Back to School Selfie Cell Phone Fun! #busedu

As I was planning my FBLA officer leadership training for this upcoming Sunday, I thought about what kind of activity I could do in that training that I could also do with one of my classes this semester when we head back to school. I wanted an activity that was personal and involved phones (partly because the kids want to use them and partly so I can see who has a phone and who doesn't). If they don't want to use their phone, they can pair up with someone else for the activity. I don't want students to feel threatened or feel "less than" if they do not have a phone (or some don't have camera phones and that would limit their involvement in this activity).

So, I came up with a "Tic-Tac-Toe" board of Share Your Self-ie! You could expand and make it more like Bingo or even pair them up with people who have phones and let them play head to head, alternating pictures. That's a cool idea, right?

Here's the Google doc link, and feel free to modify. Let me know if you like it!

Oh, and here are my selfies in each category, just for fun... (you can click to see them better).

Loving the new Google Slides Q&A! #busedu

Though I hadn't had the opportunity to use the new Google Slides Q&A feature with my actual students when it came out in May, I did decide to try it out at the KBEA Conference this summer when I did my Google session. If you haven't heard about it, you can access the new feature by pressing the down arrow next to the Present button. And, you have to tell it to use Presenter View. A URL appears at the top of your presentation that participants can visit on their phones (or laptops) to submit questions. They can see each other's questions and even up-vote them if they also have that question.

When you use it, the default is that only people in your organization can submit questions, which is fine if you are a GAFE school and using it in class with students who are logged in. However, in a presentation situation, I had to change that to be "anyone" instead (it was a simple drop down).

Also, the presenter view pops up on your screen, so I suppose you must do some sort of "extend desktop" on your presentation computer/device to make it where only you can see the questions. After using it, I might would just minimize it and then have my phone open to the URL where they submit questions so I can see those separately.

Finally, you cannot exit the presentation or the questions disappear (and the next time, a different feedback URL appears). I learned that the hard way. Although, I also learned that you can also go to "Tools>Q&A History" to access the questions.

It's a pretty neat feature! Even if your presentation isn't in Google Slides, you could make a one slide presentation just to start class (a welcome screen, if you will) and allow students to use this to ask questions about whatever topic you are discussing (or about a PowerPoint that you are using and not a Google slideshow) provided you don't exit the presentation. I think there are some great implications for using this somewhat as a back channel (except you can have students logged in, which is cool).

Thoughts!?