Chromebook & Google Drive Tutorial

Last Friday, I got to meet with an amazing group of TA's in our district and provided coaching on getting to know the Google Chromebooks and using Google Drive.  If you'd like to attend a half-day workshop in October on this, please fill out the sign-up information here: http://goo.gl/PEoMqc

Here's the presentation that will be used.  Feel free to browse through it at your leisure!

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Getting to Know Google Drive

Here's a silent screencast video on using Google Drive (audio will be added to this soon).  This three and a half minute introduction shows the following:

• How to access your account for Google Drive
• Getting to know the side-bar buttons (My Drive, Shared With Me, Recent, etc.)
• Locating files by Type (doc, presentation, etc.)
• How to open, copy, and delete files
• Creating new folders within My Drive
• Moving files into folders
• Creating an item (ie: new Google Doc)
• Inserting new apps to connect to Google Drive

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Logging Into the Chrome Browser/Bookmark Bar Access

Out of request from many teachers working within the first learning progression/block of skills for getting to know the Chromebook, I've created a quick 1:15 minute video on logging into the Chrome browser and accessing/adding to the Bookmark Bar. Typically if you log into Chrome from an actual Chromebook, you will not need to enter your username and password to login to the browser again aside from the start-up screen of the actual device. You may need to do this if you are on the Chrome browser from a desktop or from home (definitely be sure to download the Chrome browser to your at home computer!).

The bookmark bar allows you to drag and drop links to websites that you visit often.  Each time you are on a Chrome browser that is synced to your email log in, you will have access to your bookmarks wherever you go!  For those of you looking to take your online bookmarking further to include annotating and student interaction, check out setting up a free account on Diigo!

Logging Into Chrome/Google and Accessing the Bookmark Bar from Tarah Tesmer on Vimeo.

Around the 21 second mark, you may notice my screen change once I've logged in.  Once logged into Chrome/Google, my settings I have saved and apps I have stored on my Chrome browser can now be viewed.  The one you see is called the Incredible Startpage, and you can install this to your Chrome browser by searching for it in the Chrome Web Store.  Simply type in Incredible Startpage in the search box.

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If Chrome & Google Apps were a Learning Progression

As a former Language Arts teacher, I spent last year navigating alongside my department through our curriculum design and added a thoughtful addition to our teaching and learning practices.  Insert the learning progressions.  This was a big step in refocusing what we thought were our daily best practices and approach to the standards being covered within our units of study.  Learning progressions are a set of sequenced steps and sub-skills that one must master along the path to progressing to a larger concept or skill (you can read more about learning progressions here on the ASCD website).

As I've been meeting with teachers for tech-related coaching sessions, I began to wonder what it would look like if various aspects of the technology we utilize could be viewed as its own separate learning progression.  In the section below, you can see an outline of what it would look like if Chrome and GAFE (Google Apps for Education) were a learning progression! Included in it are steps toward mastery of implementing Chromebooks, the Chrome web browser, and Google Apps.  In addition, I placed a link to a survey on the Smore for teachers to access to assess where they currently are within the areas of the learning progression.

Teachers, before we meet for the first time/have our first coaching session, please fill out the survey (will take 30 seconds of your time) so I can best approach your individual needs.  Thanks!

Content created on Smore.  Survey created on Google Forms.

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