Setting Hebrew on a Chromebook

Setting up a Chromebook to type in Hebrew is fairly simple.

Click down in the bottom right area of the screen, where the time and wi-fi signal is.

Click on Settings; scroll down and click on Advanced to see more. Scroll down to Languages and click Language and input settings

Click on Add at the bottom of the Languages window

Scroll down until you find Hebrew; choose it.

Click OK.

With Hebrew selected in the Languages box, check off Use this language for spell checking. (If you choose Display Google Chrome OS in this language, then everything - menus, settings, etc. will be in Hebrew. You probably want to avoid that unless you're an Israeli and you'll be using the Chromebook in Israel. So for most of you - don't.) Under Input, select Hebrew keyboard. Then hit Done.

The first time you switch from English to Hebrew, hit Ctrl+Shift+Spacebar; then you can toggle back and forth using Ctrl+Spacebar

Binary files and How to Avoid Them in Google Classroom

Hit my first snag before my first classes started. I uploaded a Google doc to Google Classroom and it appeared with the words "Binary File" instead of Google Doc.

The result was that although I could open it, my students could not.

Turns out, it was my fault.

When you upload a Google Doc, you can choose the paperclip (upload from your computer) or the Google Drive symbol (upload from Google Drive).

If you have Google Drive installed on your computer, either one should be able to work, but that's where I messed up.

You have to upload Google Docs from Google Drive; do not use the paperclip!

The binary file is actually a link to to the URL of the Google Doc. Since both reside on your computer, it will work for you. But it won't work for your students.

Inviting a Co-Teacher to Google Classroom

Sometimes you may wish to share your Google Classroom with another teacher. Perhaps you are teaching two sections of the same class and want to know what the other is doing. Perhaps you have a Sulam shadow or ESS caseworker who wants to stay on top of a student's workload.

Here's how to do it.

Open the class and go to the ABOUT tab.

Under your name (and picture, if you've linked one with your school account) it says INVITE TEACHERS.

That's it.

Finding & Installing Hebrew Fonts on a PC

New classroom this year, which means I need to install, once again, some useful fonts on my computer (especially Rashi).

Downloading

The best place for free Hebrew fonts (and more than you can ever want or use) is The Open Siddur Project.

Download the fonts-master.zip file (I have a Fonts folder in my Download folder) and right-click it and choose Unzip. The Rashi font is called Mekorot Rashi.

For a look at all the fonts, open this .pdf

Installing

Once the fonts are unzipped, just right-click the font you want to install and choose INSTALL.

Or you can drag the fonts from their folders in Windows Explorer into the Fonts folder and Windows will install the fonts..
(Open up the fonts folder from the Control Panel or Search for Fonts in the search box when you click on the start menu [the little Windows symbol in the bottom left of your screen])

If you can't find the font you saw on the comparison chart (link above) just search the folder in which you opened the file.

Lesson Planner Part Two: Display

In my previous post, I described creating a Google Form to use as on online lesson planner.
Now I will describe what I am doing with the data.

A Confession

All I really want to do with my data is display it pretty much the same way it looked in my old paper lesson planner. Boring and unimaginative. I know. (I'll get a little more exciting with it in a bit.)

The experimental Google app Fusion Tables really fit the bill. (NB - I am having limited success  getting it to work on my Chromebook, just my desktop / laptop. Opening it from this page seems to work, however. )

.

Click "Choose File" and find the Google spreadsheet that you made from your Google form. Allow it access to your Google Drive if it asks nicely.

Follow the prompts, clicking "Next" until you reach the end product.

Choosing "Cards" will give you all your classes in individual blocks.

Click the pull-down menu under Filter if you just want to see one of your classes.

You can copy the blocks if you wish. They will paste into Word (or Google Docs, of course) as a table, and you can format it as you wish.

The final post in the series will cover some other ways of organizing and displaying your data from a Google spread sheet.

Archive Last Year's Google Classroom Classes

Miriam reminded me of this piece of housekeeping.

Clear out last year's classes from Google Classroom.

Go to your main page, click on the old classes at the three dots in the upper right-hand corner.

Choose archive. The class and all its postings will be retained in your Google Drive in the folder "Classroom," but won't clutter your main page.

ADDENDUM: If, like me, you teach the same sections each year, naming the class in Google Classroom can get confusing - in your Google Drive Classroom folder, you'll have several folders labeled "9^th Grade Biology" or whatever.

You can go into your Google Drive Classroom folder and rename the old classes to avoid confusion. (Right-click > Rename) I just place an "X" at the beginning of the inactive folders.

ADDENDUM 2: Sometimes I just don't think. 

Go into your classroom folder, make a new folder (NEW > Folder) and name it with last year's date (e.g. "2015-16").

Move all of last year's folders into this folder. SO much neater. 

And while you're at it, color-code your folders to keep them straight.

Doc Hub - One Minor Plus over Kami

Although I enthused recently over Kami, the Chrome app Doc Hub has some features to recommend it. The free version is fine for having students fill in pdfs.

You still need to direct it to save in Google Drive; it will not do so automatically. It also saves its own copy of the edited document, so if a student forgets to save it to Google Drive, it is not irretrievably lost.

The one feature it has that I really like is a silly one, but it makes my life easier.

You can insert all sorts of symbols on the document, like check marks and exes.

You can change the size of the symbol and its fill color.

True, you could use the Draw feature on Kami (and as I use a pen stylus instead of a mouse, I can actually drawing something that looks pretty decent - wouldn't want to try that with a mouse). But I like being able to insert those symbols directly on to the students' filled out pdf "papers."

Individual copies in Google Docs

A teacher came to me with a very specific need. He wanted to send out a note-taking template - that he used to xerox and hand out - as a Google doc.

He did not want to have to collect them, so he did not want to use the Assignment feature of Google Classroom with "EACH STUDENT WILL GET A COPY." But he also wanted the option of being able to look at them on line to see how their note-taking skills were progressing.

He did not want to convert it to a pdf and have the students write on it with Kami, because he wanted them to have as much space as they needed to write.

He was also concerned about document spacing - when the students would type in the allotted space on the document, it would push all the white space he had previously created for the students' handwriting.

Spacing

The last problem just required some creative editing. I suggested that rather than leave all the white space, he should just add "RESPONSE - " (or the appropriate prompt) after the question and leave one blank line after that. The students can place their cursor after the word "RESPONSE - " (or whatever) and they can type as much as they like for each question.

So from this...














to this.

Sharing

Deciding how to share the document with all his students, allowing each student to get his/her own copy (no collaborative note-taking!) took some more experimentation. If he just shares the document with the entire class, everyone will be writing on the same document.

The best way to meet all of his expectations is:

Share the Google doc with the class as a Can View.

The students will not be able to write anything on it.

Then the students should be instructed to make a copy of the document. (File > Make a Copy) . The new file will be called Copy of [Whatever the file was named].

Instruct the students to replace "Copy of" with their name, and to share it with the teacher.

This satisfies all the requirements - each student gets his/her own copy, and the teacher can view them when needed and offer feedback or encouragement.

Lesson Planner Lost & Found

Although I have moved much of my life online (attendance and grades, file storage, bill paying, shopping) I have yet to find an online app or program that could replace the same type of wire-bound lesson planner that I've been using for 28 years.

I wasn't sure what I was looking for, exactly, but I felt, as Justice Potter Stewart said in an entirely different context, that "I [would] know it when I see it."

I finally found a fully customizable program that gave me exactly what I wanted (more on that in a bit), only to be disappointed to receive an e-mail that it was eliminating the free version, and the features that I wanted would now cost me $14.95/month. No thank you. I could get HBO for that.

But having had the program, albeit briefly, it finally clarified for me the criteria I needed to design one on my own. I wanted something that would differentiate between my classes, add a date stamp, give me room to describe what I taught, what got sent out to my students and whether I posted any handouts or SMARTBoard notes to Google Classroom.

The first part of my solution has been Google Forms. (I know, right? It was there all along along, like the Purloined Letter, or the ability to go back to Kansas.)

If you're unfamiliar with Google Forms, I'll provide a brief tutorial. If you are familiar with it, check out the next post, which will detail  the ways I am organizing and displaying all this data once I collect it.

Setting up the Google Form

What follows is what I did to meet my needs. You can set it up however you wish to meet your own needs.

Go to Google Forms (or just Google it) and choose a new document. Click on the first "Untitled Question," rename it Date. In the pull-down menu on the right, choose Date.

Click the + on the side to add another variable, and rename it. This spot is going to be for my classes, so I will name it "Class" and I am going to use a Dropdown menu and add each of my classes.

For the description of my lesson (again, click the + and rename the question), I might need lots of room, so I will choose Paragraph.

For my handouts (or this year, with 1:1 Chromebooks, send-outs), I will just choose the Short Answer.

For the last piece, a reminder whether I posted anything to Google Classroom, I just used a Multiple Choice question with two options - Yes or No.

 I have taken this form and put a link to it on my Bookmarks Bar in Chrome.
Next post: Now that we are collecting this data. what do we do with it?

UPDATE: I ended up adding two more categories - one for Homework and a follow-up to Post to Google Classroom - If so, then what?

UPDATE #2: I realized that I really didn't need all of this information as the semester wore on. To streamline the process I eliminated the Homework entry and the Handouts entry, as it was duplicated by the What did I post to Google Classroom entry.

Some helpful hints on using Chromebooks

Many people used to using a computer mouse are stymied at first when using the trackpad on the Chromebooks.

The secret to Chromebooks is


You do not need to make the trackpad go "click" when you hit it. Try practicing the gentlest touch you can muster until you can close a tab, for example. You'd be surprised. 

Here are a few (gentle) finger motions to practice on the trackpad.:
Two-finger tap = right click
(using the tips of your index and middle finger together at one time. Gently.)
Two-finger swipe (vertical) = scroll (it's just a gentle rub, a light tickle, up or down the pad with two finger-tips)
I will admit - I have more trouble pulling off the three-finger motions.
Three-finger tap = open link in new tab
(or you can two-finger tap and tap (gently) "open in new tab"
Three-finger swipe (horizontal)  = switch tabs