Recording Online Lessons With Screencastify

I compiled a brief document to help my teachers use Screencastify for screen recording. It's my tool of choice for making quick screen recordings and video lessons, because it's easy to use and it saves directly to Google Drive.

Most secondary teachers in my district have used it already, but this resource was meant to be a reminder and a way to help them set it up on their home devices.

You can find the document here.

In it, there's a link to the video below, where I show briefly how to record the screen and share the video file.

Recording Audio and Adding It to Your Google Slides Presentation

It's a simple process to add audio to Google Slides presentations now. Students can use the feature for many things, including their narration on each slide. Here's a simple example I made to show how this might work.

While it's easy to add audio, there are at least three steps that students might need help with, especially when using Chromebooks. I made a document (at the link below) that will walk them through the process. It is intended to be useful for a variety of different classes and projects. 

Those three things they might need some help with (or reminders for) are:

• How can you easily record the audio for the slides?
• Don't forget you have to upload those audio files to Google Drive.
• And if you share the Slides presentation, you also have to share those audio files with the same people.

All of those details and more are addressed in this one-page document. Feel free to share that document with others and edit as you like. Please keep the link to my blog at the top.

These tutorials are linked within the document:

• A video tutorial for using Bear Audio Tool to record the files for each slide
• A video with tips for how to add the audio files and be sure they play how you want them to (including how to upload them to Drive)
• A brief explanation in the document of how to easily share the audio files so when someone presents them, they will play.

Our Best Interactive Story Project Yet

I've been experimenting with interactive story projects for a couple years now and this past week we worked through our best one yet. Sample resources and tutorials are included below.

What Is an Interactive Story?
Like the others I've written about, this project gave older students (from high school Creative Writing this time) a chance to write short stories for younger students (3rd graders in this case). It's interactive, because after each short piece of the story we include a feedback survey. The younger students fill out the survey to give the authors input on what happens next.

I originally started working on these projects as a way to motivate writers and to encourage younger students to read for pleasure. I was able to be in the classes at both grade levels this time and it really seemed to accomplish that goal. We had high engagement at the high school, since they knew the younger students would be reading their work. And the younger students loved seeing what the high schoolers had written. All teachers involved were very pleased with the project.

How Did We Do It This Time?
In this case, students wrote their introductory "chapter" in a Google Doc. The teacher required three parts:

First came the introduction to the story. We encouraged students to introduce a character or two, establish a setting and lead up to a problem. 

Next, students added a link to a Google Form that asked some questions of the readers. We required students to ask at least two multiple choice questions and one open ended question. See below for more information about gathering feedback.

Finally, we required an author bio that included the students' interests and goals. In our case, most of the stories were written by two students working together. 

You can see the sample document we showed the class here. Check out the sample story (written by a student, with a few edits) and the sample survey to see how those might look.

The survey and link to the survey were the only steps of the project that required the students to learn some tech skills. I walked them through the process in class, but this document shows all the steps. The final part of it includes a link to a video tutorial. 

Other Details

• We were pressed for time at the end of our semester, so we only did two sections of the story that asked for reader feedback, then a third part that wrapped the stories up. It took us just about two weeks of class time to complete that. In the future we hope to keep the project going longer, with at least two more chapters.
• I shared the stories with the younger students by creating a Google Site that linked to each story document. Whenever I share stories like this, I make a copy of the student document, edit it if necessary, then post the shareable link to the document on the Google Site. 
• The authors should be encouraged to use some of the reader input, but they certainly don't have to incorporate it all. The open ended questions especially can bring in too many ideas. Ultimately the decision is up to the author on how the story proceeds.
• For the second chapter, we had students write an author note in place of the "About the Author" section. The note thanked the readers for their input, then explained just a little about how they used that input to write their story. Again, most of these documents, including the story, link to the survey and the authors' note, were only a page long.
• If you want more information about gathering feedback, see this summary I made for a similar comic project. You can read more about that in this post from a couple years ago.

Holiday Classroom Game and Creativity Activity

Here's a free resource that can be used for a few fun, creative activities in the classroom. At its heart, it's just a way to generate a random pair of words that students use to write a holiday themed haiku.

I'll list a few ways I've used similar activities in class, along with a brief explanation of each. Some will link to previous posts with more details.

First, click here to get your copy of the Google Slides presentation. It will open in your Google Drive.

Generating a Prompt
No matter which way you choose to use the activity, you will be generating a random prompt and students will use it to write a haiku. To generate the prompt, open the presentation so the class can see slide 2. Don't present it. Just display it as shown below. Draw two random words from behind the gift. You can grab them and drag them by the circle at the far right of the screen.

In the above example, the two words drawn are "gift" and "peace".

Students will then create a haiku using the two random words. You can require them to use the exact words, any variation (such as singular or plural) or maybe they just have to use the general idea of the word in their haiku. Of course, if you're using it for the holidays, that will be an implied general theme for all haikus they write. How generally or specifically you want to make this is up to you, but be sure to explain your requirements before they start any of the activities explained below.

Note that you can change the words too if you want. Just drag the words off to the side of the slide, so you can see the word. Double click on the word and it should let you delete the text and replace it with whatever you want. If it's a long word, you might have to stretch the text box to make it fit. Then drag the word back under the present, so it can be randomly selected during the activity.

A Class Writing Prompt
This is the easiest way to use the activity. The teacher can draw two random words from behind the gift. Every student in the class uses those two words (and any other requirements the teacher provides) to write their own haikus.

The writing can be done in class or as an assignment outside of class. Once the teacher has time to look at the submitted haikus, she can choose up to five of her favorites and type them on the A - E spaces  of that slide. At any time after that, the class can vote on their favorite using a poll/quiz application like Socrative or Kahoot, or they could just use a show of hands or submit a vote on a paper slip.

A "Game Show" With a Few Contestants
I used to do all my creativity games this way. It is a challenging exercise for the contestants, but if you have a creative group it can be fun. In this case, 3 - 5 contestants sit at the front of the class. The teacher draws two random words from behind the gift to form the prompt. The contestants each write a haiku using those words and the teacher's requirements. They should have 3 - 5 minutes to write it.

When they are finished, the haikus are read aloud and typed into the spaces A - E (or just summarized). The class votes on their favorite using a poll/quiz application or some other non-digital method. Each contestant gets points equal to the number of votes they receive. Points can be kept on the Score slide. Usually we have time for about three rounds when we do games like this.

If you don't want to give such a strict time limit, you could combine this format with the above activity. The contestants could write their haikus outside of class and turn them in the next day for the vote.

See this post for more details and tips for running these "game show" style creativity games.

A Game Played in Small Groups
More recently I started running these creativity games in small groups. In this case, you can do a sample round with the whole class, just so they see how to play. Then have them work in groups of 3 or 4 students. Each group will have one device to access their copy of the Holiday Haiku slide presentation.

They will play multiple rounds. Each round one student will be the judge. He or she will randomly draw out two words from behind the gift and show the other group members. Everyone other than the judge gets a limited amount of time to write a haiku that uses the two words and follows any other requirements the teacher has given.

When finished, the haikus are gathered and shuffled up. One student reads each of them to the judge. The judge chooses one as his or her favorite. The player who writes it gets a point.

Now the next player becomes the judge and another round is played. Rounds are repeated until each player has been the judge once. The player or players with the most points wins.

See this post for more details about playing creativity games in groups.

Reflection
No matter how I use these activities in class, I like to seal the learning by adding some reflection.  Here's the reflection sheet I used with one class after doing a similar small group version of a creativity game. Depending on how you presented the material and what the lesson content was, you will probably want to modify the questions somewhat.

Fun Holiday Tech Project With Google Slides

Students can use this process to make animated holiday cards for family members or just for fun. Everything can be created using Google Slides.

I'll give a brief overview of the process below. If you want to see my usual directions with video tutorials (not just for holiday animations), you can find everything you need to introduce it in class for $2 on Teachers Pay Teachers.

Here's a summary of the process:

1)  Make a Plan - Students really need to decide in advance what shapes they'll use and what's going to happen in the animation. Once they get going on later steps, it's hard to make a big change. In my example above, I knew I wanted the ornaments to float up on the tree and some words to appear.

2)  Create the Shapes - When you first use this process, it's easiest to make everything and have it be part of the first frame. Just start a new Google Slides presentation and start building.

I like to have students create their art using basic shapes in Google Slides (instead of looking for clip art online). In my example, I did use a graphic from Pixabay for the border. I created the other elements myself. Here's how my first frame looked*:

3)  Create the Animation - This is the heart of the process. You duplicate the current frame, then move the animated elements on that frame just slightly. To duplicate the frame, click on it in the left panel and (if you're on a Chromebook or PC) press ctrl-d. (You can also right click on it and select Duplicate slide.)

So in my example, I duplicated the first slide. Then on the second (new) slide I moved some of those ornaments on the floor up, just a centimeter or so.

You continue that process of duplicating the slide and moving the objects until all the animation is complete. As I said above, it's hard to fix a mistake once you get going with this. That's why a plan is important. Here are some other tips:

• I frequently click through the slides to preview my animation to make sure the objects are moving like I want them to. Sometimes they're not and I have to delete some frames to do a section over.
• Some frames should display a little longer, so I duplicate those a few times without changing anything. For example, I made several copies of the first frame, the last frame and that frame where the star lands on top of the tree. I wanted a pause at those points.
• You can animate text the same way. I made the text box, then had one word at a time appear. I've seen some people who like to have each letter appear one by one. It's up to you. When you do text, you especially will want to duplicate some frames multiple times to pause it at times. Otherwise the words go by too quickly. 

Click here to see all 40+ slides of my animation in slideshow format.

4)  Publish the Slides - You can publish the animation so it plays as a full page in a browser tab. Click here to see how this would look.

You can publish a presentation by going to the File menu and selecting Publish to the web. This window will open up. Check the boxes as shown, then click Publish.

That will make a link that appears as shown below. Copy that, as it says, by pressing ctrl-c. That's the link (more or less) that you need to share with others so they can see your animation. But don't share it yet! See the next step.

5)  Share the Link - You can paste that link in an email, add it to a website or share it any other way you like. Just remember one important thing. At the end of the link you'll see a 3000 when you paste it. Change that 3000 to a smaller number such as 100 or 150. 

I usually paste it into the address bar in a new tab and then change the number, so I can play the animation and see how it will look. You can keep doing this, adjusting the number how you want, with larger numbers making it play slower. Experiment with a number that works how you like it to. Once I've got a good number, I paste the link again, change the number, copy it again, then share that link.

6)  You can also turn it into an animated GIF! - I use the site Tall Tweets to do this. They have something called Tall Tweets Studio now, but I suggest scrolling down and clicking the Classic version. I also recommend teachers make copies of students' presentations and convert those for them, since there are some privacy and terms of service matters involved with granting access to Google Drive for this process. Since it has some other settings to experiment with, this option is only recommended for older students.

Again, the above 6 steps are a brief overview of the process. See my published lesson on Teachers Pay Teachers for a "ready to assign" document with everything students need. You'll want to show them my examples from this post, though, since the general directions are not just for holiday animations.

*Actually, if you want some behind the scenes info on my animation, I used a slightly different process. I worked backward to build my animation, because I wanted to start with the final image of the decorated tree. I did this just to be sure I had enough bulbs and that they'd look right. 

This is an advanced technique and I'd only recommend it to students who have made a few animations as described above. Besides thinking backwards, the only real change is that after duplicating a slide, I dragged it above the slide I just duplicated. So instead of duplicating slide 10 and moving the objects on frame 11, for example, I was always duplicating frame 1, then dragging the new frame up so it became frame 1. Then I moved the objects (in a backwards direction) on frame 1. This is harder to describe than it is to do, but I don't recommend it for beginners.