pretty much once they came out my school switched from using macs to chromebooks and although i
love chromebooks for lots of different reasons if you're a chromebook user you also know that
they come with a unique set of challenges because you can't download programs onto a chromebook so
when i was picking edtech programs to use first i had to figure out whether or not they were
even chromebook compatible and then of course a whole other set of questions would come up like
whether or not they were appropriate for my grade level middle school my subject area humanities and
whether or not the program met my school's privacy policy good news there's a brand new resource for
chromebook teachers that addresses all of these questions and a lot more hey everybody my name
is sam carey and on this channel we show you how to design innovative engaging classrooms
using technology in this video i'm going to show you a super useful resource that google's
obviously spent a lot of time and energy building in the background and just put up for the public
called the chromebook app hub so let's hop over and check it out first to get there
just type chromebook app hub in google and then click on the first link that pops up now there's
a lot of information here and it can be a little bit overwhelming so what i'm gonna do in this
video is walk you through how i would approach using the chromebook app hub to learn more about
tools and instructional strategies that i could use in my classroom so first i would start here
on the apps tab and on this tab you'll be able to find loads of information about chromebook
compatible apps now when i was first learning how to teach with technology i often pick tools based
on word of mouth someone would tell me about a tool and i would go out and find information
about it so if you've heard about a tool and you just want to learn more about what it's
about whether it's chromebook compatible you can just search for any tool here in the search box
and see what pops up eventually though i started to look for tools that would help
me implement specific instructional goals and i would recommend that you start to do the same so
now rather than searching for a specific app i'll use the filter tool on the chromebook app hub to
help me find a particular program that aligns to my goals one nice thing about this filter is
that you can filter based on categories so you can look up tools that will help you achieve
specific goals and one of the first things i would recommend anyone do is look for a
tool that's going to help them increase active participation so here i would select classroom
management and participation and then since i taught middle school i would choose 11 to 13
as my age range given the choice i'd always prefer to use a program that allows students to just
sign in with their google login that way they don't have to create a separate account so
also check the box here for google sso or single sign-on at my previous school we were allowed
to experiment with programs but they had to be gdpr and copper compliant so i'll make sure that
i check those boxes as well now that i've defined the criteria for what i'm looking for in a program
you'll see some cards show up with a brief description of some of the different chromebook
compatible apps that i might want to look at now as i'm looking through these i'm noticing
wevideo is a program that i've heard of but it's not necessarily a tool that i thought of in terms
of active participation so i'm going to go ahead and click on it and see what they have to say
every program on the chromebook app hub has a page like this where you can learn a lot more about it
so here i can scroll down and see the common sense identified wevideo as a top tool for learning
and i can also see that wevideo is a google for education partner so it just lends a little bit
more credibility to that particular tool below there's also a longer written description about
wevideo and there's some video based resources here where i could learn more about what the video
is about in general and i could also start to learn how to use it scrolling down i can get more
information about wevideo like educator guides case studies and templates such as this one about
using video for student portfolios now i have a personal rule that i never pay for any program
without giving it a full trial run and i always advise people to do the same so one thing that
i appreciate about the chromebook app hub is that it tells you what you get with the free version in
this case it looks like wevideo is robust enough for me to give it a try before i decide to pay for
it as a google classroom user i of course also need to make sure that an app integrates with
my learning management system and i can get that information here too one question i get asked all
the time as a coach is whether or not a program integrates with other lms's like schoology and
canvas and you can easily find that out here as well in the past sometimes i actually needed to
prove whether or not a tool would meet my school's privacy policy rather than hunting all around for
it there's a link right here that i can click on to get more information and then send that
privacy policy over to my it director or principal in the related ideas section at the bottom of the
page you'll see some different ideas for how you might actually use this app in the classroom with
your students so going back to my original goal i wanted to find a tool that would help with active
participation i can see on this card that it looks like students are actively participating they're
creating a video and so i'm going to click on it to check it out all these idea pages have been
created by other educators all of whom have some level of google for education certification you'll
find a lot of useful information on these pages like tips additional video based resources with
examples for what an activity might actually look like and you'll even find some downloadable
resources like this script for a green screen video that you can literally just take and use
so if i wanted to try out we video as a way to increase active participation in my class i
pretty much have everything i need to get started right here on the chromebook app now i just showed
you how you could use the filter to find an app that meets your needs and then eventually find
an activity that uses that app but you could also go the other way around and start with an activity
first so if you want to start with an activity first go to the ideas tab and there you'll see
a bunch of different ideas for how you could use technology in your classroom like the green screen
example that i just showed you just like the apps tab you could just openly scroll around
if you wanted to or you could use the filter to be able to filter for different categories
like storytelling or social emotional learning and then of course you can also filter activities
based on subject area age range and also learning goal so here for example is a different idea page
showing me how i might have a mock twitter conversation in my classroom if you're a
chromebook teacher and want to learn more about some of our favorite chromebook compatible apps
including wevideo then be sure to check out that playlist that we put together just for you