Simplify School Elections with Google Forms/Sheets!

For those that have explored the Google Forms, you know how powerful a tool it can be. You also know how easy ti is to create one and use it to collect information for people. For those of you that are not familiar with Google Forms, it is basically a tool that allows you to create an information gathering tool much like what you use to fill in information on a website to shop or register.

You choose the questions that are asked, and then you share the form by either emailing it, sharing on a social media outlet, or even posting a link to it on your website. As people fill out the form, the data will automatically appear on a spreadsheet. 

Here are a few ideas for Forms:

1) Use it to collect data for surveys or statistics projects. (Great for Mean, Median, and Mode!)

2) Use it to gather contact information from parents or students.

3) Use it to create quizzes or tests that can then be auto-graded using a free add on. (Click the link to see how!)

4) Or use it as a tool to gather votes for your school wide class elections. (Which is the subject of this post.)

Here is the Class Election Template I have made, and used successfully for the last two school elections. It has a link on it that you can use to get to the balloting form you will use to gather the votes. Just follow the directions on the sheet and it will guide you through the process. It is really easy, and will only take a few minutes.

Once you are done, you will have a ballot you can share via a website or email that students can use to vote. It is designed to be used with Google Apps users, so as long as your students have Gmail accounts it will capture their student login info. This makes it easy to spot duplicate votes.

Once you copy the Voting Results sheet from the template to your results spreadsheet, you will be able to watch the votes as the come in for each candidate, and instantly know what the numbers are.

The Animals of Chernobyl

For anyone that grew up in the 80's, the Chernobyl accident in 1986 was a huge news event. The nuclear reactor in Chernobyl, which is located in what is now Ukraine, suffered a meltdown which ejected a huge plume of radioactive material into the sky.

The radiation that was released still haunts the area almost 30 years later. In this story, we see biologist Timothy Mousseau exploring the wildlife of the 1000 square mile uninhabited zone. While it looks like nature has reclaimed this area that was once inhabited by people, a closer look reveals a different story. Though wildlife has returned the biodiversity in the area is about half of what it should be, meaning many types of wildlife are not living there.

Another issue is the mutations being found in the creatures living in the shadow of Chernobyl. The radiation that remains in that area caused mutations in animal behavior and the actual animals themselves. With the recent Fukashima Reactor meltdown in Japan, it is important that we learn from the mistakes we have made that have damaged our environments.

The video does allow us a glimpse into a world that we would not otherwise be able to visit.

Here is another video available on YouTube. It is special that Discovery Channel did a few years ago that looked at the Chernobyl area and how wildlife had reclaimed it.

Chernobyl image from: http://cdn0.cosmosmagazine.com/wp-content/uploads/Chernobyl%20nuclear%20meltdown%20radiation.jpg

Edmodo Snapshot Tool: Free Common Core Based Assessments

OK... so the Common Core has been a challenge for many over the last few years, but hopefully this tool will make your life a little bit easier!

Edmodo has been a growing LMS (Learning Management System) for the last few years and it has grown to be a very useful tool in that short time. It is available on the web and as an app for just about all devices, and it creates a safe, teacher controlled environment that students and teachers can use to extend their learning outside the traditional walls of their classrooms.

In Edmodo, teachers can share links to websites or materials, post reminders, updates, assignments, and even host inline discussions. In addition there has been a custom quizzing feature that has allowed you to create your own quizzes that you can use to assess your students. The quizzes are saved so you can use them again, and they also can grade themselves and display the results data in some very helpful ways. It even adds students' results to a grade book.

It gets better though! Edmodo Snapshot has just been added to Edmodo for you to use. It is free and just becomes a part of your existing Edmodo account if you have one. What it is, is a collection of questions for Grades 3 -12 based on Common Core Math and ELA standards. You can assign "snapshots" to your students and they show up as a quiz that needs to be taken. The quizzes are based on and aligned with the Common Core so it is great practice for the exams.

As much as I hate the thought of practicing by taking tests, this is the world we live in right now, and this tool can help you give your students practice on these types of assessments, while also providing you with data that can show how your classes are doing on particular standards. You can also drill down to individual students and see how they perform.

Hopefully this data can be helpful to guiding instruction in covering topics that students have trouble in or pinpoint areas a particular students is struggling in to help devise a strategy to help them.

I think Edmodo is a great tool, and this Snapshot tool makes it even more appealing to me. Check out the short video above describing what it is, and if you are interested take a look at the video below to learn more about how to use it.

Here is a great video from Megan Wall on YouTube:

Create Self Grading Quizzes with Google Forms and Flubaroo

This tool has been shared before, but due to the improvements in quality and ease of use I think it is worth sharing again.

One of the lesser know tools in Google Drive is Google Forms. This tool allows you to create a number of different questions that can be assigned through email or hyperlinks. The results from these questions are automatically gathered into a Google Spreadsheet. It makes it incredibly easy to gather information from multiple sources and compile it in one place.

If you create a quiz made up of multiple choice, list, or very specific text answers you can even make the quiz self grading!  By using the Flubaroo Add-on (formerly a script) you can choose an answer key that the program will use to grade all of you results. It will even create a new sheet with the students' graded results and an item analysis of all of the questions.

It is an easy and free way to create assessments that grade themselves and save you time.

Check out the video below to see how.

Fashion... The Newest and Best Shark Repellent?!

While shark attacks are a relatively rare risk compared to the dangers of driving your car to work, for those that share the waters with these predators it can be a real danger. A growing market has emerged in the area of shark repellent devices that use electronic signals or foul tasting chemicals, but it seems a possible alternative could just be the color and patterns of a wet suit.

In this TED Talk, Hamish Jolly: A shark-deterrent wetsuit (and it's not what you think), Mr. Jolly talks about research they discover how and what a shark sees. They focused on the eyes of the three most dangerous sharks the Bull, Tiger, and Great White Sharks. Research had discovered that these predatory sharks see in greyscale, and their continued research explored the way sharks see and the patterns they respond to.

The research explored patterns for suits used on the surface of the water in activities like swimming and surfing, as well as those used in SCUBA diving below the surface. These two types of suits are designed using different ideas.

The first suit is designed for surface divers. This one utilizes bold stripes that mimic the warning stripes of fish that are left alone by sharks because they either taste bad to them or are in a symbiotic relationship with them. Since most shark attacks are attributed to sharks mistaking humans for their prey, the hope is that by making humans look like things a shark would normally not eat or avoid would prevent an attack. When they placed this type of pattern on a wet suit covering a bait container the sharks left it alone. The same container covered with a traditional black wet suit was attacked.

The second suit is designed for divers beneath the waves, and its goal is not to use bold patterns to warn the sharks away, but instead allow them to blend into the water so that they become invisible to the sharks. The patterns on this suit are designed to make the diver hard to see from the side, as well as from below, which is a favored ambush position for some sharks.

Both of these designs mimic the strategies that many ocean creatures already use to protect themselves from sharks. Humans can benefit from this by saving money on more expensive repellent ideas, as well as by being safer in the water. This is also good for sharks... the less they harm people, the more likely they are to be left alone when they drift to close to where people live.

Here is the TED Video:

Stripe Suit Pic
http://www.surfersvillage.com/sites/default/files/field/image/1807-sharksuit_4.jpg

Water Camo Pic
http://images.watoday.com.au/2013/07/18/4580593/9-620x414.jpg

3 Suits
http://cdn.novafm.com.au/sites/default/files/No-More-Shark-Attacks-article2.jpg

Google Cultural Institute... An Amazing Classroom Resource

The Google Cultural Institute is an amazing tool for exploring art, history, and the world around us. Google has partnered with museums and galleries around the world to create an immense library of ultra high resolution images of famous art work and photographs that can be examined in an amazing amount of detail. The Institute is made up of three powerful tool... The Art Project, Historic Moments, and World Wonders.

Many works of art can be zoomed in on so far you can see the dirt that has accumulated in the ridges of brush  strokes. You can also visit the museums themselves to see the work and where it is located using Google Street-view links that are embedded in it!

One amazing work that is available for exploration is called Sun That Does Not Set by HoyAyer. It is a collection of photographs taken in one of the southern most points of South America. One was taken each hour and when combines you end up with this beautiful collage. It is also an awesome science resource to show how the sun does not set in certain places and certain times.

You also have the ability to explore an amazing collection of historic photographs and video clips for almost every historic moment in the modern age... basically anytime since cameras were invented... You can zoom in on photos to explore details and watch videos of interviews with people the actual events. All of these images are reliable and easily attributed since they have been shared by museums. This is not your average Google Images Search!

The contributors and Google have been collaborating to make Exhibits from the library of materials and have made a number of really good ones so far. One of the most powerful I looked at was called Tragic Love at Auschwitz , and it was about two young Jews in Poland that found love when they met in Auschwitz. They later went on to escape, although they were later recaptured and executed. The story is told in pictures, authentic documents, and written transcripts from the people that knew them in the camp. It is amazing how the story comes to life when these separate historic resources are displayed in this context.

More exhibits are bieng added all of the time, including this one on the history of computing: Revolution: The First 100 Years of Computing.

You can also explore many of the world's wonders through photographs, video clips, and Google Street View. One amazing example of this is on the Great Barrier Reef. You can travel here through the street view links and explore the beauty of this underwater wonder. You can then take a look at some of the amazing images that have been captured here as well. When you are finished, you can jump to another amazing place on this planet and explore that as well.

Since this tool is from Google, it is free and it is also linked to your Google Account. Just by being logged into Google you will be able to create collections and Galleries of your own. You can make a collection of images from World War 2, or even create your own Gallery of your favorite impressionist works. These galleries can be brought up anywhere you can access the internet and are easily shared via hyperlink.

These tools can be used to add amazing content to your lessons, but they can also be used by students as well. They can explore history to find their own answers and create collections for study or presentation.

Here is tutorial to get you started:  Google Cultural Institute Tutorial Playlist

Tired of Watery Ketchup?

Two Kansas City, MO teens were. Instead of just waiting for some other sucker to come along and use the ketchup before them and get the watery mess on their burger, they instead decided to come up with a solution.

Tyler Richards and Jonathan Thompson, both 18 years old, decided to make this the topic for a project for the Project Lead the Way course. The prompt for the project was "It bothers me when..." Both young men found watery ketchup as something that bothered them, and after finding that 85% of the people the surveyed agreed with them, the set off in search of a solution.

Their design is for squeeze bottles and changes the cap design so that the watery stuff that can ruin a burger is collected, and only perfect ketchup comes out. They call it SNAP, which is short for Syneresis Negation Apparatus. Apparently "syneresis" is the term used to describe when liquid comes out out solution in gelatinous substances as the material contracts.

Here is a video of the inventors demonstrating their product:

The two young men are currently in the process of seeking a patent got their invention. Now before any naysayers chime in with the idea that this invention could be replaced by doing something as simple as shaking the bottle before dispensing your ketchup... keep in mind that this is America. The only thing we like more than a cool new gadget, is a cool new gadget that saves us from doing work!

It is a great idea, and the two young men behind it will hopefully continue to recapture the spirit of innovation we used to be famous for. We need more programs like Project Lead the Way and projects like this one in our schools.