Another Google-y Treat!

Need a fast, FREE method to survey your students or colleagues? Do you just want to create it and quickly send out a link or post on Blackboard for your entire class?

Advantages to Google Forms:

• Quick and simple to create
• Send participants a live link
• Results are sent to a Google Spreadsheet
• You can collaborate with others on either the form creation or the results or both
• There are lots and lots of resources and tutorials on the web that you can refer to

Google Forms might just be the solution you are looking for. Click the survey image below for a quick tutorial. This tutorial is also posted on the Faculty Learning Corner under Web-Based Resources for future reference.

Some other excellent references to help you create a Google form or to generate some great ideas for using these forms:

Tons of Google Forms for Teachers, Administrators and Students

Innovative Ideas for Using Google Forms

In the News

We’ve been hearing more and more about Google Apps in Education and Google tools lately. Google Drive, Hangouts… and what’s in that Cloud anyway?? Here are a few articles worth checking out.

Online Collaboration with Open Tools: The Case for Google Drive & Hangouts – Brian Janz, WCET Frontiers Blog Post

The Staggering Number Of Schools That Have Gone Google – Jeff Dunn, Edudemic

iTeach Juneau 2013 a Success

We recently completed a very productive iTeach 2013 in Juneau. Twelve faculty participated. You can read some of our posts by searching Twitter with the hashtag: #iteachak.

Guest presenter from UAF, Heidi Olson

Some of the tools that were explored and enjoyed included:

• Adobe Presenter
• Voki
• Pixton
• Jing
• Google Apps for Educators
• Creating movies with YouTube
• Elluminate Live

We had great discussions around choosing teaching strategies and tools that best help students meet their learning objectives while at the same time are engaging and fun both for content creation and content viewing. We also had good dialogues about the importance of writing attainable goals and objectives and aligning them to assessments and activities.

It was an intense week and the iTeach staff thank all the faculty attendees for their participation. As always, we learned lots from our faculty participants, and we hope our faculty had a challenging and productive time. Next, we’re gearing up for iTeach Sitka!

iTeach Sitka is Coming Soon, and It’s Going to ROCK!!

Is your application in for iTeach 2013? Here’s a preview of what we’ll be doing together:

• Using the latest iPad and sharing the best educational apps
• Learning about some Google Apps that can enhance your classroom experience
• Learning some great story-boarding tips and techniques that can be used when designing instruction
• Creating video tutorials or video lectures
• Using Blackboard and online design best practices
• Collaborating with faculty from UAA
• Playing with nationally known presenter, Diane Elkins
• Designing and building your online course
• Learning more about Jing, Camtasia, SoftChalk, VoiceThread, Blackboard, AdobePresenter,  and lots of cool web 2.0 tools

It is sure to be a fun and productive week. Please join us!

Click for Complete iTeach Sitka Information.

Feeling “Google-y”?

Kathi, Lori, Maureen, Marian, Nicole and Sarah (along with 22 others from around the state) immersed in Google Apps for Education training last week. It was pretty amazing how much we learned in two days. Even when you use something like Google every day, there are so many tricks and shortcuts to learn! Thank you *so* much Molly Schroeder for your great Google Apps for Educators Boot Camp!

Here are some keyboard shortcuts that I found quite useful for Chrome and Google:

• Control or Command T will open a new browser tab
• Control or Command F will bring up a search bar to search your document for something
• Command Shift 4 (on mac) will grab an image
• If you are using Google Sites, “e” will put you quickly into edit mode

A few good tools or websites that you might be interested in checking out are:

Google Boot Camp “ON” — Summit Postponed!

The Google Boot Camp (April 4/5) is ON, but unfortunately the summit itself has been postponed indefinitely. While this is disappointing, the good news is that the boot camp will be tailored to meet the needs of teachers who want to become Google Certified Instructors AND those who really want an intense “how to use” the google suite of tools, or how do I show teachers how best to use these tools in the classroom.

The Google suite of free tools can be used by any faculty, staff, or student. And, while UAS may not officially be a google campus, many of our students have Google accounts already through the university, or through personal accounts.

You can read more about the Boot Camp here: http://ak.gafesummit.com/bootcamp   I’ve been in contact with the organizers and they assure me that both days will be filled with activities that will enhance your use of these tools in the face-to-face classroom, hybrid or fully online classroom and/or in your work or play.

Think about joining us at the Google Boot Camp!

Kathi

Reminder: Google in Education Alaska Summit

This high intensity, two-day event in April (6-7) at the University of Alaska Anchorage focuses on deploying, integrating, and using Google Apps for Education and other Google Tools to promote student learning in K-12 and higher education. The program features Google Certified Teachers, Google Apps for Education Certified Trainers, practicing administrators, solution providers, Google engineers, and representatives from the Google education teams. For more information and to register visit the original blog post.

The First Google in Education Alaska Summit!

A new exciting opportunity for Alaskan educators! Jim Sill, who presented a two day Google workshop for Sitka faculty and staff last year, is coming to Anchorage for the first Google in Education Alaska Summit. This high intensity, two day event in April (6-7) at the University of Alaska Anchorage focuses on deploying, integrating, and using Google Apps for Education and other Google Tools to promote student learning in K-12 and higher education. The program features Google Certified Teachers, Google Apps for Education Certified Trainers, practicing administrators, solution providers, Google engineers, and representatives from the Google education teams. For more information and to register visit the event’s Registration Page.

For those of you who have engaged in Title III sponsored professional development activities in the past year, you may apply for travel funds for this summit. If you are interested, send Mary Purvis an email prior to March 15, 2013 stating the following:

1. Why you want to attend.
2. What Title III activities have you engaged in in the last year?

If you are a seasoned Google tool user and would like to present at the summit sharing your expertise, please contact us for information on how to present at this conference.