Keynote Fraction Animations

A really boring title I know, but this activity was lots of fun and was a great example of learning and understanding concepts rather than just knowing answers.

We are studying fractions in grade 6, in my experience students often know shortcuts and tricks to do equations with fractions

While this approach gives them an answer it doesn't promote understanding, rather it focuses on answers. I am much more interested in students understanding a concept rather than knowing an answer. Often they don't understand what the equations actually mean and written explanations are complicated and confusing.

There are lots of great visual examples online and sites like Myimaths have animations and videos explaining what is actually happening when you add, subtract, divide or multiply a fraction. While these sites promote understanding and make it easy for students to see what it means to solve equation problems, I prefer making my own or even better get the students creating their own fraction animations.

Keynote Fraction Animation

To achieve this we used Keynote and added actions to a variety of shapes and text boxes so that students could create their own fraction animations. About half way through the activity I remembered magic move and that made things so much easier.

Magic move compares one slide to the next, takes note of any changes and then animates the changes. You can easily duplicate a slide, make some changes and turn it into a nifty animation in no time at all.

Here are a series of videos I created on how to make your own fraction animations the first two use regular animations and the second two (multiplication and division use magic move)

Adding Fractions

Subtracting Fractions

Multiplying Fractions

Dividing Fractions

What I really like about this activity is that it is hard work, the students really need to think about what it means to perform operations on fractions. What does it mean to add fractions beyond a set of rules.

They look at fractions and operations in different ways, work backwards and need to problem solve to make their animations reflect what is actually happening when performing operations on fractions.

Make your own Random Google Sheets worksheets

I finally found a use for Macros

A couple of months ago I started playing with Google Sheets IF Formula and RANDBETWEEN to create interactive google sheet Maths sheet, this was essentially a drill and practice activity. I wanted my students know how to do this and create their own drill and practise activities. The idea was that the students could create maths worksheets that have a random selection of the numbers in the equations.

It was easy enough to set up a sheet using predetermined number and the IF statement to check if the students had the correct answer or not. I added some colour and extra formatting using conditional formatting. I then used COUNTIF to count the number of correct answers. It was all starting to look pretty and come together. Then I introduced RANDBETWEEN to make the numbers random to gamify and increase the longevity of the sheet.

The only problem is that when you use RANDBETWEEN anytime a change is made to the worksheet a new random number is generated. that means when an answer is written the numbers that make up the equation change.

I searched online, checked out add ons, tried pasting values, but couldn't find a way to make the random numbers stick, I started playing with Macros and was almost there when I got distracted by some other bright shiny thing. Someone showed me a few websites that do this automagically. Which was OK but not as good as the students creating their own.

I had put this in the back of my mind until yesterday someone in my PLN on twitter asked for some free drill and practice websites that he could give to the teachers in his school, I suggested getting the students to create their own using Google Sheets, the IF formula and RANDBETWEEN. He reminded me of the issues of the constant changing random numbers. I got back to work.

I created a series of ten random numbers in ten cells (H3 to H12),

I then recorded a Macro that copied the ten cells and pasted the values only into the cell next door. A Macro allows you to record a series of steps or activity that you want to do over and over again on a Google Sheet, it then turns those steps into a script, which you can then run and it will do them for you.

Often to run a script you need to use the tools menu.

But you can also add a script to a Google drawing, so I created a button to randomise the numbers when a user clicks the button the script runs. 

Essentially when the button is pressed the script runs, ten random numbers are copied and their values are pasted into the cells next to the random numbers. Because I used paste values only, it doesn't matter how many time the original cells change those numbers in cells I3 to I12 wont change until the button is pressed again.

I then use those values (I3 to I12) to populate my tables test. The Random numbers stick. I hid the columns with all the data so all the user sees is the equations and a button to change the numbers.

I can the use COUNTIF to calculate the number correct and put that as a fraction on the page.

My next step is to work out a way to time how long it takes to complete the equations and add a super cool pop up message when the user gets 10/10.

For your very own copy of the Google sheet to see all the formulas and play with click here

New Gmail my first thoughts

Gmail has just undergone a major redesign and like most of these upgrades you get the chance to try before you buy. So that is exactly what I did.

At my first look I thought YUCK, it looks horrible, babyish, it is the same but different. After a couple of minutes my mind and eyes adjusted and I started playing with it. 

Once I got used to it, the clean simple display was warming to me, some of the changes that I like include

1. In default view attachments were clearly visible and looked good.

I have now switched back to the comfortable view just to get more on my screen, but I can see that some might like the default view.

2. Calendar, keep, tasks and add ons can be accessed directly from the right hand side of Gmail.

I use Calendar and keep all the time, so it is mega useful to have it right there, I also appreciate being able to easily access Gmail add ons

3. Smart reply is super useful, 

I use smart reply on my phone via the gmail app, now that it is available on the web version I seem to be replying much faster and it is making me more efficient. It does mean that Google is watching all my emails, but I new that already. It is also useful to start a message with the smart reply and then add a personal touch or some extra information.

4. Quick tasks 

When you mouse over an email, you get a series of quick task options on the right of the email. 

This makes it really easy to archive, bin, mark as unread or snooze the email

5. Snooze, you can now snooze an email so that it returns at a predetermined time just like using the boomerang add on.

This could be really useful if your inbox is getting a bit chaotic or you are in the middle of class, often I will see an email, read it, think I need to do that later but then forget about it or can't find it.

There is supposed to be another AI powered feature called nudging  which reminds you when you haven't replied to an email in a couple of days. I haven't seen it in action yet but look forward to using it.

After a couple of days of using it, I am really starting to like it and it has already made me more productive and given me more time to do the really useful things at school like teaching and talking to people.

Round ME - create your own VR Tours

Google has just launched its Expeditions creator BETA program that allows students and teachers to create their own Google Expeditions.

According to Google
"One of the top requests we’ve heard from teachers and students is the ability to create their own Expeditions. Today, we are excited to announce a beta program that allows schools and educators to do just that. Classrooms will be able to create immersive tours of the world around them -- their classrooms, their schools, their communities."

I have signed up for the BETA program, I can't wait and I hope we get to test it out. Until then though we will continue creating our own Google Expeditions via the website roundme.com

Make your own Google Expeditions or even better get your students creating VR tours

roundme is really cool and very easy to use, it has heaps of possibilities for moving students from consumption to creation (one of my favourite things to do and right at the top of Blooms revised Taxonomy)

Creation of VR tours is a very simple process

Anyone can upload 360 degree images by dragging and dropping the image on to the browser window, with the free version of roundme, you can upload up to 15 images a week (which is plenty)

To get 360 degree images / photospheres you can use a 360 camera, the Streeview app on a phone or download Streetview images from the website istreetview.com.  See here for detailed instructions. 

Sometimes when you download Google Streetview images the image is too large, Roundme has a photo limit of 10000 X 5000 pixels. To change the size of the image on my Mac I used ColorSync Utility which allows you to set the pixel size of an image to the exact proportions you want while keeping the scale the same. I am sure there are equivalent programs on Windows or Chrome.

Once the photospheres are uploaded you can then add content to the 360 photos including Youtube videos, images, text and links to other 360 images thus creating a tour.

Press a button to publish it and share the link.

There you have it, the teacher or even better the students created Google Expedition / VR tour.

Here is an example of the roundme that one of our grade 5 teachers created so his class could check out their camp location before they went on camp.

How can I use this in my class?

We have been exploring using student created VR tours in the following ways.

• Art students create a virtual art gallery of their creations, this could include videos, images and a reflection on each piece.
• Science students can create virtual tours of inside the human body, explaining different parts and their jobs.
• PE students use a 360 image of a Soccer field and then annotate it to explain who is in position and what each player should do next.
• Social Studies students create virtual tours of modern buildings, ancient ruins or geographical features with their own embedded explanations including videos.
• Host Nation students explain the cultural significance of buildings and areas around Kuala Lumpur.
• English students retell a story or trace a journey using different 360 images to create a tour of literary novels they have been reading. 
• Elementary students can retell a fairy tale or make a 3D tour version of their own stories
• Maths students create a virtual problem wall, a 360 image filled with problems, they then add hotspots with links to the solutions (videos, written or images).
• Design students have been creating VR and AR resources for teachers in the school, they had to pick a teachers and ask them what type of resource they wanted and then create it for them.
• English students can create VR versions of their stories, with each location being a different 360 image 

We have only just started this process and I feel like we have only scraped the top of the iceberg, so to speak. Maybe next I will make a VR tour of all the different VR experiences our students have created.

The really easy way to make your own 360 videos

If you (or even better your students) want to create their own 360 degree videos with nothing more than a computer check this out.

Some of our students are using this to
- create virtual tours of important buildings in Malaysia
- display their poetry in a 360 world - students choose the location and read the poetry
- explain the different things they see in an ecosystem or different parts of a structure
- reflect on an excursion or field trip
- share their understanding of a geographical feature
- create a "where am I puzzle" for their classmates (great for ESOL learners)

The really easy cheats way to make your own 360 videos with nothing more than a computer

1. download a Google Streetview photosphere (360 image)

The first thing you want to do is find and download a 360 degree image, To do this we used Street View Panorama downloader. (Software here) This nifty little program allows you to download Google Streetview panoramas.

Searching on streetview downloader isn't great (nor very accurate), so I find it better to find the location on Google Maps and then load the panorama into the downloader.

To download the panorama you copy the Panorama ID into the downloader program, select the download location and name and hitting the download button.

make sure you label the panorama as from Google Street View and give the correct image credit.

2. Import the image into iMovie.

(or any other movie editing software)
Once the panorama is in iMovie make sure you change the cropping to fit, so that it doesn't cut off any of the 360 image.

You can then add titles and a voice over, you can even have multiple panoramas so that it acts more like a tour.

Adding the voice over is the big win for us, we want students describing features in the panorama or explaining what is happening while someone watches the 360 video. Students can also create virtual tours with themselves as the guides.

We then export the movie, making sure to keep the aspect ratio in tact, so that when youtube detects it as a 360 video everything is there.

3. Add 360 video metadata to your video

To ensure your video is turned into a 360 video on youtube, I find it is best to follow these instructions to add the 360 metadata (video information) to your video.

You download a small piece of software (spacial media metadata injector) which adds the information to your video

It is a simple as opening the video and pressing the inject metadata button. (it is also very quick)

Once you have the video with the injected metadata, you can .....

4 Upload it to Youtube

Once you upload the video, youtube should detect it as a 360 video. It can now be viewed like any other 360 video on a computer, tablet or with Google cardboard.

This is also a handy way to add music and titles to student created 360 videos. It would also be cool to use green screen and have a avatar (you could use gabsee or snapchat) talking as people scroll around the 360 video.

Emoji Stories

My kids love their Rory's Story Cubes, there is even an app (I haven't purchased it yet as I prefer them rolling real dice and telling stories to each other in real life). Story Cubes are fun, creative and improve literacy. Story tellers roll a set number (usually 6) of dice and then you attempt to tell a story using all the images on the dice.

The cubes are not cheap, but they are lots of fun and are a great classroom activity. I have seen teachers make their own paper story starters using random images and distribute these to their class.

This got me thinking, could this be automated using Google Docs, Sheets and some add ons?

I started playing and created my own Emoji story workflow. Users (students) fill in a form with their email address and they are sent a Google doc with six emojis they use to write a story.

For the story writer it is as simple as that, enter your email address and get a set of emojis.

Because it is a Google Doc, the writer can either type directly into the Doc or use the voice typing option to dictate their story. As the teacher I am the original owner of the doc so I can see what my students are writing.

Try it here

How I created this awesomeness

The basic workflow is Google Form to Google Sheet, then copy down a formula to randomly select an emoji from another sheet. These emojis are then inserted into a Google Doc using Autocrat and the Google Doc is shared and emailed to the email address entered in the form.

1. Google Form

I created a Google Form with two questions

• Do you want an emoji story?
• Email address

(I probably don't need the first question at all)

That is the easy part

2. Template

I then created my Google Doc template, this template composed of a simple title with a six column table, in each column I put the merge tag

3. Emoji list

In my Google form responses sheet I created a new sheet called emojis, this is where my library of emojis is stored. Basically it is six columns of emoji, these are the emojis (images) that are randomly selected for each box in my Google Doc. One Emoji is selected from each column.

To find and insert the Emoji into a Google Sheet I created another Google Doc and used the Insert Special characters tool

Then searched for Emoji that I wanted to be available for the Emoji Stories

I could then copy and paste from the Google Doc into each column of the Google Sheet. Here you can add different Emoji and set it up the way you like. You might want to have 2 columns of characters and two columns of objects, or just use three emoji picked at random or one column of 100 emoji picked six times. 

In my version there are 16 emoji in six different columns, that gives a possible 16777216 different story combinations.

4. Random selection of emoji

In my Google sheet, I added 6 extra columns numberd 1-6 (these match the Merge tags in the template doc)

In each cell I used the following formula to randomly select an emoji from the emoji sheet. 

=index(Emojis!$A$2:$A$17, randbetween(1,counta(Emojis!$A$2:$A$17) ) )

index returns the contents of the cell selected from the range A2-A17 on the emoji sheet. 

randbetween randomly select a number for the second part of the index formula.

counta counts the number of cells from cell A2 to A17 (I could have just put the number 16 in here)

As you add the formula to each column, make sure you change the reference (where the formula will be searching) to reflect each column in the emoji sheet. i.e. change is from A - B - C

5 Copy Down

Once you have created your formulas, you need to set up the copy down add on. This add on copies the formulas to the next row once a new Google Form response has been added. This is important because Google Forms doesn't add the data to the next row, it inserts a new row with the data. Copying the formula all the way down your sheet will not work. (You could use an array formula on another sheet to do this, but copy down works well)

Copy down is pretty easy to set up and there are plenty of tutorials and help online.

6 Autocrat

Autocrat is a Google sheet add on that allows you to run merge jobs on a Google sheet that does a variety of tasks.

I use it to create a Google Doc from the Merge doc and then share the doc with the email address shared. It also sends an email saying that you now have an Emoji story ready to write.

That is about it, pretty simplish and it can be used as it or make your own from all the resources here.

If you create your own you get to set it up the way you like and you become the owner of the Google Docs that are created, that way you can easily view and give feedback on the stories they create.

A few classes here at IGBIS have been using it and the kids love it, as long as they put in their correct email address.

Have fun and play and please share any thoughts or your own version of Emoji Stories. 

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