ChisholmCC

One of my favorite features of Google Drive is Google Forms. If you're unfamiliar with this, think of it as a way to create quick surveys that can be used for a number of applications. Google automatically aggregates this data into a Google Spreadsheet, making forms a great way to quickly collect and share information. I have seen educators and administrators use Google Forms in the most creative and inventive ways. If you're just starting with Google Forms, here are five ways that you can use them to streamline your classroom!

If you're a user of Google Drive, then no doubt you have also heard of and likely used Google Presentations (Google's version of PowerPoint). It's a great tool to create slick presentations in the cloud, especially after its most recent overhaul. However, Google Presentations is also a handy tool for doing some great projects with your students that have nothing to do with public speaking. Here are some fun exercises you can try in your classes.

Google Docs is a powerful word processing tool that many schools have adopted. As it's similar to Microsoft Word and other word processing tools, most of its features are intuitive to use. However, in addition to completing many of the functions of a traditional word processor, Google Docs provides even more capabilities that can be invaluable to educators. Here are ten tricks that can make your life easier with Google Docs:

Lesson Overview Students gain a sense of the living history that surrounds the novel To Kill a Mockingbird. Through studying primary source materials from American Memory and other online resources, students of all backgrounds may better grasp how historical events and human forces have shaped relationships between black and white, and rich and poor cultures of our country.

The Horizon Report 2014 K-12 edition is now available. Developed by the New Media Consortium (NMC) and the Consortium for School Networking (CoSN), this is the sixth annual K-12 edition. It describes findings from the NMC Horizon Project, an ongoing, collaborative research activity designed to identify trends and describe emerging technologies that are likely to have an impact on teaching, learning, and creative inquiry.

"Whatever you do the first year will be a trainwreck (compared to the nice and tidy sit-and-get PD). So from the beginning, everyone should be aware that it's all a work in progress-just like the profession itself. Perhaps the greatest potential here is in the chance to personalize professional development for teachers. The above ideas are too vague to be considered an exact guide, but an "exact guide" really isn't possible without ending up with something as top-heavy and standardized as the process it seeks to replace-or at least supplement. Instead focus on the big ideas-personalizing educator training through self-directed and social media-based professional development."

"The growing access to knowledge, information, people, and tools that our students are getting demands a shift in how we think about the work they do in school."

""We saw how the best practices we were witnessing could inform a really transformative school model," Healy said. Here are their 6 chief take-aways from what they saw and learned about schools that work.

We need to develop more learning opportunities where students constitute the actual evaluators for the work itself. Imagine if students, teachers and others evaluate and provide feedback to determine the effectiveness of a student's creation: Develop an 60-second speech to be shared with the student council and three advertising posters to be copied and placed around school to decrease bullying. Your work will be evaluated according to our rubric by the students in our class, outside professionals and me - as the teacher. These are the experiences that push learning beyond a one-way conversation between student and teacher. They demystify the assessment process and allow each student to be a creator and simultaneous evaluator, providing multiple experiences for students to recognize and apply the criteria for quality"

"Know-how is where the difference lies"...Along w "so,what & "why-buy" (and not just with #Twitter Literacy) http://t.co/kiWzdDOgkU #edchat

"The Buck Institute for Education commissioned the cutting-edge advertising agency, Common Craft, to create a short animated video that explains in clear language the essential elements of Project Based Learning (PBL). This simple video makes the essential elements of PBL come alive and brings to light the 21st Century skills and competencies (collaboration, communication, critical thinking) that will enable K-12 students to be college and work-ready as well as effective members of their communities."