"Hour of code" invitation to faculty

Dear Faculty,

as promised, here is some more info:

The hour of code =  an international campaign, aiming to have students of all ages introduced to (at least for a bit!)

the ideas and principles of writing computer code. The event is supported by a great website, full of resources:

http://csedweek.org/resource_kit  The aim is to reach 10.000.000 students!

And, it will be easy on your part: 

• The Self-guided lessons require little or no involvement from the teacher

• Requires no previous experience on behalf of the student or the teacher

• Can be completed in one hour or less.

               

Coding is not a geek thing anymore (well, sort of), nowadays there are many graphical tools available, that deal

more with the logical steps involved, as compared to typing lines of code in a sequence.

Scratch (invented by MIT) is such an example. 

How can you get involved?

Pick an hour next week, dedicate a class and do it altogether!

Step-1:

Introduce the campaign by showing - takes a few minutes - a few videos as to why programming is important

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYZF6oIZtfc  Bill Gates and others (2 minutes only)

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehDAP1OQ9Zw  a 6 year old explains how he got to develop Apps (4 minutes)

Maybe show the info graphic -> on page http://code.org/stats  of the campaign website. Has some great facts,

showing that we/schools are not catering for those jobs.

Step-2:

Pick the right level coding exercise from the options available at 

       http://code.org/learn

You might wanna try some of the options yourself, decide and then get going!

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Ok, If you miss the time to try them out, then find here are a few hand-picked suggestions:

Lower level:

http://www.tynker.com/hour-of-code/  Many options to tackle small programming tasks. 

Middle level:

http://code.org/api/hour/begin/scratch This is very nice: the exercises are based on Scratch, a wonderful free

programming language by MIT. All graphical, and guarantees a lot of fun.

Higher level:

If most of your students have an Android phone, you could try the MIT app AppInventor. With this, one can develop an Android 

App (not IOS Apple) in no time. Will be an eyeopener for many!

http://appinventor.mit.edu/explore/hour-of-code.html

On an iPad:

The free App "Light-bot-hour of Code" is downloaded on all of the MS/US iPads. It features an hour of coding basics, slick!

You can book the iPads with Marcel (as stock lasts!) 

http://light-bot.com/hoc.html  you actually can also do this on-line (Flash based) with a Mac

We hope you will give it a go, sometime next week. 

If not, all the resources are still around, and you are not bound to this week.

"Yes, I will move ahead". 1 step at a time"

Maverick for Macbook - some of the new features you can expect

Maverick -> Apple's latest operating system (10.9) is out. Most Macbooks from 10.7 onwards can be upgraded.  And, in contrary to Apple's tradition, this one is free!

 Photo Credit: Brenna Daugherty via Compfight

However, at Chadwick we recommend to wait with upgrading, as we are experiencing a number of issues so far.  Some are minor, some are quite annoying. E.g. Mail behaves rather bad, and some users gave report of very sluggish computers. We keep track of issues and are testing our configurations. You can ask the students in your class/sections, many have upgraded - and you will have some varying responses as to how happy they are! Some actually had to downgrade (back t0 10.8) again. Did Apple do a bad thing? Hard to tell. There are so many factors playing a role, a nightmare to test them all.

If you are curious what you are missing, then here are some links to Atomic Learning videos that describe the main new features

Getting Started with Mac OS X Mavericks Training

What you'll learn in this training

• Using tabs in the Finder
• Merging multiple Finder windows
• Using iBooks for Mac
• Finding a location in Maps
• Sharing locations and directions in Maps

Tech will inform you all when we have a stable version, and then you could go ahead.

Students that have upgraded are now causing some trouble with handing in work, especially when using Pages and Keynote. The free Maverick update does come with free updates to those programs. They produce different file formats  though, and are not compatible with the versions on the faculty 10.7 or 10.8 laptops.

How to solve:
Students should select the option to save the Pages or Keynote in the older iWork-09 format. Luckily that can still be done by exporting:

Alternatively, you and your class could opt for using Google Presentation and Google Docs as the basic software for presentations. 

That way, they do not have to send large files, but only have to share links with you! No problems with different versions either!

And, if you would think that Google presentation is lacking features, then have a look at he following (short) video,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt9F7tKcZcU

it will show a stunning presentation, and yes, all made within Google presentation.

Yes, Google Apps is getting better every day!

Google Sites - how to make it all look better!

Find here a few hints/tips/resources etc. to working with Google Sites.

They might give you some new ideas!

Design tricks:

http://www.googlesiteswebdesign.com/

This site has many outstanding tricks for enhancing your site.

https://sites.google.com/a/googleapps.com/sitesbp/site-development/tips-tricks

This site is pretty awesome, it shows some nice tips, AND people can contribute (using a form!). Just explore!

Menu tricks:

Google sites can have customized menus on the side (and the top). Here is how to do so!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r1QL_5mijI

How to add a horizontal navigation menu bar in detail:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWdImBSF-JM

Gadgets:

You can insert ready-made gadgets via the "insert" -> ".... More Gadgets ...." menu.

They usually are easy to configure, and will display specified content on your pages.

Google also has an extended list of gadgets on the following directory available:

http://www.google.com/ig/directory?synd=open&cat=all

You can select from their list. Explore and try one or two, so you get the feel of it!

More Embedding tricks:

Many third-party tools exist that can be added to your site. They can display the local weather, run a slideshow, 

show your most recent visitors etc.

Most of them will use "embedded" html code, sometimes in an iFrame.

If you want to try the effect of embedded code before you use it, you can do so at w3schools!

Copy/paste your code, and visit http://www.w3schools.com/

You then can tinker around, and see the results. Pretty slick for testing size, colors, effects etc.

A good site with tips and examples for Widgets/html embeddin etc. is

http://www.steegle.com/websites/google-sites-help

These guys know Google sites in and out.

Take care: a Google search might reveal widgetbox www.widgetbox.com/) , they will stop business March 2014 though.

Another 'take care' issue:

Some widgets and gadgets will not run properly anymore, as Google Chrome now has extra security checks built-in.

They deal with not allowing a mix of https (secure) and http (insecure) sites. Tough to solve right now.

Working with Safari for those gadgets will not show the errors. 

Google Site Examples (good ones!)

https://sites.google.com/site/arvidaok/

A great 'teacher' site: uses blog (announcement entries) in 2 diff. ways 

http://www.konini-primary.school.nz/

An example (slick!) of a schools website

https://sites.google.com/site/dieselandmerlot/

Nice banner, simple design

https://sites.google.com/a/medinacommunityband.org/www/Home

A community site, great startpage with photos

http://www.revue-emulations.net/

Just top-notch! In French, but have a look!

Tutorials:

https://sites.google.com/site/amslerclassroom/sampe-teacher-pages

Great tutorials AND examples

https://sites.google.com/site/mflynchsites/examples-of-google-sites

Great examples AND a great tutorial for all functions as well. 

And of course: we have our subscription to video tutorials at Atomic Learning:

http://www.atomiclearning.com/k12/googlesites

( username = hidden  Password= hidden )

Important Google drive sharing tip

I have seen a few glitches happening with sharing of files and folders with Google Drive.

When somebody changes content in a Google Drive Folder that is shared with you, there is the danger that one deletes/dislocates content for others.

Keep in mind:

Moving a Whole Shared Folder to your "MyDrive" is ok to do

Moving (or deleting) single Folders/Files out of a Shared Folder is NOT ok to do.

I created a graphic below that explains it all in a visual way:

To eliminate possible errors, create Shared folders with View access rights only (as much as possible). 

If you share a folder with your team/students, you might want to consider following option:

Have the Main Folder View for all.

In that main Folder create 2 more folders, one with View and one with Edit access. That way, you keep the View-folder always save!

Good to know:

In case content was deleted, it still lives for a month in the bin (of the one who deleted the stuff).

If content IN a document was deleted, one can go back into the revisions -> and you can restore back in time.

Need a bit more visual help, a quick overview of Google drive perhaps?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SjRH3SImlM

This short video will give you some time-saving tips as well!

Want to learn how to setup Google Drive Sync (keep a synced backup of all your files in MyDrive on your own laptop)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzwDk5JHQw4

This is a recommended step to do!

How to set your Google Chrome to English - forever!

Many of you had/have problems (Chrome popping up in Korean, no matter what you try)

Here is how to set your Google Chrome to English (once and for all!)

It involves 5 steps:

1.

In your Browser, paste the following URL:     chrome://settings/searchEngines

That will open the preferences for search engines

2.

You will see a window that looks like this:

3.

You will need to ADD the English Google option in the lower Box ("Other search Engines")

You can do so in the very last line:

Copy paste (in this order) the following (exactly!) in the 3 boxes:

    Google in English         Google.com                https://www.google.com/webhp?source=ig&hl=en

4.

Now you will have to make this newly added Search Engine your DEFAULT one (so it sticks!)

Scroll in the list, and find the one you just added (look for Google English!)

And then make that the default by clicking the light blue setting when you have your mouse over the last part.

5.

When all went well, the top line in the Window should now look similar to this:

That would do the trick! Close your Browser windows, close Chrome and re-open.

Test it, and be happy!

Of course (!) you need to check the general language settings as well:

Click the advanced settings to see the options:

Check the Language settings, and make sure that English is the top

(and maybe only) choice:

That should do the trick! Make sure that you add the Google browser as

https://www.google.com/webhp?source=ig&hl=en

Only then you will be able to make it the default!

Happy surfing again!

SketchFab - show your 3D model in real 3D on-line

Using Sketch? Want to show your design in 3D? Stunning 3D view? Rotate, zoom, the whole lot? Head over to https://sketchfab.com/ upload your object and try it out! The service has a free option (small ads, no big deal) and would be great to use for showing some objects, the results of a class project etc. They made a Video explaining the features. Here is an example of an embedded 3D model (uploaded and hosted on Sketchfab)   

Maison d'artiste from Klaas Nienhuis on Sketchfab.

Newsela: a promising new startup -> supporting ESOL readers

Newsela is a new kid on the block (in Beta). It's free (so far). It allows teachers to create classes (upon signing up as a teacher one will get a "classcode"), and students can join the classes created.

Lessons are based on news articles and one can select different reading levels (lexile based).

Quizzes can be attached to news articles, and there is a "gradebook" management tool available (linked to Common Core standards)

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="525"] Class/Student management[/caption]

Best is to try this out, and see if you like it. This startup company has hit the press a lot already, and funding is secured. Free for now, that might change later (you know that pattern)