random things order of importance. Words like Underwear, Justice and Coffee might turn up, for example. There are ways to do that in class that look a lot like what’s described in the rules. Others suggestions below are more innovative, like having the class imagine how Abraham Lincoln or Hester Prynne might rank the items.

Most of the ideas below are based on my experience, but some come from other educators who have enjoyed the game with their students. Instead of explaining all the rules of how to play here, I will just describe the changes to what’s written in the game rules.

Using one copy of the game for multiple groups

This could allow a class of 25 - 35 students to play in small groups using one copy of the game. Be sure they understand the ranking process before breaking into groups.

• Divide them into groups of 6 or 8 students. 
• Shuffle the 100 Word cards and divide that roughly evenly between the groups. 
• There won’t be enough Ranking cards for all the students, so you could make additional sets on colored notecards. Alternatively, the students could just secretly write their rankings on paper. 
• When playing this way, they could use the standard rules (with one Judge ranking the items and the others guessing) or the partnership variation (as long as groups have an even number of players). If playing with a Judge, the Judge should use Ranking cards from the game even if all the Guessers are just writing the words down. This makes it easier for everyone to see his or her rankings.
• After a few rounds, groups should exchange their decks of Word cards so everyone can play with as many as possible.
• If scoring is important, students or partnerships can just keep their points on paper. 

Everyone ranking the same Words

Sometimes it will work best for the lesson to have the class rank the same five Word cards. Here are different ways for them to do the actual ranking. Ways to select the five cards are also listed below.

Same Words, Many Groups
All students play in groups of 6 - 8 exactly like above. Any of the options and changes can be used. The only difference is the students rank the same 5 word cards that you display to the class. My friend John Golden has his students play this way as an icebreaker. He gives the judges time to explain their rankings to the others in their groups.

One Judge, Many Guessers
This is how I used the game before starting a lesson on priorities and goal setting.

• Choose one student (or the teacher) to be the Judge.
• The five Words are presented and all other students try to guess how the Judge will rank them. They record their guesses by listing the Words in order on paper.
• If a score is important, the students (on their honor) can record it on paper. They get a point for each Word they had in the same place as the Judge.

Getting the Class Rankings With Digital Tools
I have used tools like Google Forms or class response systems (clickers) to let students send their rankings digitally. This is a fun way to see how the group thinks.

Different tools allow for different ways to do this. Most simply, you can just have five “questions”, each being one of the Words. A student’s answer for each question would be a number, 1 - 5. For example, if they wanted to rate Coffee as least important, they would pick 5 for that Word. Students would just have to remember not to use a number twice when choosing the numbers.

After all rankings are submitted, these tools usually display a graph that shows how each Word was ranked. After looking at the class’ responses, students can give themselves a point if they matched the majority for a Word’s ranking. For example, if “Justice” was ranked in the first (most important) position by most of the class, every student who had it as most important would get a point.

If two or more Words all tie for a position, all of those Words would count for a point, even if they also end up most in another position. That can happen, so don’t get too caught up in the details of scoring!
One fun idea for this method is to have everyone predict how some other person would rank the words. But this person doesn’t have to be in the class! They could be a historical figure or a character in a book...or maybe not even a person.

With carefully selected Words central to the lesson theme, this can result in a short reflective writing assignment. Students would have to explain their ranking and what they thought of the class’ overall ranking.

John Golden sometimes has his class rank by criteria other than importance. For example, he will have five concepts for discussion and ask them to rank them by how much they understand them. Another option is to rank them by personal preference.

Ways to Choose the Word Cards

Regardless of which of those methods you use, here are some different ways you can choose the five Word cards for each round. Most will help you more or less focus the type of thinking and discussion you want to encourage.

For any of these, you can actually draw those cards in the moment and display them under a document camera or write them on the board or screen. Or you might want to save class time by forming the lists in advance.

• Random - Just shuffle the deck and draw five, randomly choosing one side or the other on each card.
• Random from Subset - Choose several cards from the deck ahead of time that fit your lesson theme to form a smaller drw deck. Then when you play, draw completely randomly from that deck.
• Semi-Random - Draw 7 - 10 cards at random, then choose which 5 you will use for the round from those.

Of course, you can also just make Pre-Arranged Lists ahead of time by selecting the exact Words you want to use. Feel free to add in words that aren’t in the game, if they’d be beneficial for your lesson or discussion.

Conversation Starters

As one last suggestion, a college professor told me he just kept the Word cards on his desk in his office. When students stopped in to talk, he would draw cards (or have a few pre-selected) to generate some conversation.

Authentic Audience and Authentic Engagement - Interactive Stories Using Free Google Apps

I already wrote a lot this summer about the most exciting, creative project I've been involved with in a long time. I worked with some students to create a story one short piece at a time. What made it amazing was we'd publish the story on the school website, then let the readers complete surveys to tell us what should happen in the next chapter.

This gives the students experience with writing for an engaged, authentic audience. Everyone involved was excited to find out what happens next in the story!

We told our story in comic form, using my favorite method of combining real life photos with comic elements. Of course, it will be much easier to create the stories if they're written as prose rather than comics. I'm calling them interactive stories and I will outline the process below. (There's even a 10-page ebook with tips at the link at the very end of this post.)

We actually ran into a snag in the middle of our comic project, so I resorted to some written chapters just to keep the story going. That gave me some experience with what I'm about to describe.

The Flow of the Project

• Explain the project to the students - This includes the very important aspect of telling them what course content you expect to see in the story. They need to know what they are supposed to learn from it.
• Write the first chapter - Students (the Storytellers) would begin by writing a short chapter to kick things off. It just has to be long enough to introduce some characters and make a cliffhanger that will hook the Readers. I suggest using Google Docs for this, since it's easy to share in a later step.
• Create a short survey - Using Google Forms, the Storytellers create a survey with three to five questions that will help them decide what happens next. We embed the link to the survey right in our story, so anyone who reads it can easily find it. See the link at the end of this post for lots of tips about making good surveys.
• Publish the story - We put a shareable link to our story on our school website. The Readers would find it there easily, read it and complete the survey.
• Make the next chapter - The real learning happens here! Combining the lesson goals, the Storytellers' ideas and the input from the Readers, the Storytellers have to plan and write the next chapter.

That process continues with another survey, publishing the new chapter, getting feedback and so on. As it comes to a conclusion (probably after several weeks) the Storytellers probably will request less and less feedback. 

If doing the story as a comic sounds even better (which I think it can be!) I created this ebook for the process using comics and it includes a ton of tips for getting started and working through the project. 

While it can be so much simpler to have students write the story in Google Docs, much of that ebook will till be helpful. The link below takes you to a free, shortened version that will help with these written stories.

Some tips specific to this written process are:

• Use a fairly large font with generous spacing. Dense text is not fun to read on a screen.
• Even with large fonts and spacing, try to keep the chapters to less than two pages. Your Readers might go for longer passages, but we found many wouldn't bother reading longer chapters.
• Make sure you set up Google Forms so the responses are not anonymous. This is very important if you ask for open ended comments. As the teacher, you might choose to manage the survey responses.

I summed up the Gathering Feedback section of my ebook into a much shorter PDF. You can find it here:

Getting and Using Reader Input for Interactive Writing Projects

If you do this project with a class, I'd love to hear about the results! Please send me an email and let me know how it goes. Include a link to the story too!

Scanning Text to a Google Doc for Editing

Here's a neat trick I didn't realize would be so simple! Note that this only works on Android phones right now and I use a computer or Chromebook for the second part.

While doing a virtual book study of What School Could Be, I needed to copy passages of text from the printed book. I accomplished this easily by using the Scan option in the Google Drive app.

It's all shown in the two-minute video below, but here are the main steps.

1. Open the Google Drive app on an Android phone.
2. Tap the + and pick Scan.
3. Take a picture of the printed text.
4. Retake it or crop it as necessary.
5. Click the + to add more pages.
6. Repeat steps 3 - 5 until you've scanned everything you need.
7. Tap the check mark. That will upload the scans to your Drive as a PDF.
8. Then on a computer, locate that PDF in your Drive.
9. Right click on it and select Open With Google Docs.
10. Make minor edits to the text if necessary.

I've found it works very well. I made this informal video for the teachers in our book study. Itshows the screens as I go through the above steps.

Our Collaborative Comic Story

Last fall I wrote about an interactive story experiment I started with some students a our middle school. They enjoyed our usual Google Slides comics assignment, so we decided to start an ongoing story based on input from the rest of the school.

We started the comic in September and worked on it regularly through October. Then classes changed and I got busy with other projects. It took a lot of effort to finish it, but I'm happy with the results.

You can read the complete story here. I added plenty of notes throughout, so you can get an idea of the work that went into it.

We ended up telling the story in a variety of ways, using photos, drawings and even prose.

Throughout the project I tried to faithfully incorporate ideas from the students who followed along and gave their feedback through Google Forms.



In the final weeks of school, I reunited with the girls who started it and we brought in the additional characters. We had one last photo session. It was a hectic end to the school year, but I managed to complete the final chapter and publish it on the very last day of school.

This would be an excellent addition to a Digital Media class. The skills involved went far beyond just familiarity with Google Slides.

As with any of the comic projects I've written about, you could publish the final product in a variety of ways.

Updated - Show Off Any Project With Google Sites

This is an updated version of a post I made in 2017. It addresses some changes to the publishing process in Google Sites.

Regular readers and anyone in my training sessions has heard me repeat it. "Show off the learning!"

There are lots of ways to show our best work, but doing it online is certainly one of the easiest. Even if the end product is not digital, it's now very easy to show it off online using Google Sites.

I created a one page document and video tutorial for teachers in my district to give them this easy way to show any product digitally. It makes use of the new Google Sites, which I absolutely love. 

Google Sites doesn't have a ton of options, which means students won't lose time finding just the right font and background image. 

So imagine students made a physical "something" in class. You could give the students this document of directions and they'd end up with a web page that shows pictures or video along with text, showing off what they made and learned. 

Remember that you'll have to supplement those directions with specific things you need to see on their site. For example, you might ask for three or more pictures that show all sides of their project and a detailed description of what it is. I also suggest always requiring a summary of what they learned from the project.

Here is the full video tutorial. The document has links to the relevant sections, so students don't have to watch it all at once.

And here is the single page of steps that you'd give the students. Notice most of the steps link to the exact place in my video tutorial. That way they don't have watch everything if they're stuck on only one part.

Some things to note:

• My directions and tutorial only show the how. It directs them to you for the what.
• Students would need to take pictures or video of their project, then upload those to Google Drive first. I didn't show that in this tutorial, but it's very easy if they have the Google Drive app at their phones. I consider this to be a survival skill in today's world. I'm working on making a good video to show this process.
• Some students forget to do the sharing step (labeled as #1 on my list). If that happens, you won't be able to see their pictures or video when you look at the site. 
• If your students are restricted to sharing their documents within your G Suite domain, then your site will be restricted as well. In any event, the sharing of the pictures, videos and published site will need to be changed to Anyone with the link if you want it shared beyond your domain.
• Step #8 is another common pitfall. Students often will send the link to their side of the website instead of the published version. It is clearly shown in the video, but they need to pay attention.
• I didn't address adding multiple pages in my steps, but it is very intuitive to add a new page. This could be great for organizing information about a larger project.
• Note that my final step tells them to turn it in through Classroom. If you use a different process, you'll need to modify those directions.

Updated for 2018 - Simple Video Presentations with Google Slides and Screencastify

This is an updated post about a process I've been promoting for years. It uses Google Slides and Screencastify. Since they recently updated the app, I remade the main tutorial, which you can find below.

The idea of these projects is that students make a slideshow presentation, then they record the screen and their voice as they present it.

Teachers can also use this process to make simple, quick videos for lessons to post in Classroom.

Here are two examples of how the final video might look.The first is best to show students, but keep in mind it actually was made with SnagIt instead of Screencastify. SnagIt is no longer available. The second one was designed for teachers and refers specifically to their activity.

  

Screencastify is a great Chrome extension for this process. It makes it very easy to record the presentation on a Chromebook or laptop. It also links directly to Google Drive, so students don't have extra steps of uploading video files to Drive.

You will need to install Screencastify from the Chrome Web Store or, if your school uses a managed Google domain, you can have your administrator force install the app for you and your students.

As referred to in the video below, the first time you run it, it will take you through a simple setup process. Just allow all the permissions it asks for and sign into your Google account when it prompts you.

The tutorial below shows how to actually record the presentation. As it says in the video, there are three things students should do before recording:

• Install and setup the extension. This is not shown in the tutorial, but it's very easy.
• Make the slideshow. I suggest doing this in Google Slides, but you can use any slideshow app.
• Practice! It's very important to rehearse the presentation because these have to be done in one take.

As you can see from the tutorial, the resulting video ends up in Google Drive. From there it's easy to share or turn it in through Google Classroom.

Keep in mind that the free version of Screencastify puts a watermark on the screen. It also limits you to a 10 minute recording and 50 recordings per month. There is a paid version which removes those limitations and watermark. It also allows for some basic editing. I haven't paid to upgrade yet, but that option to edit is very promising. 

If you have any questions about this process, please let me know. I'd like to improve these resources so they benefit many students!

Effective Integration of G Suite and Related Tools for Learning

Last month I presented at the MACUL conference about using G Suite apps and Chromebooks effectively according to the Triple E Framework. It was a culmination of many ideas I've used in trainings over the past two years. I was very pleased with the reception.

The main resource I shared in the session is this Google Docs table. In it, I list the nine key questions from the Triple E Framework and point out several ways in which apps like Docs, Slides and other tools can excel in each. I also list a few possible weak areas to watch for.

I hope to present on the same topic a few more times this year, so I'll be glad to hear suggestions for additions or ways I can improve it.

I also have the complete list of resources from that session here, though you will find many of those other resources on other pages in this blog.

Excellence in Education Award

I've been wondering if I need to trim back on the extra work I do in education, then I was notified recently that I won the Excellence of Education Award from the Michigan Lottery.

The honor brought with it some interviews (one on camera, which is part of the video below) and some soul searching. It has been a great honor and a chance to sort out what I've done right over the past two decades. It's given me much to consider as I plan the rest of 2018.

Candidates for the award are nominated by students or staff members from their district. In my case Melinda Newcombe nominated me. Melinda is a high school English teacher I've worked with for a long time now. She will tell you I immediately questioned her judgment when I found out I won. I eventually decided it would be better to go with it than offend her!

I decided two things if I was going to accept the award. First, I have to give God credit if I have ever done anything right in education. Teaching has been an uphill struggle for me, especially those fourteen years trying to teach high school math. While some of it fit my personality, a lot of it certainly did not. I decided teaching is a calling and I stuck with it. I learned to pray about it and trust I was where I was supposed to be. 

My book for success would have two chapters--Trust God and Marry Well. I don't know much after that.

Second, I hoped this would bring some positive attention to our district. I work with many excellent educators, many better than I could hope to be and many who helped me be better. 

The only reason I would get recognized over them is because I work with so many more teachers and students. It increases my chance to be noticed. If I had to pick one of them to nominate, I honestly don't know how I could ever choose between them.

As anyone in education will tell you, good teachers make tremendous sacrifices for their students. I see many at LakeVille doing that every day and this has been a reminder to do better at highlighting their successes.

If you're interested in seeing the announcement for the award, it's here.

And here is the video as it aired from one station. (Note that they put the wrong name on the screen for the person who nominated me. I made sure it was corrected at other stations, but their videos weren't so easy to embed.)

Making a Choose Your Own Adventure Story with Google Slides

Update 6/26/2019:  I just posted an updated lesson plan for this on Teachers Pay Teachers for $2. It includes several improvements I made this past school year. My goal was to make a lesson you could assign in Google Classroom and the students wouldn't need any help from you to complete it.

As I mentioned last week, I'm teaching a class called Learning Through Gaming. In the survey I gave the class the first day, many students indicated they wanted to make games. To give them a taste of creating a game, I had them create a Choose Your Own Adventure story using Google Slides.

Here's a document based very closely on the directions we gave our students.

The document contains all directions and a link to this very basic sample story I made. I also included a link to Eric Curts' excellent example. (If you're not familiar with Eric's amazing site, Ctrl Alt Achieve, be sure to check it out. Like so many of his posts, he has the definitive guide on Choose Your Own Adventure stories for class.)

A few other things to note about this assignment:

• I put a video tutorial in the later stages of the document that shows how to create the links. 
• Students will probably want to get started on the links right away. As you'll see, I emphasize planning first.
• As Eric says on his blog, his story was written and illustrated by middle school students. Like the Choose Your Own Adventure books many of us loved as children, the endings sometimes involve your death. Keep this in mind if assigning this to younger students.
• The example stories I link to are published to the web. That means they open in full screen. I didn't include directions for that for the students. In their case, they start the story by clicking the Present button in Google Slides. 
• Like many of our activities at the middle school level, I will be posting the students' stories on our school website. The school will vote on their favorites and the winning authors will get a prize.

Learning Through Gaming - One of our first assignments

I'm helping with a dream class at our middle school this marking period. It's called Learning Through Gaming. I'm showing the students a mix of digital and non-digital games and we are learning these skills:

• Communication
• Math
• Problem Solving/Thinking
• Success

I'm really excited about that last one. The idea is we can win in life using principles that help us win in games. For example, we have to know the objective, play by the rules, play to win and play so others can do their best.

I told the students from the start that they'd have to play, then do some written reflections. Here's one of our first assignments. In it, students had to 

• Play three games that I programmed. I made them a number of years ago using Stencyl and I've written about them previously on this blog. You can see all four of my Stencyl games on this page. It's probably best to play the games on Chromebooks or laptops.
• Answer questions about each one, including opinion questions about which they liked best and why.

The students had a lot of fun with the games. I'm glad to see they held up well. They didn't do such a great job on answering the questions. I quickly gave them feedback, asking many of them to try again. It was a good exercise to convince them I want to see meaningful reflection.

Click here to get the assignment document as a Google Doc. Feel free to make a copy and edit or share it as you like. I appreciate it if your copy keeps a link back to my blog.

If you're interested, see these blog posts about other ways to use two of those games:

• A critical thinking and writing activity based on What's It to Ya?
• A game based learning activity for Pegged

Reflecting on our student video tutorial project so far

Brenda June and I sat down last week to talk about our Room 10 Learning Chats project. It's the grant funded project I posted about previously, where students and teachers are creating learning videos. We will report about it at MACUL in early March.

I recorded our conversation and uploaded an edited version to SoundCloud. You can listen to it all or just pick the separate sections below. Each section is about five minutes long.

Summary:

• Part 1 - Overview of the project and some initial insights
• Part 2 - What we've learned as we continued working through the process
• Part 3 - Putting more motivation into the project using Prodigy and our value of watching their videos
• Part 4 - Our Learning Journey video series, thoughts on branding, growth mindset, our next steps and the positive difference it has made.

Free Resources and New Videos

One of the free digital posters we created for our
MACUL grant project.

Brenda June and I have been working a lot on our Learning Chats project (funded by a MACUL grant). We posted some free resources and new videos on our site, so I would like to give some updates here. (And click here to listen to our conversation about the project.)

Please consider sharing these resources to encourage our students! I want them to know their work is being viewed. Also, your feedback will help us improve.

Free Resources

As Brenda and I work with students, we get many new ideas and we come across some from other thought leaders. We started making some classroom signs and I uploaded them as "digital posters" on our Room 10 Learning Chats site. You can find them on our Free Resources page.

Along with the signs, there are links to a Google Slides presentation and one editable version of a digital poster like the one shown above.

Videos

We added more videos that we created and some by the students. This one is the second part in the Learning Journey series that Brenda and I created. (Update: Here's the 3rd video too.)

And here is an example of a video I created with students. These girls did a good job. I added a few "questions to consider" within the video that are meant to explore some areas that weren't explained as clearly as I would have liked. 

Remember that if you access the videos from our Room 10 video page, you'll find questions to answer before viewing too.

We also have a link on that page where you can leave feedback about the videos you watch there.

Introduction to Video Editing Assignment Using WeVideo

I created a project last week for our middle school Computers class that introduces students to video editing. We use the education version of WeVideo in our district, so the project is based on that application. If you use another editor, you might still find the video clips and the assignment document to be useful.

For a final product, the students will create a 20-25 second commercial. This will require them to edit several short clips that I provide below and also make use of transitions, titles and music.

The Video Clips

To make sure this project only focuses on editing (leaving out all the work of recording), I compiled and trimmed out several short clips of free videos from Pixabay. Each clip shows rides and people at a carnival or amusement park. You can see those video clips in this Google Drive folder.

If you are using my directions exactly as I did, you'd want to make copies of those videos and upload them to a folder in your WeVideo Media. See this video for more information.

The Project Directions

Click here to get a copy of directions for the project as a Google Doc. It contains these things:

• Step by step directions
• Links to two videos that take students through the editing and finishing process
• The list of requirements for their commercial

Note that two links are left out on the document because you would have to provide those to your students on your WeVideo account. Or you might use a different editor. In that case you'd have to modify those steps explaining how to get started.

If you do use WeVideo, you will want to set the project up similarly to what I did, including adding some links to the document. Here are the steps I used:

• I copied the link from WeVideo that would allow students to add themselves as members to my account. That link needs to be pasted into in Step 4 of your document. There are several ways to add students to your account, but doing it this way worked best for this group I was working with. See this article from WeVideo for more information.
• I created a project in WeVideo called Carnival Commercial and copied the link to it so students could add access the project. See this article from WeVideo to learn about project types. I chose the Shared option and I copied the link from the lower left of that Project screen (see the picture below). That link needs to be pasted into Step 5 of the directions. 

• Finally, I shared those video clips I uploaded to my WeVideo media with anyone in that shared project.

After you do that to finish your version of the directions, share it with your students (possibly through Google Classroom) and they should be able to work through the project to completion.

___________________________

A couple notes about WeVideo:

• Students under the age of 13 should not use the free version of WeVideo. It is not COPPA compliant. If you don't use the educational version, you also won't have all the features referred to above.
• We have had a lot of success with WeVideo at our middle school and high school. However, we do find the audio is sometimes too quiet on clips we record. It won't matter in this project if you use the clips I provided, since they have no audio. I have contacted tech support about this, but no satisfactory solution was offered. 

Six Things We Learned So Far In Our Middle School MACUL Grant Project

Updates 2/19/2018:  Lots of new things have been added since I wrote this in December.

• Free resources for teachers
• 10 takeaways from a related book on how to learn best
• Our finished Learning Journey series
• Our recorded conversation about the project

I've written here and here about our middle school math project funded with a MACUL grant. We've been making learning videos for and with students in 6th grade math. We post the final videos at Room10LearningChats.com.

Since I'm an instructional tech coordinator and not a classroom teacher, I've been working with Brenda June's students. This exciting project that has required us to stretch as professionals. We meet several times a week to plan videos and discuss what we are learning.

As you'll read below, it has been challenging at times. Our goal now is to glean the many excellent things we are learning from it so teachers can do the same without spending all the time we have. We will share those insights here, in our videos and at the MACUL Conference in March.

Here's a summary of big ideas and some practical insights we've learned so far.

1)  Students love making videos for other students. When I wrote the grant proposal, I hoped this would be the case with most students. But when we started out, the enthusiasm I saw in class surprised me. Initially we kicked off the project in every one of Brenda's classes. Out of more than one hundred students, I only saw slight resistance from one student when we asked them to make their first video. Within minutes, even that student was engaged in the task.

Before we had anything like an audience for our videos, students excitedly ended their lessons with phrases like, "Thanks for watching," and, "Be sure to see our other videos."

As you'll see in my next point, this is not the dream project to solve all the challenges of teaching math in middle school. Still, the idea of helping others learn and sharing their work with a wider audience changed class from the "got to do this" mindset to "get to do this".

2)  It's harder than I expected to do this on a large scale. There's no way around it. This is a challenge and we are trying to figure out exactly what we recommend for other teachers to try. I did learn a few practical things that I'll list below, but student created tutorials take a lot of time and effort.

I make a lot of video tutorials and I've worked with students for years to make them in class. I didn't think technical problems would take so much time. On top of that, it's difficult to find time during class for students to get free to record a tutorial. Some of this is unique to our situation. I wrote the original proposal for a different class at the elementary level, but that teacher ended up in a new position. Brenda was glad to try this project, but we almost certainly would have written different details for use in her secondary classroom.

Here are just a few unexpected things I ran into:

• We want to focus on why more than how in our lessons, but it requires students multiple takes just to successfully show how to do the problems. As I mentioned, attitudes have been great, but it surprised me how long it would take to work through a multi-step problem without a mistake. 
• The microphone was picking up far more than just our narration, and sometimes not even our narration! After recording our first "polished" tutorial, we realized every time the students touched the table, it was being recorded as a loud thud by the microphone. Add another 15 minutes (1/4 of class time) to that one!
• Even if the explanation and math work is perfect, students might mumble, misspeak or write illegibly. There's a lot to get right!
• Editing takes longer than expected because of the mistakes. We've improved in this greatly, but our student created tutorials are much simpler and less polished than I originally envisioned. I thought I'd be able to get by with students doing most editing in iMovie on an iPad or WeVideo on Chromebooks. Instead I've had to do the editing and some of it has been very complex. I need higher end software too. More on this below.

3)  Focused discussion with colleagues is invaluable. This has been a key takeaway, as Brenda and I have had to spend hours working together on this project. We already knew collaboration is valuable, since we met almost weekly last year and have done many other projects together. This one has been particularly helpful, though, because we want our Learning Chats to focus on how to learn deeply.

Brenda and I read Mathematical Mindsets and a lot of other research about good teaching. She has spent her career constantly improving how she teaches and she's been focused on excellent discussion techniques in class for the past year. This project came at a good time, since she is excited about what her questions in class have uncovered and how we can address the misconceptions and gaps the students have in their learning.

It might not be completely clear in the videos we've completed so far, but what we've discovered and how we see it impacting students has been invigorating. Our most popular video so far touches on some of this. Be sure to watch The Learning Journey if you haven't seen it already. Part 2 should be available soon.

4)  You can see (and hear) students' misconceptions by having record their explanations. We suspected this of course. I mention it here because it's another sign that we're onto something important. When we first started the project, we had every student make a quick, informal video tutorial. Had they done their work only on paper, many of the problems would have looked correct. Hearing the thinking (or lack of thinking) behind each of their steps gave us much more insight. 

5)  Practice before recording is the key. This will also seem obvious, but it is worth mentioning. Anyone who has made a video knows that better preparation for recording saves a ton of time in editing. More than that, though, the practice I do with students before recording a Learning Chat gives me an opportunity to ask good questions and get them thinking about why they are doing what they do. A good example of this came from our tutorial about multiplying fractions. The discussion we had before recording that required the students to think more deeply than they were about the process. It also was one of our easiest to produce.

6)  We know better which tools work and which don't. Here are some specifics:

• We decided on Educreations for informal tutorials in class. We tried Show Me first, but went with Educreations in the end when we wanted every student to record their work. We ran into fewer technical challenges with it. You can see two examples at the bottom of this page. It costs about $12 a month for the premium version that allows for easy sharing with the teachers.
• I used to love Explain Everything on the iPad and I expected this would be the main tool for all of our polished tutorials. Well, they have added a lot of features since I used it and that has added to the complexity. It's still a great tool, but it's too complicated for the students. It posed challenges for me and Brenda as well. And it's over three times as expensive as it was when I bought it years ago. For now, I set up the problems and pages in Google Slides and then transfer them over to Explain Everything for the students to write on during recording. If they only write on it rather than construct all the slides with it, it serves its purpose well.
• I absolutely love Camtasia for editing. It's expensive, but I get a free copy as a Google Certified Trainer. I've used it for years to make screen recordings, but recently I've started using it for all types of video. The animation features are excellent and the ability to quickly work with multiple layers is extremely helpful. I highly recommend it if you create professional tutorials or videos.
• We use the iRig Studio microphone with an iPad to record narration. I like it, but as I mentioned above, it picks up every tap or movement on the table. I'm sure there are some shock mounts that would help, but our low budget approach has been to set it on a folded cloth, such as a towel or (in a pinch) a student's hoodie or stocking cap. 

So that's a summary of what we've gained so far. I look forward to creating many more videos over the next eight weeks as we prepare to share in our MACUL presentation!

Update on our MACUL project

A couple months ago I announced our project funded by a grant from MACUL. We have been working on it steadily, but we have progressed more slowly than we hoped! 

Brenda June and I have learned a lot as we've been creating video tutorials for and with students. I make a lot of videos, so this isn't new to me. But from choosing the scope of the tutorial to finding the best tools and workflow, it's been more challenging than I expected. 

We added a few more videos over the past weeks and now that we have a routine down I expect to have a few more from students before we go on break next week. Here is a summary of what we've done.

First, you might want to start at our Room 10 Learning Chats site. Besides the videos listed below, we also ask pre-questions for many videos and some of them have additional resources.

Our most popular video so far has been The Learning Journey, which I created with Brenda. We are still working on the follow-up video, Identifying Your Next Step.

These are the other tutorials Mrs. June and I created:

• Finding the Measure of an Interior Angle of a Triangle
• Thinking About Positive and Negative Numbers Part 1 and Part 2

And these are the ones featuring students:

• Identifying Types of Angles
• Order of Operations - We include some growth mindset ideas in this one.
• Multiplying Fractions - This shows a way to visualize fraction multiplication.

Keep in mind we are all still learning how to best churn out videos at a good rate. All of these videos have plenty of room for improvement. Many of the things we don't say in the video or the slight mistakes we left in can provide an opportunity for discussion in the classroom. 

Mrs. June, the students and I are very open to feedback. Please comment here or send me an email if you would like to suggest improvements or if you have any other thoughts to share.