Kevin Brookhouser

brookhouser . me/news Shownotes ! As I mentioned earlier , each week some friends and I get together to produce a YouTube show using Google+ Hangouts On Air called The Google Educast . Here's an example of the final product. Now with a Google+ and YouTube account, students can create a news broadcast show for the world to watch. Here are some instructions on how to pull it off on your own. The instructions in this post may become outdated as the technology changes. I'll try to keep them current with crowdsourced help here. Please comment in the doc. With Google Docs and Hangouts On Air, students can prepare, produce, and broadcast a news show quickly with little to no cost. Here are the steps. Planning Develop segments for the broadcast. Sample segments include … Latest news Sports reports Upcoming events Study tips Teacher feature Student on the street Service spotlight Create a shared document and develop the segments assigning re...

Until this week, I've been using three different tools to supplement my professional learning community: Twitter, Google Groups, and a discussion board hosted my the National Association of Independent Schools. I'm sure I'll use these for the foreseeable future, but I think the landscape is going to change significantly with the launch of Google+ Communities. Google Groups and other online discussion boards have been around for decades and are certainly functional. But they've been around for decades and feel slow. The Twitter PLCs I belong to gather around hashtags. For example, once a month we meet on twitter using the hashtag #geniushour to discuss our 20% projects. 20% Time = Genius Hour. The problem with these hashtag meetups is that all of my followers who are not remotely interested in 20% time, or teaching for that matter, get flooded with completely irrelevant tweets. Google+ solves this problem because conversations can rally around specific topic...

Last night I joined Fred Delventhal, Diane Main, and Sean Williams for the Google Educast. 

On Wednesday with over 40 other educators I hosted a Google Education On Air Conference Session.

This afternoon a few fellow Google Certified Teachers who teach English hung out on air with me in a Google Hangout On Air. We thought it might be fun to share some of the things we were doing in the classroom, and it turned out to be a ton of fun. We held a conversation across California, New York, and London with  Jen Roberts , Catlin Tucker , Carol LaRow , and David Read . I am completely energized with new ideas for using Docs in the English classroom. Here is the video of the Hangout. Then tonight Diane Main mentioned our Hangout on the Google Educast . Also see Jen's blogpost about the event here . I have to say, Hangouts are amazing! This is exactly the tool we needed a year ago with the SchoolsAndTech podcast. We'll definitely need to have more of these in the future.

On May 2 at 11 am Pacific Time, I am going to host a Google Education On Air Session using Google Hangouts. I can invite nine people to join me for the conversation, and an unlimited number of folks can watch live and / or view the archived session on YouTube. Please share this with anyone you know who might be interested. If you'd like to be a participant rather than just a viewer, leave a comment on my Google+ post about the event. Session description Google Docs  can completely transform the entire process of teaching writing. Eliminate stacks of papers and unmanageable email attachments by having your students submit their writing through a shared collection. This session will explain best practices including naming conventions, controlled sharing, and streamlined rubrics using Google Forms. Grading papers is a pain. Google Docs makes the process much easier. More details here.