Getting to Know Google Drive You Can Do

I'm excited to be back after a 2 week hiatus! This is the time of the summer when my brain really starts to focus in on the coming school year. Today is all about Google Drive. If you are a Google user, you've heard of Drive, and hopefully either you've experienced its power or someone has told you about it.

The best way I can describe Google Drive is an endless filing cabinet. (Ok, to be fair, a personal Google account only comes with 15 GB of storage ... but even THAT is a LOT!) Any Google item you create is stored here ... AND you can store pretty much anything, even if it isn't a Google product here, too.

At the end of each school year, I pop into the 4th grade classrooms and do a Google Drive activity. We talk about the pieces of Drive, we do a little organizing so when they enter our middle school they start off in a pretty good spot, and we talk about some good long-term strategies for using & managing their Drives. I also work with numerous teachers on cleaning & organizing their Drives. IT CAN BE DONE ... and relatively painlessly.

I've broken this up into 2 parts ... "Getting to Know Drive" and "Organizing Drive". Today is the first part, "Getting to Know". I've found that while most people go to their Drives often, they don't always know Drive (especially students!). There are so many options to customize Drive and really make it work FOR you. The first step is understanding the various parts of Drive. 

I've made a Slidedeck to help you get to know Google Drive better. Feel free to use it for yourself, peers, and most definitely with students. I've based it off what I do with 4th graders and everything here is appropriate for them (so definitely for you, too!). If you want to use it with younger students, great! You might want to break it up into smaller chunks or just use a few pieces. By 4th grade in our district, our students have enough items that these pieces make a little more sense.

*** UPDATE (July 30, 2019): I added in a Slide to share my thoughts on whose Drive do you display? It all depends on your audience ... students or adults? Check out Slide 3!

Curation You (and I) Can Do

I took a small break last week from my curation theme and I'm operating more on "summer time" right now, hence the delay in posting. I've covered WHY we should curate & shared a few digital tools you can use in "Digital Curation Tools You Can Do". I followed that with 3 activities you can do WITH your students and why this can be time well spent in"Curation Activities You Can Do".

This week, I'd like to share some of the ways I, personally, have curated resources, ideas, tools, tricks, and much more. Honestly, I am a kind of person who likes variety - not too much - but some. This could be a bad thing for some people, but I enjoy it. Each time I find something new, I find things I like, and don't like, about it. It always makes me rethink WHAT I'm curating and forces me to really think through WHY I'm curating, not just for the items, but also the tool I am using to curate with.

I want to share these photos without an explanation. Don't worry, I'll get to it later. I just ask you to take a look at the 3 photos of shells.

For the past few years, I have been reading, absorbing, collecting, seeking, learning, and being amazed at everything that is out there. Not a day goes by that I haven't learned something and I love it! I had a teacher say to me, after showing some ways to manipulate images and text in Drawings, "HOW do you know all this?" He was amazed each little thing I showed him. I smiled and laughed, and being a tad embarrassed, said, "I spend an extreme amount of time learning and playing with this stuff. I love it that much!" 

There's no way I can keep all of this in my brain, and I've been on a journey to find the perfect system to curate all the good stuff I find.

#PodPeeks: Teachonomy Talks

Today I'm highlighting another awesome podcast I've added to my playlist, Teachonomy Talks with Chuck Poole. Most of the podcasts I listen to I do a great deal of learning. Teachonomy Talks is a bit different ... and I love it! It's DEFINITELY a thinker, but it's more of an "inspirational thinker". Each episode is short and packed with inspiring and reflective thoughts. I love how Chuck shares short and thought-provoking ideas.

I have shared many Teachonomy Talks episodes with others. Often, I feel like Chuck knows what is going on in my brain and he is speaking directly to me and they provide reaffirmation, a different perspective, or just some inspiration to give me a boost.

You can find all the episodes (currently there are 131!) on your favorite podcast player or on the Teachonomy Talks website. Here are a few episodes I'd like to highlight:

💙 Episode 131: "Where Do You Shine Your Spotlight?"
💙 Episode 126: "Thoughts for Teachers: Do You Look Through Your Backup Camera"
💙 Episode 115: "Two Minute Timeout for Teachers... You Were Built to Sail"
💙 Episode 107: "Two Minute Timeout for Teachers... YOU are a Masterpiece"
💙 Episode 101: "Thoughts for Teachers: Do Your Flaws Forms a Foundation?"

I could go on ... but if you tune in for one or two of these, I'm sure you'll be hooked, and you'll find many more wonderful episodes.

Curation Activities You Can Do

Last week, I shared "Digital Curation Tools You Can Do" with 3 digital tools you can use to curate the various articles, ideas, activities, books, etc that you come across. If one of these works well for you, awesome! 

This week I want to share a different idea about curation. YOU don't have to do it all. 

"Why not have STUDENTS help with the curation of sources?"

Today, I'm sharing 3 different ways you could have students curate WITH you below, but let's talk about WHY you should have students curate sources.

We all want our students to be using good and credible sources, right? So quite often, we provide the sources FOR our students. But we are missing out on a big opportunity when we do this. At some point, students will be researching on their own. They will be sifting through vast amount of information that is at their fingertips. Have you ever seen students research? They go for the first few links - not the best ones - and call it a day.

That's why I think this is such a good activity. The skill of finding good, credible sources is a tough one. It's tough for many adults! I've heard many teachers comment on how their students don't find good sources and ask how we help them get better.

Think about this the next time you ask your students to do research. What if you collaborated with them on this task? What if this was step one in the research/project/activity? Hear me out ...

This can be beneficial on a couple of levels for you and your students. First, even if you ask each student in your class to find a single source, you could end up with 20+ sources of information on your topic. How great is that? Students finding the sources and then having a bank to refer to? Hot dog! Can you imagine what your bank of sources would look like if you have each student find 2 ... or more? And how about then having students use that bank of sources to DO the project or activity? How awesome!

Digital Curation Tools You Can Do

Do you ever feel like you have information overload? 

I do. A lot. I see so much I want to read or try or create or soak in or share out. I feel like I am constantly reading and looking. My husband often asks, "How do you have so much going on in your brain?" 😊 But I don't feel like this is a bad thing ... not at all.

What I struggle with is keeping all the good things I see organized in a way that will make sense to me now AND later. Call me crazy, but I've not found "the perfect" system. I hear people swear by this tool or that tool, and I feel a little jealous! I wish I had "the perfect" system. I've tried out others' systems, but it doesn't work for me - not in the "perfect" sense. I like a lot of things about a lot of tools, so until I find "IT", I will continue to use a variety of tools to curate what I come across & want to keep.

Why curate? I couldn't possibly do everything right now ... I need to prioritize, and I support a variety of teachers with a variety of needs. I curate a wide variety of tools, activities, people, books, blogs, resources, conferences, and more. I do this all year long and summer is a great time to take a good look at what you've got and sift through. In fact, it's on my to do list ... to better organize - for both personal and professional items. 

If you are interested in digital curation tools, I've got a few to share, but there are dozens out there. These are ones I've spent some time working with and feel like I can comment on.

Pinterest

Pinterest ↭ hands down, my oldest curation tool. I got hooked on Pinterest when I was pregnant with my middle daughter. I could sit and snuggle her and scroll through Pinterest in small chunks or long periods when I could just rock with her. I love being able to create boards for groups of ideas. And the secret boards are perfect for projects you don't want everyone else to know about! Many dinner recipes were found this way. I don't use it a great deal anymore - I'm not a fan of the many links where you are linked out to a place you also have to have an account or you have to pay to use. I do curate my blog posts there under a board I call "Tech You Can Do" (LINK HERE). Pinterest has both an app for mobile devices as well as a Chrome extension that I use.

Pearltrees

Pearltrees ↭ another social bookmarking tool. While I've used it some, I've not dug in deep. I love the visual aspect of Pearltrees. I love that I can add more than websites to it. I've used Pearltrees only for a year or so and I think it provides a nice view of curated "things". Right now, I have 3 groups of "pearls" where I've curated Twitters I follow, various learning opportunities I want to share out, and professional learning with podcasts and people that I admire. I have embedded them on my website and from the stats, this page gets a fair amount of views. (LINK HERE) Pearltrees has a Chrome extension that I'd highly recommend if want to use it. It also has a mobile app that is easy to use.

Wakelet

Wakelet ↭ is similar to both Pinterest and Pearltrees. It is also a digital bookmarking tool. This is a newer tool with a familiar feel. I have tried to get into using it, but being honest, I've not. I do know several people who really like Wakelet, and it's a top tool in the edtech world. You can make collections and these collections can be shared. Wakelet is intended for those 13 years and older. But collections can be shared with younger students.

If you are interested in learning more, check these links out:

• 🌟Wakelet ebook - bit.ly/wakeletebook 

Authors - Sean, Karly, Dr. Randall Sampson, Jen Saarinen, Scott Titmas, Claudio Zavala Jr., Paul West, John Bimmerle

• Kathleen Morris, "Using Wakelet In The Classroom For Curation And Research"
• Matt Miller, "10 ways to use Wakelet’s new collaboration feature"

*** UPDATE!!! *** Thanks to Andy, my Tech Director, for sharing this tip ... teachers can share Wakelet collections with students in their Google Classrooms. How awesome!!! Kim Mattina shared this "how to" VIDEO. (Thanks, Kim!)

email

Email ↭ I know this is probably on everyone's "Do Not Do" list, but I've found it to be a great tool for curation. I often email myself a link with a short note attached so I know who I was wanting to share with or a note to remind myself later what I was thinking. If it's school related, I email it to my school account; if it's for me personally, I will email it to my personal email account. This has worked REALLY well! Part of the reason it works, is the little badge reminds me I have something waiting for me. And I check my email several times a day. It is definitely going to be a tool I continue to use. (Hey, sometimes you just have to be a rebel, right?)


This is a very small collection, so if I don't list one here & you have an awesome one, please reach out! Maybe you will have the one I've been searching for.  Next week, I'll be back with a different take on curating and curation tools.

Have a question or comment? Feel free to comment below, reach out to me on Twitter @kiefersj, or email me at sarah@techyoucando.com.