The Amazing race revisited part 2 - make your own

This is a continuation (how to post) following on from this post

As I stated earlier I began with this Google Slide Presentation


All of the resources can be found here

The main features of the Amazing race are

• Email sent to the participants with a link to -
• Google MyMaps to show tasks and locations
• A form is filled out to complete the task
• Another email is sent out with the next location / task
• Add ons are used to automate the process

For all of this to happen

I created

• 6 Google MyMaps (contain locations and task instructions)
• 7 Google Forms (used for the teams to submit their evidence or answer questions)
• 7 Google sheets (used to track results and send emails)
• 1 starting slide show

Collecting the team information

To collect team information I used this Google Form (1 form per team)

Amazing race sign up

That way I get to collect all the email addresses and team names.

I could then go to each Google Form (6 of them) and add the teams names as a drop down menu or I could automate this using Form Ranger.

I prefer to automate this so I use the Form Ranger add on, Form Ranger allows you populate questions on a Google Form from a column (range) on a Google Sheet.

I used the column 'Team name' from the sign up sheet as the data source for the team name drop down question on each of the 6 Google sheets.

You can set up Form Ranger to refresh the questions on form submit or every hour, the problem is that I want the form to be refreshed as soon as the Amazing Race starts. To do this I need to go into each form and just start the Form Ranger Add on and the questions are populated (you occasionally may have to use the refresh button).

I have a copy of each question form open in a tab and then just go from tab to tab and start the Form Ranger Add on. This might seem like a hassle but it is much easier than updating the question as a drop down myself. I do this as soon as the race starts when the teams are sharing their chants.

Once you have done this (and started the race), everything else runs itself.

The Start

To send the emails (and start the race), I use the Form Mule Sheets add on. Form Mule allows you to send personalised emails either in bulk or when a form is submitted (automagically). For the first form (sign up) I want to send the email all at once (when the race starts) for all the other sheet I want the emails to be sent as soon as the form with the task evidence is submitted.

Once I preview and send to all, each team gets their first email with a link to their first MyMap.

The MyMaps

Google MyMaps look cool (like an Amazing Race route) and are pretty easy to make. I added different icons in different colours and lines to show the route. The tasks are markers in the Map You can add Youtube videos, images, links to Google Docs, Forms or drawings, in fact you can add links to pretty much anything you want the participants to do.

Once you have made your first Map, you can easily copy the map and then add the extra marker and a route line from one task to the next, that way you slowly build up your map and end up with something looking like this  

This quick video shows you how create your own series of MyMaps for your own Amazing Race

The Tasks

The tasks can be anything really, depending on your subject area. In this Amazing Race I made each task a skill or tip on how to make your own Amazing Race. Each task needed evidence (a link to a Google drive resource, uploaded file ) or correct answers to questions before the team could proceed.

The tasks included

• How to take a screenshot and then upload it to Google Drive, including finding the link, giving correct permissions and adding the link to a Google Form
• Creating a Google MyMap 
• Answering questions in a Google Form. The form can not be submitted until they get the correct answer (using Response Validation - text contains)
• Giving some ideas of how they could use an Amazing Race in their subject, they could not submit the form until they completed the required number of characters. (response validation - Length minimum character count)
• Finding a blog post on how to make an Amazing Race. The form could not be submitted until the team correctly posting the URL (Response Validation - text contains)
• Creating a flow chart in Google Drawings and uploading (using the file upload function in Google Forms) 

Each MyMap task had a link to a Google Form (often extra instructions and videos are added to the form) where the participants had to complete or add their evidence.

Forms and Sheets

Once the Form was submitted with the evidence, it was sent to the Google Sheet. I (once again) used Form Mule to send out the next task (link to the MyMap) in another email. This time I used the Form Trigger - Send on Form Submit

That way as soon as team completed the task, they were sent the next task.

This continued until they had completed all the tasks and were sent the last Email / Congratulations video.

Scoring

In the past I have had a team of scorers who keep an eye on the google sheets when the answers come in and give each teams points depending on the quality of their answer. This is a great way to do it if you have the person power available. Usually I have another Google Sheet linked to the spreadsheet that has a running total / grid of each teams score. Students are great as scorers and it is always fun to give the students some power over the teachers.

I didn't have the helpers so I wanted to make the scoring automatic and simple, I just wanted a visual representation of where each team was on their journey.

That way we could make it a bit more competitive and get some energy flowing. This ended up being harder that I thought.

I started by adding some extra sheets (tabs) to the sign up sheet  one for score total and one for each task. I then used the Import Range Function to import the responses from all the sheets into this one sheet.

I then needed some way to determine / record if a particular team name appeared in a sheet. i.e. I want a cell (next to their name) in the scores sheet to show a number 1 if the team name Kool Kids appears anywhere in the sheet "KL". Their name will only appear if the team has completed the task.

I tried a few things, but finally Jay Atwood came to my rescue the day before I was due to present. 

I used the Countif formula

 Here the formula is counting the number of times the term in cell A2 "Kool Kids" appears in column C in the sheet KL. That way if the term "Kool Kids" appears in the sheet a number appears in cell C2. I then used conditional formatting to change the colour of any cell that has a value greater than 1

That way I get a nice blue visualisation of where each team is at during the race.

To insert the sheet into your Google Slide it is as easy as copying the cells you want to be seen and then pasting them on the slide. You will be provided with an option to link to the spreadsheet.

If only Google slides had the ability to auto refresh an embedded spreadsheet, that would be great. At the moment I need to manually press the refresh button. It works and it will have to do for now.

I would love to hear about other Google Amazing Race's people have created.

The Amazing Race revisited Part 1

At the recent KL Summit I ran my "Amazing Race Google style" workshop. This is something I have been doing for a while (usually with staff as a beginning of the year activity). It does take a while to set up, but is well worth it. I originally got the idea from Wesley Przybyoski at the Google Apps Summit in KL (2015). Wes' Amazing Race Site

Last year I blogged about my staff Google Amazing Race here. Reading over it now, I noticed it is a bit light on detail and for my KL Summit version I added a few extra features. With this in mind I thought it might be time for a more detailed explanation and an update on how it could be used.

All of the resources and links can be found here geoffderry.com

I started with this slideshow (the music was blaring as the teachers started trickling in)


To start the participants got into teams of 3 or 4, they thought of a team name and created a team chant. They entered these details into a Google form. (this is how I collected the email addresses of each team) Once everyone was done we went around the room and each team shared their chant. (This gave me a chance to refresh Form Ranger in each of the google forms so that names were automatically added - but more about this later)

I explained how it was all going to work (see the slideshow)

To start the race I pressed the magic button in Form Mule and the first email was sent out to each team.

The teams had to

• open the email, click on a link to a google MyMap

• the MyMap contained a task

• once they completed the task the participants had to fill out another form with the evidence

• once the form was submitted a link to the next MyMap was sent and they repeated the performance

• This continued (with live updates via the slideshow) until everyone (or at least one team) completed the race. I played music, walked around giving hints, took photos and just had lots of fun.

I also had some student helpers who actually joined some of the teams and added an extra element to the experience.

The whole thing was high energy, fun and some people even learned some things. All of the tasks were skills, apps or hints on how the participants could make their own amazing race.

I got lots of positive feedback from the participants. Including this quote

"will definitely do an amazing race activity for a summative in grade 4 and will also look into creating one of these for new staff orientation."

The winning team was of course

The legion of the Rainbow Unicorns

So how did I create all this mayhem and fun?

See this blog post for all the details.

Google Docs Scavenger Hunt

A fabulous start of year activity (actually a great anytime activity) is a Google Scavenger Hunt

Google Drive Scavenger Hunt

In grade 6 a couple of weeks ago, we did this scavenger hunt. 

Whenever I think of an idea for an activity, I always go to Google it to see if anyone has already created one that I could use. I found this Google Doc's Scavenger Hunt by Catlin Tucker. But it wasn't exactly what I wanted, I wanted the kids getting up, moving around and learning together rather than sitting at their laptops.

I found a few others but they were all a bit 'sit at your computer and do this', So I had to create my own. I used Google drawings and just stole a few ideas and developed some of my own for the tasks.

It was a collaborative activity / lesson / activity. The students had to find someone else in the room who could do the task on the square (even if they already knew how to do it). Then that person had to show them how to do it. e.g. if the task was "use voice typing to record your thoughts" someone in the class had to show you on their computer how to do it (not just tell you they could do it). The students then wrote the name of the student who showed them.

If no one in the class knew how to do it, the kids could research (google it) or just play until they worked it out. If the students knew how to do something but no one else did, they had to show someone, then the person they just showed had to demonstrate the skill.

It was lots of fun and it was great to see the kids teaching each other. Kids were walking around the room talking to each other. Some of the interactions I heard included

• "Do you know how to do this?" 
• "Arlo knows how to do, why don't you ask her to show you" 
• "Who did you get to show you how to use the built in Google training?"

It was really powerful to hear lots of oohhhs and ahhhhs as students learnt a new skill or hint (they loved voice typing) and the energy in the room was super high. Much better than walking past a classroom with everyone with their heads down in computers and no human to human interaction.

One of the big takeaways was that there are lots of other people in our class that can help us with technology (and it is OK to ask them for help). The students were given explicit permission to ask each other for help and told that the teachers would also be asking them for help.

We are now thinking of other ways we can use this concept with other tools and apps.

Make your own Icons and buttons for Google Sites

Use Google Drawings to make your own Google Sites buttons / icons.

This is something that many teachers and staff at IGBIS have been doing in many of our sites and pages. It is pretty easy to do and once you get into a rhythm you can make a new icon (or change an existing one in no time at all)

Icon Template
(you can use this to start straight away)

To create the template I started with a Google Drawing and changed the page setup to a custom setup, to make the image smaller. (This is also useful when using drawings to make A4 or A3 posters, just Google the paper dimensions)

I started with an image and used the mask with a shape (click the little down arrow next to the mask icon) to turn it into a circle (you could use any shape that you like)

Then added text and our icon was made

Then I download the icon as a png file (this keeps the transparency in the background) or a jpeg (if you are happy with a white or coloured background)

You can then drag and drop the icon on to your Google Site to upload it. When you start resizing images Google sites will often crop them for you, which can be annoying. You can use the uncrop button to instantly remove the cropping.

Then link the icon to another page in your site or an external website.

It's as easy as that.

Make your next button / icon

Once you have created your first icon, things start to speed up

You have a template, you can easily change your icon by using the replace image button in Google Drawings

The good thing about using replace image is that it keeps all the dimensions and settings of your original icon. You can then change your text, download your new icon and add it to your Google Site. The workflow is pretty seamless and can be very quick.

start with the template

replace the image

change your text

download the icon

add it to the Google Site

resize and link

You could also add the drawing directly via 'insert from Drive', if you use this option you can't link from the inserted drawing, you would need to add your hyperlink into your Google Drawing and also copy the Google drawing to make more than one icon. 

I think the download as a png is a cleaner workflow.

Have fun playing and making your Google site look

Make you own animations with Google Drawings and Photos

This is basically a tech updated version of the flipbooks I used to make when I was in school

The other day while working with some teachers we explored and started playing with using Google Drawings and photos so that students could create their own animations. Sure there are plenty of ways for students to create their own animated gifs but we thought it would be cool to try and do it Googley and it might be a bit easier than trying to use Scratch or something else.

We used Google Drawings to create our starting frame

Then we download the drawing as a jpeg

Then we went back to our Google Drawing and made a slight change to create our next frame.
Downloaded frame number 2

Made a change to the drawing
Downloaded frame number 3
Change
Download
Change
Download

this continued until we had created all our frames for our animation.

We tried to make changes uniform by using the checkbox guidelines that are in the background of a drawing

We added speech bubbles by using the shapes tool

We changed the colour of images by using the image option / recolour

To make the text boxes uniform, we first created one and set it up how we wanted, then we cut it, made a few changes / download jpeg / change etc and then pasted the text box back and changed the text. This was quicker than trying to remember the formatting and setting up up every time.

With a bit of creativity, you can make some really cool effects, even something as simple as moving objects to the back can make a huge difference.

Once all our frames were downloaded, they were conveniently saved and renumbered in our downloads folder.

To create our Gif, we dragged them into Google Photos on a Chrome browser to upload.

Once images are uploaded you get the option to create a new album, which we did.

We then selected all the images in order and used the + button to create a new animation

A new animation / Gif is created.

Once you have done it a few times, it is pretty easy and you can get really fast at it.

The animation in this video took less than 10 minutes from start to finish.

Have a go, or even better let your students have a go and get them creating.

It was lots of fun and the kids got the idea that all movies / animations are just a series of still images running together.