How to Create a Table of Contents in Google Docs

Google Docs {the Google equivalent of Microsoft Word} can be an amazing resource for the classroom. These are my top 5 favorite ideas for using Google Docs in education:

1. Collaborative writing {up to 50 people can edit a document at the same time} 
2. Essay/research paper written by students {and then turned in/graded digitally} -- bonus: teachers can see revision history and hold students accountable for edits
3. Error correction: create a document with deliberate errors, and let students correct it digitally
4. Reading response journals: eliminate the risk of losing the paper in transit between home and school
5. Meeting notes: document minutes and discussions at team meetings and easily share with colleagues

Once you start using Google Docs regularly, you might start using it for lengthy documents. When that happens, it's time to start utilizing the table of contents tool to get the document organized again. 

1. Open your document in Google. 

2. Type headers for each section of your document, as shown below:

3. Highlight the first header. Go to format >> paragraph styles >> heading {any you want -- there are 6} >> apply heading, as shown below:

4. The heading you highlighted before should now look different. {For reference, heading 1 is the largest. The text becomes smaller and/or italicized when you choose headings 2-6.}

5. Follow steps 3-4 for all the headings you typed. {So I completed the steps for "Supplies," "Warm Up/Anticipatory Set," "Activity," "Closure/Summary," and "Evaluation/Assessment" in the mock lesson plan example below.}

6. Put the cursor in the spot where you'd like the table of contents to appear. {I always go to the very top of the document.}

7. Click insert >> Table of Contents.

8. Your document should now have a table of contents, like so:

Click on any part of your table of contents to jump to that specific part of the document. 

Click on any part of the TOC to view a refresh button; press if it you need to update any of the heading titles you typed {such as adding a completely new title or editing the spelling/structure of an existing one}. 

Tweetable:

• Tame your endless Google docs by creating a table of contents! 

Resources

• 29 Interesting Ways to Use Google Docs in the Classroom
• 32 Ways to Use Google in the Classroom

Setting Up a Blogger Blog

A blog is a unique kind of social media website. It's social because it encourages others to interact with the main poster, usually in the form of commenting. But it's unique in that it allows the user to post multi-paragraph posts, as well as other media such as pictures, videos, and documents.

This website -- Innovate. Instruct. Inspire. -- is a blog that is directed at teachers; it is intended for other educators to read this site and glean information that could be useful in their classrooms. A blog could also be used as a classroom or grade level website that students and/or parents use to get information during the school year. Finally, it can also be a place for students to post their writing and/or discuss class-related topics.

Via

First of all, please know that there are lots of blogging sites you could use. However, a lot of people choose Blogger because...

1. ...they already have a Google account {gmail, YouTube, Google Drive, etc.}, so they actually already have a Blogger account, too. That means it's one less username and password to remember!
2. ...it's free.
3. ...it utilizes a drag-and-drop interface when customizing the layout and design, which is super-easy. 
4. ...it allows for lots of customization in terms of colors, fonts, layouts, sizing, etc. You can do as much or as little as you want. 
5. ...it doesn't require the knowledge of HTML in order to manage it {although you can use HTML skills to further customize your website, if you want}. 

I currently maintain 4 blogs and help a friend with another, all without losing my mind. :) That's because Blogger is so easy to use! {Here is my old OUES blog if you want to take a look.} It's for this reason that this post will focus only on the Blogger platform for classroom blogging.

As discussed above, I think there are 3 main ways you can use Blogger as an educator:

Teacher Blogs
If you've ever been on Pinterest, you've surely seen some super-cute, practical, and/or just plain genius classroom ideas. If you clicked on the idea, you were probably taken to a blog.

The craze of teacher blogs has really picked up in the last few years, and I love it! Now, more than ever, teachers are creating websites solely intended to be viewed by other teachers so they can share the fabulous ideas they've used throughout the years. During my first two years of teaching, I spend a ton of time reading teacher blogs, and I attribute a lot of my good ideas to them.

As of late 2013, these are the top 50 elementary teacher blogs, as named by Teacher Certification Degrees. 

As of December 2011, here are 50 must-see teacher blogs as named by Edudemic.

I would compile a list of who I think are the best bloggers, but then we'd be here for hours. :) There are two ways I've found fabulous blogs: via Pinterest and on other blogs. For instance, if you scroll down and look at the right side of this page, you'll come to a list that looks something like this:

I know I've got at least 20 or so EdTech blogs I read regularly listed in that section {you may have to click "show all" at the bottom of the list to see them all}. Click on any of those links to view the blogs. From there, look for similar lists. Just keep clicking and reading!

The benefit to having a teaching blog is that you have a way to write down all your cool ideas and share them with the world. You can also make blog friends that can help you with teaching-related problems when they arise. {Not to mention, I'm sure a teaching blog would look nice in your portfolio or resume!}

Classroom or Grade Level Website
I love the idea of a classroom website. It's a fabulous opportunity for students to access valuable classroom material outside the hours of 8 - 3:30 on weekdays.

You can post contact information {such as your e-mail address and links to your classroom social media sites}, the syllabus, supply list, due dates to upcoming assignments and events, copies of your lessons plans so that parents are more in-tune with what's happening and absent students don't wonder what they missed, outstanding working {I used to call this my "virtual refrigerator" page when I taught 8th grade. I would black out last names and post great work on the 'fridge just like my Mom used to do with me.}, learning links, and so much more. On my Science Lab blog, I used to post a short blurb about what activities each grade level did with me each week. I felt like it was one way to help connect families to the Science Lab from home.

Classroom Blog with Student Contributions
You can also have students write posts for the blog. They can be about anything! In my class, I might have students type their lab write-up for the day with pictures from their experiment.

When I taught English, I had students volunteer to post their short stories and essays on the blog.

I also posted a blog with thought-provoking questions and asked the students to discuss the topic in the comment section. Students were required to respond with their original thoughts on the discussion question as well as respond back to another student who had posted. It was a great opportunity to extend the thinking, work on Internet navigation and etiquette, and to improve typing skills.

How do I get started?
Like I said, there are lots of other blogging websites, but this post will focus on Blogger. If you already have a g-mail, YouTube, or Google Drive account, you already have a Blogger account. Just go to www.blogger.com and log in with that same username and password. If you don't already have a Google account like the ones mentioned above, click HERE to sign up for one. Once you log in, you'll see your dashboard, will will be empty if you've never set up a Blogger blog before.

Find and click this button in your Blogger dashboard to get started:

You'll see a pop-up that looks like this:

Type a name for your blog in the "title" box {don't worry -- you can change it later}.

In the "address" box, type the URL you'd like people to enter in order to get to your blog. Most people make this the same as their blog name, but it's not mandatory. Notice that your blog's address will end in .blogspot.com unless you purchase your own domain name and apply it to your blog.

Choose any of the templates -- you can change that later, too -- and click the orange "create blog!" button.

From there, you will see an overview of your blog:

You don't have to customize your blog at all if you don't want to; you could just click "new post" and start writing! {Click HERE to read my article about publishing a post on Blogger.}

Take a look at the options over to the left:

Here's what you can do if you click on each of those options:

• Overview: quickly see page views, news from Blogger, and any news about your blog {like if you got a new comment}
• Posts: look at all the posts you've ever written -- published, unpublished, and scheduled. You can also add and delete tags and edit posts from this page. 

Pages: at the top of this page, you should see 3 tabs: home, about, and video tutorials. Each of those is considered a "page." Add, edit, and delete pages from the "page" tab in your dashboard.

Comments: reply to, delete, and mark comments as spam on this page.

Google+: connect your blog to Google+

Stats: see your monthly page views, how many page views each post has gotten, where your audience lives, traffic sources, and the breakdown of which browser users are viewing your blog in

Earnings: only visit this page if you are using Google's "adsense" to make money from your blog

Layout: play with where things are located on your blog on this page.

A header is what appears at the top of your blog. Mine looks like this:

Decide which pages {if any} will show on your blog. Modify how people can comment and what the bottom portion of each of your blog posts says. Add Google's "gadgets" around the sides of your posts. Gadgets can include a search bar, a list of labels from each post, archives, an "about me" section, any HTML you want to include, pictures, videos, and lots of other things! Blogger made it easy to add the most common items so that you don't have to know HTML in order to use a Blogger blog.

Template: choose how you want your blog to look. Scroll down to choose a pre-made template from Blogger. There are also lots of websites that create free Blogger templates -- all you have to do is copy and paste it where the designer tells you to. HERE is one of my favorite places to look for templates.

{The screenshot below was taken when I was using a different blog name. :) }

It is in the templates section that you can also change how your blog will look when someone views it on a mobile device.

Settings: change your title, description, blog address, and privacy options on the first page. Customize how many posts you want to show up on each page of your blog, and how people can leave comments. Choose your time zone and the date format that Blogger will post every time you publish a new post. The "other" tab has options for backing up your blog and deleting it, should you ever decide you need to do that.

Click HERE for my post about publishing a post on Blogger. 

Twitter: Suggestions for Use

Now that you know all about Twitter (what it is, special Twitter vocabulary, setting up an account, navigating the website, sending tweets, the hashtag, Twitter chats, and Twitter accounts to follow), it's time to put that information to use. Below are some ideas I have about using Twitter as a teacher.

Suggestions for teacher-posts with limited interaction:

1. Reminders about assignments that are due or upcoming quizzes/exams/projects
2. Reminders about snow days, picture days, sporting events, field trips, spirit days, etc. 
3. School events and/or their outcomes (plays, musicals, art shows, academic meets, etc.) -- especially ones where your school won/did well or is playing a rival
4. Hints about how to complete an assignment or project
5. Bonus points that can only be aquired through Twitter. {For instance, when I taught high school English, I once tweeted, "Go to the class website and scroll to the bottom of the home page. The first student to describe to me the newest object at the bottom of that page gets 5 bonus points." The purpose of this, of course, was to get students to view the class website and the newest important tool on it.}
6. Helpful websites
7. Links to related online games
8. Helpful apps
9. Books you recommend
10. Vocabulary words/definitions in a Word of the Day (#WOTD) format
11. A poll to help your classroom/planned lessons {either with the answer options included in the tweet or as a link to another polling platform, like Survey Monkey, for instance}
12. Exit ticket answers {If students ask a question on an exit ticket, you could answer it on Twitter.  This allows everyone to benefit from the answers without taking up valuable class time.}
13. Motivational/inspirational quotes 
14. Challenges {"I challenge you to find one example of alliteration today."..."I challenge you to do one random act of kindness -- #ROAK -- today."}

If you're interested in using twitter for professional development purposes, please read this blog post.

Posts to stimulate interaction/potential student projects:

1. Schedule a chat. For instance, I might specify the #MrsKSci4 hashtag and assign a start time of  7 pm. Ideally, at 7 pm, students would log on and use the search box to find our class's hashtag. We can then have an online discussion of classroom topics outside the walls of our classroom. You could discuss anything from an in-class topic to a President's speech on television to a movie you all went to see. Click here to read more about Twitter chats. 
2. Peer-to-peer tutoring. Encourage parents/students to tweet questions. Other students/parents could check the hashtag and answer peer's questions. We learn best when we teach! Of course, you'll want to monitor the feed to ensure that all questions are answered accurately.
3. Exit ticket. At the end of class, ask students to whip out their mobile device and tweet a quick exit comment/question to the cyber-world. Hopefully, these tweets generate a discussion for other students answering their peers' questions. You also get a quick evaluation of who understands the material.
4. Summary of the day. Whether you've just taught a math lesson or you've just finished another chapter in the class novel, students can tweet a 140-character summary of the day's lesson. In order to make assessment easier, you might consider having students either tweet this as a "reply" or include the class hashtag.
5. Short answer quiz questions. Of course,  <140-characters/tweet is a short short answer! But if you're able to explain/answers something in such a short and concise manner, you're probably more likely to understand it.
6. Twitter as bellwork. This feeds off the last suggestion, but immediately upon entering the room,  there will be questions or a discussion prompt on the board {or tweeted by you}. Students must respond to the question(s)/discussion prompt while you take care of those mundane "house-keeping" duties {attendance, lunch count, etc}.
7. Summary of text. After reading a chapter in a novel or expository textbook, ask students to tweet  summary of what they just read. 
8. Timeline report. Follow a celebrity or company and track their tweets over time. Then write a report over their day-to-day life. This could work as a biography project or even for a business class.  
9. Find students in another school/state/country with whom your students can tweet back and forth. It would be challenging to convey all information in 140-character segments, but that might create more concise writers. 
10. Create a class story. One student can start by tweeting the beginning line to a story. Students then take turns to tweet a class story, one line at a time. This collaborative project works on writing skills, creativity, and sharing.
11. Getting to know you. As a back to school activity, ask students to describe themselves in 140-characters or less. If students' Twitter usernames weren't easily recognizable, you could even play a game where students must guess which student belongs with which tweet.
12. Character tweet. After reading a novel, students can pick a character from the story and tweet, say, 5 status updates throughout the day. Each status update should be written in the 1st person format, as if the student were actually the character. 
13. Historical tweet. Feeding off the previous suggestion, you could ask students to pick a person from history and impersonate them on Twitter throughout the day. What would Abe Lincoln have to say if Twitter was available during his time? A website called Historical Tweets might help with this.
14. Hashtag timeline. Monitor the hashtags over a period of time to see the trends of our society. This would be great for a history or current events class. 
15. Hashtag quick-write. On a random day, write the current trending topics on the board. Ask students to write about a curtain hashtag either individually or as a group. They could write their thoughts, create a story, etc.
16. Personal story. Using the 3 parts of a story, ask students to write an entire story in 420-characters or less (140 for the beginning, 140 for the middle, and 140 for the end). 
17. Micro-research paper. Ask students to create a micro-research paper using the Twitter guidelines. The intro paragraph must be 140-characters, the thesis must be 140-characters, the first paragraph.... you get the idea. Each part of the micro-paper must comply with Twitter character count rules. 
18. Spelling race. Tell students a word in class and see who can tweet the correct spelling the most quickly. (You could also do this for math problems, science/history trivia questions, etc.)
19. Vocab race. Tweet a word and see who can reply with the correct definition the most quickly...or vice versa.
20. Vocab sentences. Tweet a word and ask students to reply with a tweet that uses that vocabulary word correctly in a sentence. 
21. Synonym/Antonym race. Call out a word and ask students to tweet synonyms or antonyms.
22. Book club. Students can tweet book blurbs in an effort to get other kids to read great books.

Ways you can keep track of tweets from students:

1. Create a hashtag for each class or group of students. For instance, I might specify #MrsKSci4 for my 4th grade Science Lab classes. From that point forward, if I wanted to find my students' tweets, I just type #MrsKSci4 in the search bar and read away. 
2. Create lists. You can create a list for all of your students, and then divide them by class and/or subject. When you want to read their tweets, just click on the name of the list and read only tweets from students on that list.
3. Ask students to "mention" you in every classroom-related tweet.

>> Don't forget to follow me on Twitter: @ckarasedu <<

Here are 50 more ideas about what to post on Twitter, courtesy of Teach Thought.

Here are 22 ways to use Twitter for learning, based on Bloom's Taxonomy, courtesy of Teach Thought.

This article by Teach Thought has 100 of the best Twitter tools for teachers. Some of them are great for use with students. 

Below are the other Twitter posts I've written for this blog:

• An overview/short 'n sweet guide
• Definitions of Twitter and its Vocabulary
• The basics: setting up an account, navigating the website, and tweeting
• Twitter Accounts to Follow
• The Hashtag
• Twitter chats {a fantastic yet "unofficial" way to be "professional developed"}
• Personal Success Stories from Using Twitter in the Classroom

Tellagami

Our librarian loves to use Voki with our kiddos. And I have to say: our kids respond well to Voki. But with the rise of iPads in our school, I thought it might be nice to know about an app version.

The app is called Tellagami, and it's free to download.

Tellagami works a lot like Voki, except there are only male and female options {no aliens or animals like Voki offers}.

Customize skin color, hair color and style, clothing, eye color, and even head size.

There aren't too many customization options -- for the female avatar, there were about 4 top options in 3-4 colors each in clothing, for instance -- but it's enough to get the job done.

Once your avatar looks the way you need him/her to, move on to customizing the background.

The app comes with 2 free sets of backgrounds {"free" and "road trip"}, but there are plenty of other background packs you can purchase if you so choose. I particularly liked the educational backgrounds. One of the edu sets appeared to be for college, while the other set was geared more toward elementary; the elementary backgrounds have alphabet/color borders above the blackboard and brighter colors.

 I chose to customize the emotion of my avatar after my background. Choose from 7 emotions:

Finally, add some speech. You can either record your own voice, or type something in and choose from a dozen or so male and female voices.

Preview your Tellagami to make sure he/she sounds the way you need it to, and then share your creation. I like that you can share on social media sites + e-mail + text messages.

I e-mailed it to myself to see if I could figure out how to embed it on my blog, and wouldn't you know it? Clicking the link in the e-mail takes you to a screen that offers a link to the video and an embed code. Yay! Here's my sample Tellagami:

One thing I love about this app is that you don't have to have an account in order to save anything.  Just open the app, create, and send. I don't see a way to edit the Tellagami after it's made, so that may be the only drawback I see so far.

For reference, the maximum length of time for a recording on Tellagami is 30 seconds {which is the same for Voki, if I remember correctly...?}.

Ideas for using Tellagami or Voki in the classroom:

1. As a getting-to-know-you activity, all students could create a Voki or Tellagami to represent themselves. The avatar could speak essential information, favorites, etc. about themselves, and then al students could play their creation for the class. 
2. After reading, students could create a Tellagami or Voki project to summarize what they read. 
3. After reading a story, students could pick their favorite character and create an avatar that speaks from that character's POV.
4. On a similar note, students could create an avatar of a famous person or a historical figure; the avatar could speak facts about that person's life and achievements. 
5. After writing a story, students could make an avatar of their choosing, and then use the call-in feature to read their story to world.
6. Instead of always posting things to your classroom website in words, create a Voki or Tellagami video to get the information across. For instance, I once embedded a Voki into a class blog entry and used it to prompt students on their next assignment. {I included text, too, in case students didn't have speakers available, but this is a good option in the paperless classroom for those kiddos that may struggle with reading or just prefer verbal instruction.}

This article tells you about 6 other free avatar-creating apps for iPad.

Trading Cards

Constructing a biography is a fairly common school project. I know that, for instance, both the first and second graders at my school have to write a biography for their research project. The Trading Card function from Big Huge Labs might be a way to spice up that report!

The Trading Card function allows students to upload a picture of a person (or animal, I suppose... the website doesn't monitor what you upload), add a title, facts about that person or object, customize the color of the "trading card," and even add a couple of fun icons to the sides.

There are just enough options to keep things interesting, but not so many that it becomes an overwhelming project. 

One of the best parts is that students do NOT have to have an account or e-mail address in order to use this. Another great thing about the Trading Card project is that students can download their project as a .jpg (picture file). From there, you can incorporate it into a a FlipSnack book to share with parents or store in your Dropbox account for easy access later.

Here's an example I made. Mine is over Albert Einstein:

Try the Trading Card feature from Big Huge Labs for yourself by clicking here.