Assistive Technology and Accessibility Resources

One of the things I do in my role as a K-12 Education Strategist is work on resources for schools to use. I've been working on a resource document that has resoures on Assistive Technology and Accessibility and thought I would share it here:




Related:

More Accessibility Resources

Google Accessibility Features and Resources



-

Benefits of Google Apps and Chromebooks for Schools

Benefits of Google Apps and Chromebooks

Updated version of this as a Google Doc: https://goo.gl/zbcAA2 

How does Google Apps and Chromebooks compare to Apple or Microsoft inside the classroom?

• Google Apps and Chromebooks are extremely easy to use. Students and teachers can access thousands of web apps and extensions, most free, as well as everything on the internet.  
• Schools using Chromebooks have great experiences with limited issues or concerns.
• Unlimited file storage on Google Drive (any type of file)
• plenty of resources to help teachers use them to improve teaching and learning
• can use Office Editing (free app) in Docs, Sheets and Slides to edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files
• can use Office 365 or any web based software
• can be used as the only device, or in a mixed device environment
• huge community of users that share and support each other (over 50 Millions users of GAFE!!)
• Google Classroom is a game-changer…it allows teachers to share resources and communicate with students, distribute, collect and grade assignments, and so much more.  Google Classroom resources for Educators

Why Should Schools go with Google Apps and Chromebooks?

Google Apps for Education and Chromebooks Educational Resources

Resources for Teachers:

• Educational Technology Guy: Google Apps and Chromebooks Resource Page
• Google for Education Training Center - excellent resource for teachers on using Google Apps in the Classroom
• Google Chromebooks Basics course - another excellent resource for teachers using Chromebooks in the Classroom
• What Can You Do On a Chromebook? Pretty Much Everything
• Google Apps Training Site
• Learn how to Use Google Apps at School
• Google Apps and Chromebooks for Education Resources
• Lots of great resources and web apps to use with Chromebooks!
• Chromebooks do work offline
• Google Apps and Chromebooks for Special Education and Special Needs

How do they manage a Chrome device versus an Apple or Microsoft device from an admin perspective?  

• Chromebooks are extremely easy to manage, whether managing 30 or 30,000
• Management is done through web based admin console from anywhere, on any device
• do not have to physically touch the devices once they are enrolled
• settings, apps, etc are all pushed out almost instantly
• over 170 settings can be managed
• manage users, networks, devices, apps, and much more
• import users from a variety of systems into Google Apps easily
• easiest devices to manage
• no re-imaging,
• easily shared in as a multi-user shared device

Technical Resources:

• Educational Technology Guy: Google Apps and Chromebooks Resource Page
• Getting Started with Google Apps for Education
• Google Apps Administrator Help Center
• Chrome for Work and Education Help Center
• Google Apps for Education IT Guide
• Google Apps for Education Deployment Guide
• Google Apps Deployment Site
• Google Apps Deployment Checklists
• Chrome Device Quick Start Guide
• Chrome Device Deployment Guide

What is the ROI and price?  

• huge ROI and low prices
• GAFE is free
• most web apps are free (even when the iPad app had a fee)
• easy to use so they get used all the time in class (and <7 second start up)
• Total Cost of Ownership Calculator for Chromebooks
• Example - 1000 students - 3 year total cost of ownership
• Windows PC $6,213,000
• Chromebooks $1,071,000 - savings of $5,141,000 !!! (that is 82 % less)
• Mac and Apple are  similar to or even higher costs than Windows (higher hardware costs, more labor to deploy and manage, software costs)
• Example:

• iPad: $399 + $99 Apple Care + $99 keyboard + $49 case = $646
• Chromebook: $299 + $30 license  = $329 – half the price of an iPad
• A Chromebook ($329) and a Nexus 7 tablet ($199 + $30 license + $30 case = $259 ) (Total $588) can both be purchased for less than the price of just one iPad
• Chrome web apps are 95% free
• iPad apps, while there are free ones, are more fee based and license is non-transferable
• Windows devices have higher up-front cost, are harder to manage, require more IT support, Antivirus and more.
• Most users are using web-based apps anyway, or there is a web based version available

Why Should Schools go with Google Apps and Chromebooks?

* Easy to use, inexpensive, easy to manage, great training and PD resources, you can do anything on them. *

Google Classroom update - students can join class - teacher in different domain

Google Classroom is an excellent tool from Google that allows students and teachers to collaborate and communicate and allows teachers to assign work to students, collect that work, grade it and comment on it and return it to the student.

One limiting factor in using it was the fact that the students and teachers had to be in the same Google apps domain. Many schools use separate domains.

That has now changed. You can whitelist each domain in each admin console and allow them to work together in classroom. Simply follow the instructions here: https://support.google.com/edu/classroom/answer/6173514

It's easy to do and make Classroom accessible to even more schools.


Google Classroom Resources for Educators






-

Google Tips - 78, and counting, Things You Didn't Know You Could Do with Google

Google has a great resource, Google Tips, that provides quick, easy tips for using Google Products.

It is setup in a card format, using simple, easy terms (not tech-speak). You can view all the cards or sort by Category, such as Do More, Save Time, Have Fun, or by Product (Android, Chrome, Gmail, Drive) etc.

Click on the card to get more info. Most have some kind of video to show you how to do it, or very simple instructions. Each card also has a little icon on it showing what it applies to: mobile, video, security, etc.

The cards have great info and are easy to understand.

This is a great resource for anyone, especially schools using Google apps.

Related:

Google for Educators Resources

Resources to get Started With Google Apps and Chromebooks

Some Expert Tips for Adopting Google Apps for Education

Google's Own "Learn Google Apps" Site - great resource for Google Apps users

-

Google Feud - turns Google search suggestions into a game

Google Feud is a fun game Google has made that has players try to guess what Google's auto-complete will say to answer a question. It is easy, fun and makes you think. It is like family feud where you have to get the top most popular results to get the answer correct.

One warning to schools: certain results may be offensive or incomprehensible so it may not be acceptable for schools yet.

Choose a category and try to answer the question. It tallies your score and moves you on to each round. It's funny too since some of the answers are a little out there.


-

Guided Tour of a Google Data Center - very interesting

Google has some very cool data centers. The video below is a guided tour of one. It's pretty interesting to watch. Students love seeing this too. It's also a great learning resource to discuss energy, environment, data, technology and security.

The data center campuses are very secure, with very limited access. Security includes badges, iris scanners, cameras, guards, multiple fences and even under-floor intrusion detection systems. 

The centers run pretty efficiently and at higher temperatures than most. In typical Google fashion, employees can bring their dogs, decorate their work spaces, uses scooters and bicycles to get around, Google's colors are everywhere and they even have a foosball table. The server racks are custom designed and built, as are the servers, and data security is high. Failed drives are wiped and physically destroyed. 

Take a look at the video above and you can read more about this data center here and see some pictures here. Here is the link to Google's main data center page: http://www.google.com/about/datacenters/


--

Google announces updates to Translate App - great uses for Education

Google has just announced an update to their Translate app that will prove very useful in education. Google Translate apps have been updated (Android and iOS) to do instant translations.

You can already use the camera mode to take a picture of text and get it translated. Now, you can do it instantly. Aim your camera at the text and the translation will instantaneously show up over the image, even without a data connection. This works for English to and from: German, Italian, Portuguese, French, Russian and Spanish with plans to add more languages soon.

This is great for ELL students who are trying to learn English and need some help, as well as helping out on trips. Students, and parents, could use this to translate signs at the schools, as well as text on posters and such.

Real time conversation translation has been available on Android for over a year, but it has just been updated to work faster and sound more natural. It supports two-way translations. This can assist students, as well as ELL parents, and teachers communicate easier. 

Both Android and iOS will get the updates over the next few days, with iOS finally getting the features Android has had for a while. 

I can't help be think of science fiction and universal translators when I see things like this. So cool. 

Related:

Google Translate Adds 10 More Languages

Google for Education Resources

Android for Education Resources

The Science Fiction of my youth has become reality

--

Google Launches Guide to Activating Technology in Schools

Google has just launched an excellent site to help teachers, administrators and technology staff get started using technology effectively in school. They took lessons learned from other schools and compiled a guide to bringing learning online with the best resources, tips and tools. It starts with defining the goals, investing in internet access, building the team, offering web tools and managing the change.

The guide has some excellent resources and tips, but also includes case stories from different schools. It is available in 10 different languages too.

This is an invaluable resource to any school/district that is looking to go digital or even expand what they do now. Take a look.

Here is a short video about it too:




Related:
Google for Education Resources

My most used/favorite Apps and how I use them

I have a few apps and resources that I use on a daily basis. I thought this might be a nice way to end the year.

Here they are and how I use them:


Email - I use Google's Inbox for most email, and Outlook at work. In Outlook, the Evernote Clipper is my main tool to get things out of Outlook and into Evernote where I can use it. I love Inbox for email as I can create reminders, add reminders to emails, more easily categorize and organize them.

Evernote - I use this for everything. Here are some examples:
 http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2014/12/examples-of-using-evernote-as-teacher.html

Google Apps, especially Drive, Classroom, Chrome browser, Calendar, Blogger, and Sites - use Drive for all of my files that I use with classes and all of my legacy files (most new things are in Evernote). Classroom for assignments and communicating with students, Calendar for organizing, Blogger for this blog, Sites for technology resource sites and classroom sites.



Social Media - Google+, Twitter, and Facebook - Google+ is my go to for education and technology resources, connections and sharing. I love that you can have longer posts and discussions than on Twitter. I also use Twitter for education and technology resource finding. Facebook is just for personal connections.
Google+ is a thriving community and I find some great discussions and resources on it.


Feedly - I subscribe to a lot of sites and blogs and use Feedly to organize and read them, as well as easily share them to Google+, Twitter and even Evernote. This is where I find a lot of resources for use in my job, life and for this blog.



Pocket - I use this to save articles and blog posts for later reading/action, including reading them offline later.



Tech & Learning - great resource for educators and administrators on educational technology. I go subscribe to the site and blogs and magazine.



Hardware- HTC One Android Smartphone, Nexus 7 tablet, Chromebook
-- access every app and piece of data on any of my devices, anywhere.
My smartphone comes with me everywhere. I use my tablet for browsing social media and watching Netflix and my Chromebook is my main work horse.




Related:


My Favorite Resources for Teachers and Students

Technology I'm using daily as a School District CIO

Technology I use on a Daily Basis - updated for 2011

-

Two services to Backup your cloud files and data, in the cloud

Many people want to go completely with cloud services, but many, like me, like having a backup of our cloud data somewhere besides that service. I keep backup's of my Google and Evernote data on my home laptop, which also gets saved on my archive hard drive.

But what if you don't want to use any sort of backup/download on your own devices? What if you are going completely Chromebook?

Here are two of the services that are out there:




1. Backupify: automatically performs scheduled backups of 10 different online services, including Google Apps, Wordpress, Facebook, Flickr, and more. They offer Twitter backups for free and three additional premium plans that range from $3.95 to $14.95 per month, depending on how much storage you need. Backupify also encrypts data, gives you version history, cloud based restore, and two-factor authentication. They seem more geared towards the enterprise vs. individual users. 

2. Revert.io. It automatically backs up your Evernote, Tumbler, MailChimp and ConstantContact data in the free version and keeps the data for 30 days. If you upgrade to the paid version ($9.99 per month) that will keep your data longer and also add Dropbox, Highrish and Pipeline. Google Drive backup is coming soon. There is also a "Team" version coming in 2015 for groups and organizations, like schools.


My district uses Backupify to back up all 26,000 Google Apps accounts and data. It has come in handy for restoring user files that they deleted, then realized they needed back later. It's also very easy to use and set up.

Backing up your data and files is very important. Make sure you have a plan.

Google Classroom Student Quick Guide

Alice Keeler's blog has been a great find for me as she posts a lot of items about Google apps, especially Google Classroom. You should definitely check out her blog.

She created a great Student Quick Guide for Google Classroom. Go here to view it: http://www.alicekeeler.com/teachertech/2014/12/01/google-classroom-student-quick-sheet-guide/

Excellent infographic of Google tools and uses

I found this excellent infographic of Google Tools and Uses for them in education on the Daily Genius site.

It's a nice summary of the different Google Tools that are out there and how to use them in education.

You can find out more about Google for Education here.



Find more education infographics on e-Learning Infographics

Google Updates and Improves its Learning Center for Teacher Training

Google has updated and improved its Learning Center for Teacher Training with new use cases and best practices, making it even more useful and easier to learn about Google apps.

The site has some great resources and training for:

• Android Tablets for Education
• Calendar
• Chrome
• Chromebooks
• Classroom
• Digital Citizenship
• Docs Suite
• Docs
• Drawings
• Drive
• Forms
• Gmail
• Google Maps
• Google Play for Education
• Implementing Google Apps
• Search
• Sheets
• Sites
• Slides
• YouTube

Each topic has an introduction, basics, and advanced sections depending on your level of experience with that app.

There are lessons, case studies, examples and best practices, and ways to connect with other educators.

It is an excellent resource for all educators

Google Inbox - a replacement for your email with some new features

Google's Inbox is there new email client that has a different layout and different ways to handle emails. I've been using it for a while now and love it.

Your emails are bundled by category (Promos, Purchases, Social Media, Travel and others) to keep them organized, you see each email at a glance in the main page, you can snooze an email (reminder for later) and pin emails to make sure they stay put if they are important. In addition, you can mark emails as "Done" which moves them into a different folder, but doesn't delete them, so you can still search for them. 

You can even set reminders for tasks at the top of the inbox - no more separate task list (this is new). There are also "assists" that help you remember what you need to do with that task and gather information related to the task (like your confirmation email, person's phone number, etc.) You can read more about these new features here: http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2014/12/assists-in-inbox-extra-helping-hand-for.html

These features are great for educators too - sort emails easier, snooze an email to work on later, set reminders, and more. 

You can read more about it and request an invite here: http://www.google.com/inbox/

Google Translate adds 10 more languages.

Google Translate adds 10 more languages, bringing the total to 90 supported languages.

This is great news for education - with so many ESL/ELL students in our schools, Google Translate can help them learn English, as well as provide resources for them and their families in their native language.

The 10 new languages supported by Google Translate include:

Chichewa
Malagasy
Sesotho
Malayalam
Myanmar
Sinhala
Sudanese
Kazakh
Tajik
Uzbek

Related

http://educationaltechnologyguy.blogspot.com/2012/09/google-translate-android-app-has.html 

Chromebooks - definitely awesome for education

Back in May of 2012, I wrote about Google Chromebooks and how they were great for education. Two and a half years and 11,000 Chromebooks later, I stand by this even more.

Our district has over 11,000 Chromebooks deployed in grades 3-12. We also have a high school using Windows laptops.

Here's why I recommend Chromebooks:

1. inexpensive - average cost, with laser etching, Chrome management and setup is around $310 per device. Compare to around $600-$900 for comparable Windows laptop and around $600 for an iPad with keyboard. 
2. Performance - I use an Acer C720 Chromebook with 4GB RAM (we have thousands of these in district) and the performance is excellent - very fast, even with multiple tabs open.
3. You can do anything - there is a web app to match pretty much any software and they even work offline and you can now run some Android apps on them. You can also view, edit and create Office documents right inside Google Drive on a Chromebook. 
4. Work for testing - they are compatible with PARCC and SBAC.
5. Easy to deploy - we got them pre-enrolled in our domain and setup in the carts. All we had to do was deliver the cart to the school.
6. Easy to manage - a thousand times easier to manage than laptops or tablets. Everything happens in the Admin Console, which is very easy to use. 
7. Easy to support - most problems are fixed with a simple reset (takes 10 seconds). If that doesn't work a factory wipe and re-enroll often fixes the issue (about 10 minutes). If that doesn't work, send it back to the manufacturer. 
8. Easy to use - teachers and students need little training to use them.
9. Google Apps for Education - great apps that work perfectly with Chromebooks.
10. Resources - websites, communities and resources galore for using Chromebooks in the classroom. And Google provides excellent support. 

Chromebooks aren't for everyone or every application. For instance, they can't run PowerSchool's Gradebook app (it's still based on Java) and online CAD programs are limited. But, they are a great device for most education (and business and personal) use. I even recommend Chromeboxes as desktop replacements.

If you are interested in learning more about Chromebooks and Google Apps in Education, I am available for consulting about selection, deployment, setup and training and use. 

Resources:

Google for Education Resources

Why Google Apps and Chromebooks 

--

Google's Santa Tracker is back - and has some cool new features and activities

It's been a busy week for Google with lots of new updates (see my last few posts) and now they brought back their Santa Tracker and added some new features. You can still follow Santa around the world on Christmas Eve, but now there is more - they've added Santa's Village.

Santa's Village is an interactive space with videos, games and more, including some educational parts like Christmas traditions around the world. New options and activities appear each day, including learning new languages and learning to code!

It is available online and through the Android app.

Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, this is a fun and educational tool.

Two more great updates from Google

Google announced two more great updates to their apps:

Google Docs, Slides and Sheets now support 15 new Microsoft Office Formats: dot, dotx, dotm, docm, xlt, xltx, xltm, xlsm, pot, potx, potm, pptm, pps, ppsx, ppsm. This makes Google apps even more useful for more people. I really like the PPS conversion for all of those PowerPoint slide shows I get sent. In addition, there is now better support for charts and SmartArt in Google apps.

The other update is that you can now convert a non-Google file attachment in Gmail to a Drive-friendly version right in Gmail.

These constant updates are great for users.

Google announces some great updates to Slides and Docs

Google just announced some great updates to Slides and Docs that add some nice features.

In Slides, you can now add slide numbers to your presentation, which is useful for both presenters and audiences. Just go to Insert>Slide Numbers, from the toolbar. You can apply numbers to all slides, selected slides, and skip title slides.










In Docs you can now adjust the image color and filters, like you can in slides. Select the image, click Image Options in the toolbar, and then under "recolor" you can change the color. Under "adjustments"  you can change the transparency, contrast, and brightness of the image. I really like this because now I can do more image edits directly in Docs.














Also in Docs, you can now merge table cells (a feature I use a lot). Simply select the cells in the table, click Table and then Merge Cells.

Most of these features are also available in the right click menu.

It's great to see Google continually improving these products, especially with so many people, teachers and students using Google Apps and Chromebooks.

Google launches new security tools

Google recently launched a new Devices and Activity dashboard that gives you a view of all the devices that have accessed your Google account. This allows you to see if anyone else may have accessed your account. You can remove the device, secure your account and change the password. 

This is a great way to make sure your account is secure. You can also check mobile devices and make sure that you have secured them so no one else can get access to the account through these devices.