Make a Jigsaw in Google Slides

I wanted to create an online puzzle activity for  Grade 5 now that everyone is learning from home. The problem with many sites is unwanted ads or that users often are required to sign up. I have been playing with the idea of collaborative puzzles so that students can work together whilst practicing using a trackpad. Using Google Slides makes it easy to share and control how many users are in each puzzle. There are no ads and I can check which students are working on what puzzle as their Google accounts will show me who is in which slide deck. And it's fun!

I thought that solving a jigsaw would give some practice in clicking and dragging the puzzle pieces whilst being careful not to resize them. I can also teach the students command-z which is undo on a Mac. 

How to make the Puzzle

Start by opening a new Slide doc from Google Drive and creating the image that you wish to use for the puzzle. It's a good idea to use a blank slide as the proportions match well with the puzzle website. 

Pro-Tip

In Google Slides you can easily search for images by clicking the photo icon from the menu bar and selecting 'Search the Web'. Be sure to use photos that are labeled for reuse. 

Once you have created your finished image - download that slide as a JPEG ready for uploading to the online jigsaw puzzle maker. 

Go to https://thejigsawpuzzles.com/ and create an account. It's free and it will save your project work. You can save up to 30 puzzles for free. Create a new puzzle and upload your JPEG. 

I prefer to leave my puzzles unchanged so that the pieces don't have to be rotated. This mode is easier for beginners and for students working in groups to solve the puzzle. 

When you want to create the pieces, mouse over the thumbnail of your puzzle to select what kind of cut and how many pieces you want. It's 100 pieces by default but I prefer 50 so it doesn't take too long to solve. Once the puzzle pieces have been generated, you will need to copy each one by one over to your Slides document. 

I like to use a split-screen on my Macbook so that I can copy-paste the pieces. You can't do them all at once as it will act as one image. You will need to copy them one by one. Do this by right-clicking each piece and choosing copy and then on your slides window click command-v. There are a couple of advantages to making the puzzle in Google Slides, no ads, no sign-ups, and students can work in small groups to solve the puzzle. Once you have all the pieces copied over, try making the puzzle to check if the size works. I didn't change the size which works well as it is smaller than the default slide. 

Once your puzzle is ready, all you need to do is share it with your class. You can even make copies so that you can have smaller groups working on the puzzles. It's a fun way to learn about controlling the trackpad which is such an important skill for students learning to use a MacBook. 

The Power of Publishing

Recently I ran two online workshops via Google Meet for the Emmanual Foundation's Innovative Schools Project.  The workshops were to help their graduates try to meet the needs of online learning now that all schools in Indonesia are closed due to the pandemic.

The first workshop was designed for teachers that are new to Google apps. I introduced Slides and led the participants through how to make a simple layout with layered photos in Slides. 

I wanted to keep things very simple so we stayed completely within the app and used the Google Image Search that is inside. I taught the participants how to add .png to a photo search to get vector images with transparent backgrounds. 

The task I set was to make a lesson that used photos and instructions. The participants were so keen that the workshop went on for 2 hours. 

For the follow-up workshop, I taught the participants to create a virtual reading room. Here is the example that I used Virtual Reading Room.

The example that I used with the group was in Indonesian. I published these stories almost 8 years ago. They were written as a part of the backpack project that I did back in 2012 in a small village in North Sumatra. I worked with the children in that village to write every day stories about their life. 

There was a lot of discussion about these books and I hope that I inspired these teachers to try publishing stories of their own. I used Book Creator to publish these books and they even have a free version that includes 40 books. 

I was so proud to see that these teachers (70 attended my session) were able to make their own reading rooms. Here's an example from the class. Here is a screenshot of a virtual reading room created by one of the participants. She even put links to each book and filtered the YouTube videos with SafeTube. I'm happy because I did go in detail about online safety and whilst YouTube has so many awesome videos, it's much safer to filter out unwanted content. 

IB Dunia at Global Jaya School

 Today I presented at IB Dunia. I share about Augmented Reality and how you make it. In my workshop taught about how to create interactive augmented reality on an iPad using Apple Reality Composer. It was a pack session and I took a suitcase of iPads from school for participants to use. We also explored Merge Cube together with Tinkercad as older iPads can use this. I wanted to make sure that I offered a number of options for schools with different types of iPads.

I also share about my new book Create Your Own AR Pet. 

Published Books to the Apple iBooks Store

I wanted to share with you all my list of published books. I have created a List.ly to make it easier for people to access.

Books by Janeinjava

View more lists from Jane Ross

Technology in Chinese Lessons

I haven't written a blog post in quite some time. It's not that I haven't any content. I just don't have much time with my transition to a new school next academic year and a lot of demand for workshops :) I thought that I should share a recent workshop that I presented in Beijing. It is a collection of my tips for Chinese language teachers using iPads or Macbooks with their classes.

I am always careful to use creation apps on the iPad. There are some good content apps out there but you really need to look carefully as they often don't match with your curriculum needs.

Here we can see a teacher using a stylus to input Chinese characters. This allows for quicker typing of the characters. It is easy to set up via the keyboard options in your Macbook settings panel.

This is a very exciting way for students to write calligraphy on an iPad using an actual brush! You need a paint brush stylus. I have used the Sensu brush which feels so natural. I actually feel like I am writing calligraphy but there is no messy ink!

I really love the Drawing Pad app for iPad. I have been using it for several years now and it just keeps getting better. What a great way to make pictorial calligraphy to help learners remember their Chinese characters.

There are many Flash card apps for iPad. I like this one because you can draw right inside the app which is helpful for remembering Chinese characters. It is easy to make new sets and to share them across your classes. You can also download sets that others have made.

A few years ago I helped some Chinese teachers at my school to make Mr Bean movies with Chinese voice overs and Chinese character subtitles. It was so much fun. Here is a video made by a student. The learners gained so many new words from this project and had loads of fun!

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Here is the video that I made about Chinese books being creating using the Book Creator app for iPad. This lesson led to Keily Setiawan becoming the youngest child to ever publish an English/Chinese book to the Apple iBooks Store!!

Here is the link to the Apple iBooks Store for the book 'Chen Chen Goes to Space'.

Backpack Classroom Level 2

Tomorrow marks the second time that I will run the Backpack Classroom. This time I am taking my current class which is a Grade 4 class. They use Macbooks 1:1. Actually I will go with the whole year level. Our aim is to create 39 books.

What is the Backpack Classroom? 

This is a simple idea that I had at the end of last year. It is a way to help children with limited access to technology to create a digital book and to publish it. I originally took a backpack of iPads to a remote village in Sumatra to teach the children there to create digital books. It resulted in 9 books that to date have been downloaded over 20,000 times.

So what is different this time?

This time I am taking my current class from the International school that I currently teach at. My class has Macbooks as their 1:1 devices. We will keep it simple by using Keynote and Photo Booth to record the story. 

Where are you going?

We will go to the Santi Rama School in Jakarta. This is a school for deaf children. We have chosen to visit this school as our current topic is about how we can modify messages to suit a particular audience. The books will be tri-lingual. That means that there will be 3 languages included on each page. The children from the Santi Rama school understand Indonesian. They are all deaf children and use sign language to communicate. To make the books more accessible for an international audience we will translate the stories into English. My students will act as publishers and then promote the finished books to an international audience via their blogs and other online forums. 

Where did you get the idea to go to Santi Rama?

I have been visiting this school with different classes over the years. I have always gone to see them so that my students can make new friends and learn about communicating in sign language. This time the focus will be on to help each deaf student to create a digital book that we can publish to the world for other children to read. 

How will you make it work?

The idea is for each SWA student to have a Santi Rama student partner. The Santi Rama students have been preparing for tomorrow and have already written their stories on paper and made some illustrations. My students have been learning about how to create a digital book with embedded video on each page. They have also been learning how to create digital artwork to illustrate the book.

We are really looking forward to tomorrow. More information to come after our visit.

The Backpack Classroom Part 1

I want to try to tell you all the story of the Backpack Classroom. This is part one. I am going to need several attempts to tell this story. The Backpack Classroom was an initiative led by me to teach storytelling on iPads at the Tambunan Village in North Sumatra. I intend to publish an iBook on the whole project later. This blog will act as a place to get my thoughts organized for that iBook.

I am married to a Batak. His family comes from North Sumatra and we have been to visit our village several times. Our village is very remote. It takes about 8 hours (if there is no traffic) to drive there from Medan. Villages in Sumatra are quite small. There are about 40 houses in this village. Some houses are new and some are the traditional ones with the big curved roofs that look like boats.

This time we visited our village we had a new goal. I have been wanting for some time to do some storytelling workshops with the local children. I loaded up my backpack with 5 iPads (3 iPad 2s, an iPad 1 and an iPad Mini) along with an iPad camera kit, a DSLR and my Macbook Air. I wasn't sure if I would be able to do much teaching as it is school holidays, but I was hoping that I could run some informal workshops.

The night we arrived the word passed around and to my delight our house soon filled up with children from Kindergarten to Grade 9. I am fortunate to have wonderful children of my own who were able to act as mentors. That night we pulled out the 5 iPads and introduced the village to interactive stories on the iPad. The kids were amazed and loved to read the stories that I had loaded that were all written by my students in Jakarta.

I tried my best to explain that these stories had been written by children and published to the iBookstore. Then I pulled out Kayla's book 'The Skeletal System' that had been printed up, they finally understood that these books were actually books. Everyone wanted to write a story - but then came the tricky part - the kids had to come up with their own stories.

I knew that my best strategy is to lead by example so I decided to make a story about the house next door. This house is a traditional house. I decided to make a simple story about the four grand daughters of the house. Here is the cover of the book.

I will have to finish this post later. I need to put the final touches on this book and upload it to the iBookstore.

Digital Nation - the sequel to Growing Up Online

I have used the content from the PBS documentary "Growing Up Online" many times in my seminar presentations. Now there is a sequel that is currently being developed. This program is called Digital Nation.
Here is a quote from the website about its' content:
"Digital Nation is a new, open source PBS project that explores what it means to be human in an entirely new world -- a digital world. It consists of this Web site as well as a major FRONTLINE documentary to be broadcast in winter 2010. Our production team is posting rough cuts and raw footage on the web, and gathering input, feedback and stories from users as we go."
I really like the episode from Korea about game addiction. See it here Gaming Addiction. I will show that film at my parent seminar on violent digital games this afternoon.
I like the interviews with Marc Prensky about eBooks and find the interactive Digital Native Map (see screen capture on the left) truly fascinating.

Podcasting in Grade 5

The learning in a 1:1 laptop program never ceases to amaze me with how sophisticated and deep it becomes. Here is a podcast created by two Grade 5 boys. The process was to explore the workings of one of the human body systems. Initially as front loading the students watched the Human Body episode from the Magic School Bus and then took one minute of the film and created their own voice over explaining the scientific process. An example of their work in that activity can be seen here in a previous post - Body System Video
This time we wanted to go further. The students at SWA use the LMS Studywiz and were able to upload their podcast images to Studywiz to compare with the other students in the class. They were also asked to draw one image using Artrage. You can download a free trial version here.



The above screen capture was taken from SWA's Studywiz. What you can see here is the title page of the podcast and the student responses. I love the comment "Extraordinary and elegant work" made by Hansen. The students turned their images (online downloads and picture book scans) into slideshow screens ready to be placed into their podcasts as it related to the information being presented. This makes the podcast a multimedia experience. By using Studywiz, the students were abe le to share their work and get feedback from their peers. This helped them to make decisions on what images they would choose for the finished work.
Here is one of the finished podcasts.

21st Century Learning - Anywhere, Anytime

This film was taken on location on the island of Sumbawa in Indonesia. The Grade 5s from SWA went on a four day trip to learn more about how mining impacts the local environment. The students took their school Macbooks with them so that they could record their learning on location. Indeed portable technologies have empowered learning allowing it to be 'just in time'.

21st Century Learner

SWA students presented at Summerecon Mall Serpong today as a part of the iBox seminar on 21st Century Learner. Two Grade 5 students presented about making a virtual Monas (Indonesia's national monument) and two Grade 8 students presented their Mr Bean film clips with student created voice overs in Mandarin Chinese and Chinese character subtitles. The students were fantastic. Many people could not believe that the work was student made. The students made a quick demonstration of the process which had the audience mesmerized. The presentation drew a big crowd in that shopping mall. The first minute is in Indonesian for the benefit of the audience.

Transportation in Chinese

Today in Grade 7 the students learned about different types of transportation. First the students wrote down all the different kinds of transportation that they had ever traveled on.
There were plenty of unusual ones like metro mini, flying fox, helicopter, skateboard and even an elephant!

The students were then asked to make a Keynote slideshow with photos and the words in pinyin.
For example

火 车 －huo che - train



Teachable moment!
Just as this lesson was in progress a helicopter landed in the field beside our school. Of course we took advantage and got all the students to take a look and learn the words for helicopter:

直升机 － zhi sheng ji - helicopter

Preparing the Keynote for Open University in Jakarta

I have been working on my upcoming presentation for a national seminar at Universitas Terbuka (Open University) in Jakarta. I will present the keynote for their seminar on "Tema: Dampak Internet terhadap Pengembangan Karakter Generasi Muda Indonesia" (Theme: Impact of the Internet on the character development of Indonesia's younger gereration).
My slides will be in English but I will present in Indonesian.

My presentation will be about 21st Century Learning based on my experiences in the 1:1 laptop program at Sinarmas World Academy.

Here is a sneak peek.

Digital Wisdom - My Thoughts

Are you familiar with the term 'Digital Native/Digital Immigrant'? Check this article for further details Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants

I have studied Prensky in my recently completed Masters and we all need to remember that he wrote about this theory in 2001. 2001 - in technology circles - was a long time ago! FYI, Prensky has updated this theory - see http://www.marcprensky.com - from Digital Natives/Immigrants to Digital Wisdom.

Yes, many of our older students lack essential tech skills. But, what do you expect them to be able to do if all they have previously engaged in is FB or chat? We know that parents are role models. Parents who read are encouraging their children to read. How many parents are actively tinkering with technology and actively showing their kids how they are learning to use it? I know I do and all my kids are digitally wise :-)

I spend most of my time as an educator de-programming students who have been taught to essentially 'wait' for the teacher. It is hard to change the kids mindset but given time, many students can learn to be self directed learners. My message is simple no one can know it all and no one has ever trained me to use any of the software or tech tools that I use. I trained me - so you can train you!

I frequently use new software with the students and we learn to use it together. Reading the instructions, following a tutorial, searching through forums and looking for tutorials on You Tube are useful strategies that get results. The teacher must try to do whatever task that is set for the students - actively demonstrating the problem solving strategies that they are using to achieve the goal. Teachers can't step back and expect it to 'just happen'.

Like I am always saying to everyone at school 'It's a computer - not a magic wand'.