Faculty Training Meeting 1

A majority of the faculty gathered in room 134 for the first of monthly training meetings in preparation for the 1-1 Chromebook initiative. With Chromebooks in hand, the training began.

First topic was a review of Chromebook basics. The highlight of this portion was the discovery of the Chromebook keyboard shortcuts:  Ctrl + Alt + ?.  Using Ctrl +  and Ctrl -  to Zoom in and Zoom out on the screen is also useful.

A video review can be found here:  http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2014/08/everything-teachers-need-to-know-about.html#.VBSD_fLmpEd.blogger

The second portion was the review of Google Drive. The review covered all the icons and the menu items. Discussion was held on importing and translating MS Word documents into Docs. Sometimes formatting becomes an issue. This is especially true when translating an outline from MS Word to Docs. The reminder was given that using the search bar to find documents is a tool that can be used often.  The tip was given that a pdf document can be opened with Google Docs and thereby become editable text. This is handy when scanning a document on the copy machine and emailing it to yourself, or just when you find an pdf on the web. Finding details about documents can also be a help. Information on changes and when they were made and by whom can be useful in a classroom setting.

The third portion of the training was a review of Google Docs. Again the icons and menu items were explained. The difference between Making a Copy and Renaming a document was explained. Renaming does not create a new document with a new name. Only Making a copy creates a new document - the copy may then be renamed. Revision History does allow one to go back to previous versions of any document and restore them. Although there is a spell checker, some of the auto correct has some idiosyncrasies. (eg. lower case i  will not correct to upper case I)

The final session of the training was the introduction of Google Classroom. This is a document manager for teachers to use with their students. In order for the faculty to get a feel for the student side of the application, all are to join the Faculty Google Development Class. Go to classroom.google.com. From here click on the plus sign in the upper right corner next to your login name. Join a Class. The Class code is wv4ban. Short assignments and readings will be given to the faculty to help them learn about ways to incorporate Chromebooks in their classroom next year. Short assignments will be given to give the faculty a taste of the student classroom experience. A second task for the faculty is to click the plus sign next to their login in the upper right corner and create a class. If possible once or twice a semester, teachers should try using classroom with their students. In this way the faculty will experience the teacher side of classroom.

In the right column of this blog are five links to help you review all the features of Classroom. Please review them and learn what you can do and then try it. As mentioned at the training, all the juniors, sophomores, and freshmen, will have a good working knowledge of Classroom by the end of the year. They will be ready to use it effectively next year. As faculty members we also must be just as ready to use it.

Next meeting - October 20.