Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Draftback - Play back your Google Docs

Draftback is a Chrome Extension that allows you to play back a Google Doc as if you were recording a video of all of the edits.   This simple Chrome Extension will allow a writer, or someone who is helping to give feedback to a writer, to view their writing process and see the flow of their writing.  This could provide information into how they wrote something and help find ways for that writer to improve.

Another use, which some teachers will like, is that it can show you quickly if there were any major copy and pasting going on in the document.  If you think someone was guilty of plagiarism, you could easily view their document and see if the flow of writing matched what it should look like or if there was a giant chunk of writing that just appeared at once.

You can find the Chrome Extension at https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/draftback/nnajoiemfpldioamchanognpjmocgkbg?utm_source=chrome-ntp-icon or watch the video below to see how it works.



Creating a YouTube Playlist for Students

There is a tremendous amount of useful information on YouTube, along with a large amount of not useful information.  One thing we can easily do to help students, is to create a Playlist of videos related to the topic in our classroom.  This could become a great resource for them to extend or enrich their learning but also could be useful in all aspects of learning.

One thing I have realized, is that there are definitely other people out there who are better at explaining some topics than I am.  If that better explanation is combined with engaging and informative graphics, you have a very powerful tool for learning.

Creating a Playlist is a very easy thing to do and you can share it quickly with students or others. Curating videos for students will give them more options when it comes to learning and will help them be more efficient instead of just searching the vast amount of videos that are out there.

Watch the video below to see how to create your own YouTube Playlist for Students.