Month: November 2017

Curate Images with DriveSlides

DriveSlides is a chrome extension that was created by Matt Miller and Alice Keeler to help get images into one place, more specifically into a Slides presentation. Below, I have provided an explanation of how the extension works as well as given a couple of examples in how this tool can be implemented.

How the extension works:

  • Curate all images into a folder in your Drive
  • Be sure to open said folder showing the list of all images
  • Select the chrome extension DriveSlides
  • Automatically, the extension will curate all of the images in the folder and place each one on its own slide in one Google Slide presentation. You will notice that the Slide presentation is located in the same folder as the images for further access.
You really cannot ask for a simpler process in getting images into one place. Alice Keeler is all about helping educators (and students) be more efficient with their time.
DriveSlides Examples
Curating Pics for Staff Slideshow
On our first staff day for the school year, it is tradition to watch a slideshow of staff experiences over the summer. Here staff can celebrate marriages, highlight family outings, and/or share new experiences. In past years, staff photos were curated in different ways:
  • Staff would email individual photos to the person who was creating the slide presentation. You could image the number of emails that this person must have received. Then to only download each picture to their desktop, followed by inserting the downloaded image into a Google Slide presentation.
  • Staff would add their own pictures to a shared Google Slide presentation. You could image that this is not as fun as staff could see what others had imported prior to the first staff meeting showing.  
This past year, Mrs. Croft, created a Google Form and asked one simple question. Upload your photo. She allowed staff to fill out this form as much as they wanted. Because of the way the ‘File Upload’ question works in Google Forms, a folder is automatically created in Google Drive. Here, Mrs. Croft was able to open up the folder and use DriveSlides to automatically move all the images into a Google Slide presentation. From there, she was able to move slides around, add text to some slides, as well as insert her own slides to create title slides. DriveSlides, saved her a lot of time.

Note: With the ‘File Upload’ option in Google Forms, participants filling out the form must be signed in with their Google account in order to submit a file to you.

Google Classroom Assignment
With the design of how Google Classroom has been created on the backend, DriveSlides works perfectly. To help with organizing files, for every assignment that is created in Google Classroom, a folder is made. Thus, if you ever have students turn in an image, such as:
  • photos taken for photography class
  • screenshots showing graph created in Desmos
  • picture of written work from webcam on Chromebook
you can use DriveSlides to curate them all in one Slide presentation.

Once you open an assignment in Google Classroom, you will find a folder icon above all of the files turned in. You would select this folder icon to then view all images uploaded in the folder view. This would allow you to then use DriveSlides.

You might say, well why do I need all student work from the class in one slide presentation. Maybe you

  • want a way for students to collaborate and provide feedback on each piece of work. With the appropriate sharing permissions (anyone with the link can edit), you can allow all students in the class edit that one Google Slide presentation and provide feedback/add content.
  • want an easy way to show what the overall class thought process was like after the lesson
  • want an easy way to share student learning with administration
The possibilities are endless with this chrome extension. If you are interested in learning more about how you can use this extension with your curriculum, you know where to find me. 
And that is my spiel…