Educational Technology and Life

The features are limited, but here is a quick screencast revealing how to do a simple mail merge in Google Docs. This uses the Template Gallery and the Scripts Gallery, but you don’t really need to know how to use either to “stand on the shoulders of giants” and benefit from the work others have done before you.

As always, let me know if this is at all unclear, or if you have anything clever to add yourself. :)

When I was presenting on “Killer Research Tools” at the Google Teacher Academy in London, Googler Dana Nguyen asked me why I didn’t include Google News Archive Search. I responded, “because I don’t like it.” Naturally, Dana used to work on that project… and was gracious enough to show me the light. In short, I didn’t like it because so many of the archived articles cost money from various services. But, it turned out millions of articles were archived full text by Google and are freely available – if you know where to look. Like so many great Google features, this one was well buried, so I created a screencast to capture what Dana showed me right away.

As always, let me know what you think… and if you’ve used this in a clever way with students… or if you know any similar tricks. :)

At the request of a recent workshop participant who was frustrated by not being able to replicate this trick using Google Translate, I recorded a quick screencast.

Let me know in the comments if this isn’t clear or you have any additional suggestions – or similar tricks.

I just finished speaking at the Google Apps EDU Certified Trainer Summit, and I want to share the slide deck along with the resources in a public space… so here we are on the blog. These slides may not stand entirely on their own (and good presentations never do, right?), but many of the links below will lead you to more in depth written explanations of the anecdotes and metaphors I was sharing. I hope you’ll add to these resources by leaving comments and links to your own “effective professional development” resources.

Welcome Activity
More: http://edtechlife.com/?p=2094

Google’s Mission
More: http://www.google.com/corporate/
This is in alignment with our mission as educators.

Computer Using Educators, Inc. (CUE)
About: http://www.cue.org/about

CUE Confernce
More: http://www.cue.org/conference/

CUEtoYOU
More: http://www.cue.org/cuetoyou

Google Teacher Academy
More: http://www.google.com/educators/gta.html

Google Workshop for Educators
More: http://www.cue.org/google
Live Map: http://goo.gl/maps/QBP9

Google Apps EDU Certified Training Organization
More: http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/certification_index.html

Passion and Professional Development
More: http://edtechlife.com/?p=1551

The Lead Learner Philosophy
More: http://litt.wikispaces.com/2009-04-15welcome

The Face-to-Face Philosophy
F2F PD must be better than the podcast.
Webinars need to be better than the podcast.
The podcast needs to be better than the podcast. ;)
Tap the talents, experience, and creative energy of the people in the room.
Make, do, or create together!

The Kindergarten Philosophy
Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/2908834853/

The “And Life” Philosophy
Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwworks/2908834853/

A Message From The Future
More: http://edtechlife.com/?p=1889 & http://edtechlife.com/?p=1920

Driving a Race Car
More: http://litt.wikispaces.com/welcome2

Google and Driving a Race Car
More: http://www.google.com/corporate/history.html

Reflection Activity
More: http://edtechlife.com/?p=2092
Image Source: http://bit.ly/dxrLqu

Go Forth and Do Great Things!
This is an homage to Daryl Stermon, who recently retired from the San Diego County Office of Education. :)

Sweet! I just received this from Google:

Hello Google Apps administrator,

At long last, Google Apps accounts can now function more like full Google Accounts. In addition to current services like Gmail and Google Docs, you are now able to let your users access many more Google applications with their Google Apps accounts, like Blogger, Picasa Web Albums and Reader.

This transition will automatically happen for your Google Apps accounts this fall, but we encourage you to begin the transition on your own schedule as soon as possible.

Step 1: Review the known issues regarding this change
Step 2: Sign into the Google Apps control panel and access the transition dashboard
Step 3: Decide which Google services your users should be able to access with their Google Apps accounts
Step 4: Contact any users on your domain who have conflicting accounts
Step 5: Select specific users to be early adopters or transition your whole domain
We hope you and your users enjoy all the new capabilities now available with your Google Apps accounts. For help and answers to frequently asked questions, please visit our Help Center.

Sincerely,

The Google Apps team

————-
You have received this mandatory email service announcement to update you about important changes to your Google Apps account.

Please don’t reply to this email, as we won’t be able to review your response. If your question wasn’t answered, please feel free to visit our Help Center.

Google Inc.
1600 Amphitheatre Parkway
Mountain View, CA 94043

I hope many of you get to try this out soon… I have high hopes and will share what I learn.

As promised to many on the waiting lists, we’re posting the iPad in Education workshop resources here at CUE.org. While this is no substitute for being in the room as Steve Dembo (or Robert Craven) leads the session in person, here are the workshop outlines and resources:

iPad in Education Workshop

Feel free to play along with the “Share Your Favorite Apps” activity. :)

If you’d like to register for an iPad in Education workshop yourself, you can see what’s currently open for registration from CUE. Or, if you’d like to bring the iPad in Education workshop to your own site, district, or region, you can request the workshop via the CUEtoYOU professional development program.

• Google Teacher Academy: London, UK
  And the big news for the week: "Application now open for GTA London on Thursday, July 29th, 2010. Apply by midnight PDT on Thursday, June 17th. The Google Teacher Academy is a FREE professional development experience designed to help primary and secondary educators from around the globe get the most from innovative technologies. Each Academy is an intensive, one-day event where participants get hands-on experience with Google's free products and other technologies, learn about innovative instructional strategies, receive resources to share with colleagues, and immerse themselves in an innovative corporate environment. Upon completion, Academy participants become Google Certified Teachers who share what they learn with other primary and secondary educators in their local region."
  (tags: gta googleined googleapps gct)
• Official Google Enterprise Blog: Putting email in context with Gmail contextual gadgets
  And for Gmail users comes this big news (particularly if you use Mail in Google Apps): "Contextual gadgets in Gmail – like YouTube, Google Docs and Picasa previews – intelligently display relevant information from other systems as you read your email, so you can be more efficient without leaving your inbox. Starting today, third party developers can build Gmail contextual gadgets and distribute them in the Google Apps Marketplace."
  (tags: gmail googleapps googleappsmarketplace)
• Encrypted Google search coming to a browser near you
  Also welcome news from Google, especially for privacy advocates: "Google has begun rolling out an encrypted version of its search engine in an effort to protect Internet users from having their searches sniffed by others on their network. The new version of Google is SSL encrypted and located at https://www.google.com. Like many of Google's other changes, it's being rolled out slowly to all users who choose to search securely."
  (tags: google search security privacy)
• Official Google Blog: Google Apps highlights – 5/21/2010
  This week brought several big annuncements for Google Apps (including, in most cases, Education Edition): Google Calendar gets a new look, New themes for forms in Google Docs, Drag images into Gmail messages, Google Voice open to students, Google Wave (Labs) open to all, and (most importantly) More Google applications coming for Google Apps customers.
  (tags: googleined googleapps)

• Email Alerts for Google Scholar
  Great news: "Google Scholar added the option to get email alerts when new articles related to your interests are published."
  (tags: research googleined googlescholar)

• Using captioned videos for English as a second language or ESL I received an email about this service… they catalog captioned videos on the web, and have provided some support for educators using the captioned videos for teaching ESL. (tags: esl language video captions)

• My Adventures in Educational Technology: Saskatchewan IT Summit 2010 – Cool Tools Duel – Dean Shareski and Will Richardson Thanks to Joanna Sanders Bobiash for sharing this. (tags: tools)