Google Glow Slides

Well, it only took me a month, but here they are, the slides from Jodie and my Virtual School Society Annual Spring Conference talk. It was after viewing this site yesterday that I realized how lame I was in not embedding these slides to this blog earlier. The site has a number of Google Docs presentations that were produced by a class of 6th graders in New England and embedded into their class blog. Pretty cool. I'm sure they would love it if you dropped by, viewed some presentations and left a few comments.

I know that some of the slides in our presentation may be difficult to see--the main goal was to have these screen shots projected onto a big wall, not viewed on a screen at 410 pixels wide. Having said that, enjoy! Perhaps sometime this year I'll record some audio and and it too?




Addendum: I just realized that if you have a Google Account, you can view these slides full screen by doing the following; click on 'Menu' at the bottom right of the slides, then select 'Our Presentation Google Glow'. From there you are taken to the Google login page. Then you have view the slide show in full screen. Now that's better!

Comment Pet Peeve

So, you have a blog with Blogger/Blogspot/Google and you're looking forward to lots of great conversations on your blog. Here's one thing that many people overlook that could be hampering their ability to get the conversations going.

Default Comment Permissions

When you first set up your Blog on the Blogger platform the default setting is to only allow people with Blogger or Google accounts to comment. So when a person clicks on the comment link, this is what they'll see:

A lot of people are not going to be that interested in commenting if they have to sign up for an account. Or, if you're like me and have a Blogger account, but wish to link to your blog on another platform, it is just annoying. By having your blog comments set like this you are making it harder for some people to comment and join in the conversation.

How to Change Your Settings

To change your settings first you need to go to your Dashboard and click on 'Settings'.

Here's what you'll need to do next:

1. Select the 'Settings' tab.

2. Select 'Comments' from the menu.

3. Under 'Who Can Comment?', select 'anyone'

After making these changes, here's what your readers will see when they decide to comment.

If you are concerned about anonymous comments you could enable comment moderation and put a disclaimer on your blog that anonymous comments will not be posted :-) Easy!

Another Plug for the Comment Challenge

Part of what prompted me to post this was that I've been participating in the 31 Day Comment Challenge and so have been visiting a lot of blogs that are new to me. Amongst these blogs I've encountered some with the 'Google only' commenting.

Final Thoughts

If you come across a blog with 'Google only' commenting, maybe you can link them to this post. If you think there are some very good reasons for sticking with 'Google only' commenting I'd like to hear them. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

This is cross-posted on my other blog, Clarify Me.

Google Info for Teachers

For National Teachers' Day, the Official Google Docs blog had this post with links to various resources for teachers. If you are thinking about trying Google Docs, or have started but need to learn some basics, this post is for you; lots of good step-by-step information. They've also re-vamped their Google for Educators site. All are worth a look. And please note, no I don't work for Google and no they don't pay me. I just really like their stuff :-)

Comments Now Available To All

When I set up this blog, I forgot to make it so that anybody on the www could comment. I've changed the settings now, so please do comment! If you haven't commented on a blog before, here's how you do it on this blog. At the end of the blog post there is a comments link which you need to click.


or it may look like this

Then you are taken to the comments window. Follow the image below as I go through the steps. Step 1: if you'd like to be notified of follow up comments--particularly useful if you've asked a question ;-), check the 'e-mail follow up comments to' and ensure that your correct e-mail address is there. Your address will not be posted with your comment. Step 2: Once you've typed in your comment, you need to choose an identity. If you do not have a Google/Blogger account, you'll probably choose 'Name/URL'. What you type in for your name really depends on how you want to be recognized on-line. I usually give my full name, a lot of people just give their first name, and still others use a 'handle'. Step 3: click on 'Publish Your Comment'. You're done!

Google Really Is Telepathic

At the VSS talk I mentioned that Google is always updating and making changes to their on-line applications. I suggested that all you had to do was wish for a change and it soon would appear.

Presentation Speaker Notes
When we were working on our presentation last week, on more than one occasion I remarked to Jodie that I wished that we could have a place to put notes about each of our slides to aid us in the presentation. I believe PowerPoint has this feature and I came across it in Zoho presentation software. Well, today I was using Google Docs and the 'New Features' tab was lit up so I thought I'd check it out--ta da! There are now speakers notes in the Presentation application in Google Docs.


Work Offline with Google Docs
Google had started to initiate a feature in Google Docs a few weeks ago whereby you can view and edit your documents offline--handy if you need to work on an important document and you have no connection. Again, we were hoping to be able to do that with our VSS presentation slides, in case the internet connection was shaky, but the option was not available on Wednesday--now it is. Cool.

All the New Features
You can check out the features I've mentioned above, plus others here. And remember, when you sign up for your Google account use your powers for good because it seems that, well, Google really is telepathic ;-)

Google Brainstorm

During the conference session the audience brain stormed ways that Google Docs could be used by teachers. Here's what they said:

Docs:

- writers' workshop--have lesson (F-T-F) posted and students can see, post their own

- collaborative writing / group projects

- staff agenda

- sharing lesson plans

- team teaching

- school newsletters

- hockey pools

- transferability of files

Google Docs in Plain English

We've embedded the Common Craft Video Google Docs in Plain English here. In YouTube you can choose to embed and not include related videos at the end. This is useful as sometimes those videos have undesirable content and you have no control over them. In YouTube next to the 'Embed Video' option click on 'Customize'. Then select 'Don't include related videos'. In the customize section you can also choose the colour of the video 'skin'.