GEG Central in Cape Town holds a Meetup at Rondebosch High

On Friday 24th April I excitedly made my way to Rondebosch Boys High to take part in a GEG (Google Educator Group) Meetup.

Wondering what GEGs are? 
Google’s world-wide GEG initiative aims to grow voluntary groups of teachers in communities who will share their use of the various Google offerings with other interested teachers in their community. Here in South Africa our Google Educator Groups are growing steadily with a membership of 679 teachers since August 2014.  To date we have 12 GEG groups around the country. The GEG South Africa Google+ community  https://goo.gl/2fDXtN keeps a record of all the various groups and their activities. We invite you to join the community.

But back to the afternoon of Friday 24th April. This was the first Cape Town Central GEG group meetup since the group was formed in August last year. There were around 20 - 25 attendees and the programme was even better than the one advertised because it turned out to be a type of informal Demoslam (Google’s terminology for a TeachMeet where teachers voluntarily share ideas in short presentations with the rest of the group).  Chrome books were placed on the tables for us to share and explore.

Glen Jones, the Cape Town Central GEG leader who teaches at Western Province Preparatory School opened the meeting and shared about how their school is using Google Classroom. WPPs is using Chromebooks for some of their classes so Glenn showed us the workings of a Chromebook.  He also showed how they are making use of Google Classroom in a team manner with a class. One class can be shared between a number of teachers. There were a number of queries and ideas from the attending teachers about using Google Classroom as a group of teachers.


Andrew Hughes a Maths teacher from WPPS shared on how he uses Google Forms for Maths. There was discussion on how to use Flubaroo to mark Maths tests.

Rhine Adams who is new to WPPS is the Grade 2-7 art teacher and he shared how he uses Google products in Art. He also keeps his classes together using Google Classroom so that he can share interesting resources with the classes. The students can also share resources via Google Classroom.

The students work from Google Drive with Apps that can edit images such as Pixlr editor. He demonstrated how to do this. He also uses Google Sites with the Grade 7s and often visits the Google Cultural Institute virtually with the students.

Leighton Forbes briefly showed us a site called http:// beterafrikaans.co.za which is great for Afrikaans teachers.

What I enjoyed about this Meetup was the way folk could ask their questions and different teachers would attempt to answer them, demonstrate or add their viewpoints. After the meeting we all networked and shared informally as we tucked into the beverages supplied and eats that were supplied.

The two GEG leaders for the Cape Town Central Community, Glenn Jones and Leighton Forbes, are considering holding these meetups on a regular basis incorporating the Demoslam method of sharing ideas, tips and tricks being used each time.

I love PowerPoint!

I have to tell you that PowerPoint is an all-time favourite application with me. Apart from its main purpose as a presentation application it just has a myriad of other amazing uses. One often hears the words 'Death by PowerPoint', and rightly so at times when PowerPoint presentations are cluttered, text-heavy and just plain boring! But did you know that PowerPoint is a powerful and useful application that can be used in many different, unexpected setting! Here are 25+ examples.  I wonder if some of the other good presentation tools out there can also do all these…

PowerPoint is alive and well! 25+ ideas for using PowerPoint creatively in the classroom (by Fiona Beal) from Schoolnet SA

This is going to be a favourite Chrome extension - The Great Suspender! It frees up resources...

Have you found that Chrome just stops functioning on  your Microsoft laptop or PC at times...daily? People are loyal to their web browsers, and I love Google Chrome with all it’s functionalities. But its tendancy to slow down one’s computer and drain memory is very frustrating!  So when I heard about ‘The Great Suspender’ extension I installed it immediately. https://goo.gl/OjWhr When I read the words, ‘Magical Chrome extension puts tabs to sleep so they don't kill your browser’ I rejoiced    http://goo.gl/99K92W !

I installed it immediately. https://goo.gl/OjWhr

This extension claims to ‘automatically suspend unused tabs to free up system resources’. When I click on it I get two options.

A message from The Great Suspender after I installed it:

Actually, I am starting to love this extension after using it for a few hours. It really does its job well!

The Colour Poem Global Twitter Project #5 (Week 6) INDIGO poems with Grade 3

We have joined the Colour poem Global project started by Linda Yollis  http://goo.gl/YtbFkg. The Grade 3s did Indigo Poems today. We decided to find three indigo things,  write their names and make a statement about indigo.

I think the learners are getting to know the colours of the rainbow now!

Links to the recordings from the Google Education on Air Online conference on May 8 and 9, 2015

This Google Education on Air Online conference can only be described as a feast! Google’s recent free online conference on May 8th and 9th was a HUGE two-day event with amazing speakers. What a great way to share information with the world of educators. All the recordings were uploaded by the next day! The 2015 Education on Air conference featured tens of thousands of registered educators from 185 countries. They had more than 100 sessions to choose from in the two-day event.

Where to find the recordings
The recordings can be found neatly organised at the following link:  https://educationonair.withgoogle.com/live/2015-may. Matt Miller from Ditch that Textbook was equally fast in uploading his review of the event via his blogpost ‘10 key takeaways from Google’s Education on Air conference’. He reports that the videos can also be found at this link on YouTube.

Thank you Google for this educational feast!

The Colour Poem Global Twitter Project #5 (Week 5): BLUE poems with Grade 2

We have joined the Colour poem Global project started by Linda Yollis http://goo.gl/YtbFkg.   The Grade 2s did BLUE Poems today. The Grade 2s were excited about doing blue poems. They are enjoying this global project.

Skills learned

We used PowerPoint and I we learned the following skills:

• Using commas between words and leave a space after a comma
• Centring the words to make it look like a poem
• Using Google Images to find images
• Formatting the background and selecting a matching colour

Creating the poem
We had a little revision lesson on nouns (naming words), verbs (doing words) and adjectives (describing words) first on the mat. I could see their teacher had been through this with them. First we thought of blue things that we love (nouns). Then we tried to describe them using adjectives. We talked about that those things they had chosen can do (verbs). We ended with a noun.  These came out in a diamond shape.  Here is the format:

Noun

Adjective, Adjective

Verb, Verb, Verb

Noun

Examples

My evaluation of the lesson
The class enjoyed the lesson and I enjoyed the lesson as well.  I was pleased to see how they had caught on about nouns, verbs and adjectives.

Try using Google Classroom. Here are 10 steps to getting started...

There’s a lot of excitement about the Learning Management System,  Google Classroom,  currently with new features appearing almost weekly. This is the first in a series of posts about this amazing application.

Are you a Google Apps school? Only accounts that are associated with Google Apps for Education are able to utilize Google Classroom. Here are some first steps in the process

1. Log in
Assuming you are a GAFE (Google Apps for Education) and you are logged in to your account go to http://classroom.google.com to start your login and setup process.

2. Get started
Click on the + sign of the opening page of classroom

3. Create a class
You’ll be prompted to create a class. It’s a simple as that

4. Choose a theme
Once in you’ll land on a preset theme as the header of your classroom with an option to choose another theme or pattern from the Gallery – you can even upload your own photo for the theme.

 

If you have uploaded a photo of yourself to your Google account it will appear here f you select a pattern.

5. Invite your students to join Classroom

6. Complete your 'About' page
It also has a link to the Google Drive folder that is automatically created for each course to house resources.

7. Add your students
You can either give them the code that has automatically been generated to join with or you can invite them by email. If selecting the code option which is more suitable for bigger classes the students would just need to go to http://classroom.google.com and sign in, then click the ‘+’ icon and click Join Class.

8. Add an announcement
Go back to your stream and either add an announcement or an assignment.

If selecting an assignment you can upload an attachment, insert a Google Drive document, add a video from YouTube or insert a link.  Once yiu have completed your information click on POST.

You will see your announcement as your class sees it.

9. Add an assignment
If you are adding an assignment click on ‘Add an assignment’ and follow the links. Fill in all the required details and even watch the tour if this is your first time round! The tour takes you into the process step-by-step.

10. Review what you have just learned
To watch a video on this process take a look at Amy Mayer’s video entitled ‘Getting Started with Google Classroom’ found at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIfXzJMLsMQ



In the next post on Google Classroom we’ll add how to manage, grade and review the assignments that are returned to you.

The Colour Poem Global Twitter Project #4 (Week 4) GREEN poems with Grade 1

We have joined the Colour poem Global project started by Linda Yollis  http://goo.gl/YtbFkg. The Grade 1s did Green Poems today. The learners are loving this project. They always want to see what other classes have done. I had a student teacher helping me today so I managed to get a fairly complicated lesson done with her help.

Skills learned
We used PowerPoint and I managed to teach them the following skills:

• Adding a colour to the background 
• Finding images in Google Chrome 
• Adding an image by right-clicking and choosing ‘Çopy Image’ 
• Formatting the background to a shade of green

Creating the poem
In order to create the poem we had a discussion about the colour green first on the mat. Each one chose something green to write about. Then when we started on the PowerPoint template our format was as follows:

• Start with a question 
• Write three short sentences about the item they chose 
• Write one final statement about the item

Examples
The lesson went well. Here are a few examples:

My evaluation of the lesson
I loved the different shades of green that emerged. I always tell them that in computer lessons we don’t worry about spelling – we just write and when I walk around I’ll show them how to correct any spelling errors.  I was amazed how well the Grade 1s did in this lesson thanks to my co-helper!

GVC #18: An email from Give Back International to Team GVC4201 - winners of the Primary School division of the Global Virtual Classroom Contest

The Global Virtual Classroom Contest is sponsored by an organisation called Give Back International so I was thrilled to thrilled to receive an email and a PDF letter from Andrew Ezzel of Give Back International congratulating us on our win. The link to the PDF letter can be found here.

He said, “I want to congratulate you and your students for your outstanding and award winning work in the Global Virtual Classroom Website Design Contest! Attached is a letter from me recognizing your achievement. In the next few days, I will be mailing you a package which will include the award plaque. I want to thank you for your leadership and participation in the GVC program. We believe this is an important program to give students an opportunity to learn from other students from different cultures. We hope you continue to participate in future GVC programs”.

He also mentioned that part of our award is a sponsorship of a student that they will be sponsoring, in our name, through our GSBI Foundation. They are now speaking with a Girls High School in Harat, Afghanistan to sponsor some poor students to attend that school.

Places to find free reading material for your classroom on the Internet #1

Nowadays there are so many wonderful places to find free reading material on the Internet. I have decided to start keeping a record of these places - they come in so useful in the classroom. Here are just a few...

Public domain sources
Every year new publications enter public domain. That means their intellectual property rights have expired or are not applicable any longer.

1) Complete Library of Children’s Books online: Rosetta project
http://www.childrensbooksonline.org/library-complete_index.htm 
The Rosetta Project is a global collaboration of language specialists and native speakers working to build a publicly accessible digital library of human languages.

2) Project Gutenberg
http://www.gutenberg.org/ 
Project Gutenberg offers over 46,000 free ebooks: choose among free epub books, free kindle books, download them or read them online. 

3) The International Children's Digital Library
http://en.childrenslibrary.org/

"The mission of the International Children's Digital Library Foundation (ICDL Foundation) is to support the world's children in becoming effective members of the global community - who exhibit tolerance and respect for diverse cultures, languages and ideas -- by making the best in children's literature available online free of charge. The Foundation pursues its vision by building a digital library of outstanding children's books from around the world and supporting communities of children and adults in exploring and using this literature through innovative technology designed in close partnership with children for children. The ICDL Foundation is a non-profit corporation." -The ICDL Foundation

4) 7 Places to Find Children’s Books in the Public Domain
http://diyhomeschooler.com/7-places-to-find-childrens-books-in-the-public-domain/
This post outlines seven places to find free books for students to read.

1. Baldwin Online Children’s Literature Project
2. 19th Century Schoolbooks
3. An Old-Fashioned Education
4. Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature
5. Timeless Truths Free Online Library
6. Classic Reader Young Readers Collection
7. Complete Library of Children’s Books Online

5) 25 sources of free public domain books
http://ebookfriendly.com/free-public-domain-books-sources/
e-book friendly.com has collected links for 25 sites that offer free public domain ebooks.

Creative Commons sources
Many books are placed online under a Creative Commons License.  That means the original creators allow the books to be read and used but require acknowledgement of the original author or publisher as well.

1) The African Storybook Project http://www.africanstorybook.org/
The African Storybook Project (ASP) is a wonderful project that is currently creating and encouraging the use of a multilingual, digital library of stories for the first few years of reading (Grades 1-3)

2) Pratham Books http://www.prathambooks.org/
Take a look at their free resources