Happy Birthday to My Blog!

Holy Cow! An entire year has gone by already. My intent with this post was to reflect on my Ed Tech journey over the past year and all that I have learned, but I'm not sure that I'll be able to put it into any coherent form. When I think about all I have learned my mind jumps from one thing to another like a drop of water on a hot skillet. Therefore, I will simply make a random list about my growth over the past year.

1. I STILL can't believe that I went to the Google Teacher Academy at the Googleplex last summer. That day started this whole wild ride and I've loved every minute of it. Sometimes I'm successful with all of the cool tools I learned about and sometimes I'm not, but it's always interesting. I feel very fortunate to have had the experience with Google and the fabulous presenters that day. As a result, I have become MUCH more of a tech evangelist. Our students use technology to get information every day, but it seems that many in education are reluctant to tap into that.
   
2. Within a week of attending GTA I had started this blog and joined Twitter. As I've said before here and here, I learn something new on Twitter every day. For me, Twitter is primarily a professional thing; I follow teachers and other education professionals. Just last night, because of Twitter, I found the YouTube Reporter's Center and links to several blog posts summarizing sessions from NECC '09.
   
3. In the past year I've learned to be less afraid of technology. Actually, I'm not sure that I ever was afraid of it, I was just cautious. This week I've given my blog a facelift and earlier in the year I finally figured out the timeline gadget in Google Spreadsheet. Both of those tasks would have been beyond me a year ago...not so much that I couldn't do them, but I would have been afraid to try.

So, where does this leave me? I know I still have much to learn. I find I spend much more time thinking about how to make my classroom more student centered. I believe this is especially important now that I am in a journalism lab. The dynamics of the physical layout, in my opinion, demand a different way of teaching and learning. There are new tools that I want to try (like Skype). I want to attend more webinars this year and plan to 'attend' this year's K12 Online Conference in December.

I am looking forward to learning this year. Stay tuned for updates!

Timelines in Geography

On Friday, my geography students were finishing up a paper timeline on the territorial expansion of the US and Canada. They had gathered the information using their textbook, then created an outline with dates and events before putting those events on a larger piece of paper. Several of the students finished early so I put them to work on two projects that I wanted to test out.

First, I put two students on Mnemograph.com, an online timeline creator that I found through Tom Barrett on Twitter. They entered their data, then added pictures and descriptions. Mnemograph allows timeline builders to rank events in the timeline, but the students hadn't gotten to that by the end of the period. The timeline can be viewed here. I'm not sure how this happened, but the events where students were inserting graphics got moved. They were also having trouble finding the graphics when viewing the timeline. It was frustrating for them to not have things "stick" where they wanted them to.

Another group of students worked on a timeline in Google Docs. We used spreadsheet, then inserted the timeline gadget. I had written last summer about my frustration with the Google Docs Timeline Gadget, but now it works like a charm! I had one student entering the data, two others searching for images that might be appropriate and two more searching for websites that would be relevant for additional information on the topic. The next class had one group proofreading descriptions and adding more detail, one checking images, another checking relevant websites, and a fourth group double-checking dates and event names. Students loved the collaborative aspect of the task and next time will use the discussion feature in spreadsheet. The second class was able to show small groups of their classmates what they had been doing and, generally speaking, they asked for the opportunity to do more lessons like that.

While some students were definitely more comfortable doing their timelines in the paper and pencil fashion, others reveled in the challenge of doing their timeline in a new way.

Google Docs Timeline Gadget

For the past four days I have been struggling with the timeline gadget in GoogleDocs. I finally figured it out this morning. I scoured the internet, I talked to other teachers, I wailed in frustration. Interestingly, I could find many blogs that expressed exasperation with the timeline gadget from back in April 2008, but couldn't find any solutions to the problem. I found the GoogleGroup discussion for the gadget, but it wasn't clear to my newbie, non-programmer mind. Today, I found a published timeline using an earlier version of the gadget and it conveniently had data to accompany it. Much to my surprise, it kind of made sense. I made one change in my spreadsheet and it started working. So, I pass along my feeling of triumph to you.

Here's how to get a nifty timeline from your spreadsheet:

1. log into your Google account. Go do Documents.

2. click on New under the Google Docs logo and open a spreadsheet












3. in row 1 enter the column headers in this order: start, title, end, image, link, description
some of the documentation online says that the order doesn't matter. I couldn't get the gadget to work unless it was in this order















4. enter your data in the rows below (see example above). Use dates that include mm/dd/yyyy. Keep titles relatively short. No need for an end date unless there is a specific one. It works to link to images you find on the internet (at sites such as American Memory and the like). Just copy and paste the URL into the box. Do the same for the link box. Descriptions should be succinct, but there doesn't seem to be a limit.

5. highlight the cells that are part of your timeline as shown here
















6. click on the link to add gadgets in the upper right part of the screen, select the timeline gadget. I've noticed that at times it says different things. Sometimes it just says "gadgets", other times is says "create a chart, graph, or table..."

Here is the top of the spreadsheet with the "create a chart, graph, or table..." link showing.




After clicking the link, this is what you should see.











7. the range in the gadget should show the cells you have highlighted. Check to make sure the range here matches the range selected above. Change the title of the timeline if you wish. Adjust the upper and lower time intervals if you wish. You can choose week, month, or year. You can change the background colors too, if you wish.













8. click APPLY! Your timeline will show below the settings you've just checked.

9. your timeline is there! I like using the popout feature which opens in another tab in Firefox. Scroll sideways to see your timeline in all it's glory!













Thanks to Keldon Clegg for sharing a draft of his timeline on Federalism.