Category: tutorial

tutorial

Chrome OS Flex

Patrick Cauley1 Comment

Chrome OS on a MacBook? You better believe it!

Here is how this happened.

It is the end of the year and a teacher wanted an extra Chromebook on hand for her student to do some work in Google Docs. Since it is the end of the year, our supply of Chromebook loaners is really dwindling, so the Tech Department didn’t have any to spare.

The solution was Chrome OS Flex. It allows you to put a Chrome OS installer on a USB and then to use that installer on older Mac or Window laptops, which is the case we have here. This MacBook is around 8 years old, has a battery that only lasts around 90 minutes (more than enough for this situation), so we thought we would give Chrome OS Flex a try.

One thing to note – this is not intended for widespread deployment yet (according to Google).

Getting started

Google wants you to head over to this website and give them your name, organization name, size, etc. Then you can head over to this website and start deciding if this is right for your device. On the support page it has a list of Mac and Windows laptops that are “compatible.”

One thing to know is that “compatible” does not mean stable.

Most of the laptops we had fell in the “Mino issues expected” category. There were some (such as the 11.6″ MacBook Airs) that were not listed at all. I think we’ll play around with those this summer.

At any rate, you will need a USB with at least 8GB of space on it. This USB will be wiped and reformatted so make sure you backup whatever information is on it. This USB will be the installer.

As you work your way through the support pages you will find yourself here where they ask you to plug in said USB and get going.

You need to make sure you are using the Chrome browser and you will need to install a Google Extension that acutally creates the installer USB.

This process took around 15 minutes to make the installer. Once it is done go to the laptop you wish to convert to a Chromebook. Power it down, plug in the USB installer and then power up to boot to the USB instead of its hard drive.

From there it is very straight forward. One thing you need to know is that this is wiping the computer and replacing its original operating system with Google Chrome. There is no undoing this (at least that is my understanding). This is not installing Chrome OS to run side by side with the original or putting Chrome OS in a virtual machine. This replaces the current operating system with Chrome OS. Just so you know.

The installation was . . . fast. I think it only took 2-3 minutes for the installer to do what it needed to be done. At the end of the process, we removed the USB and it rebooted into Chrome OS – wow!

Super easy!

Here are some questions that we had (have):

  • Can we enroll it into our Google Admin Control Panel to manage it remotely? – YES! You obviously need a license, but you definitely can do that
  • Will it run all extensions? – We are not sure. The student using this is using it very sparingly and for a specific purpose. We need to test more thoroughly.
  • Will it run Android apps? – I have no idea whatsoever. I guess it probably matters what kind of laptop you are using. My gut reaction wants to say yes – but I’d be very cautious
  • Can multiple people log into it like a Chromebook? – You betcha! When it boots up there is the option to add another user, just like a Chromebook
  • How is the performance? – It’s fast. It boots up very fast and it has no issues loading basic websites and getting to Google Docs/Gmail/Drive.
  • Will there be future updates? – I would be shocked if there were not! This is in its early days and it is already created a bit of buzz throughout the educational community. Then again, it’s Google and they are known for killing off services rather suddenly and with little explanation.

So there you have it – we have always wondered what to do with our aging computers and now we have a path going forward. We will be cautious and won’t start converting MacBook carts entirely but the odd MacBook may find itself becoming a Chromebook and I hope Google continues to develop this program.

Google Drive – Make a template

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It is back to school time! I thought I would start this school year with a pretty simple tutorial on how to create a template that you can reuse over and over again. If you have ever used Google Classroom then there is a type of version of this already there. When you make an assignment and attach a Google Doc, Sheet or Slideshow then you have the option to make a copy for each student. That way the original stays untouched and each student will have their own copy to play with!

Well in Google Drive you can make a template that you can use over and over again without the original getting sullied. Be aware though that the template will be accessible by the whole organization. If you cannot do this from your school account, you should reach out to your IT team and reference these instructions so they can turn this on for you.

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Google Workspaces and transferring ownership

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Well, well, well I learned something new today.

An area I’ve always wanted to do better was to help our students leaving our school transition their data from our school account to a personal account (most likely a personal account since they probably won’t have their new school account yet. As you can tell from the title we use Google Services (recently rebranded to Google Workspaces). Our students use Google Drive to not only create documents but also as a place to store their files.

For safety reasons we limit all sharing of documents and emails to be restricted to our domain, but at the end of this year we decided to try and do a better job of helping out students transition their data from their school account to a personal account.

I thought it would be as simple as having students go into the sharing settings of individual settings, share it to their personal account and then go back into the sharing settings and change the ownership to that account.

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Make your own flashcards in Google Sheets

Patrick Cauley1 Comment

OK – to be fair, you need Google Sheets and the Flippity add on, but still, this is pretty handy, easy to do and works really – really well. I’ve seen a couple of articles about this on the web but I’m going to go a little deeper and walk you through from start to finish.

In this example, we will be doing some language learning though I can think of this being used for math problems and vocabulary as well and much, much more. So let’s get started.

Google Translate in Sheets

The first thing we need to do is open Google Sheets and get ready for some magic! We will be translating words from English to Spanish. I will be using specific words and not phrases. As we all know translating longer pieces of text can sometimes lead to unexpected results 🙂

As you can see, I have 10 English words about the Spring season. I could look these up, but I will let Google Translate do it for me.

In cell B2 I will type this formula which will translate it from English to Spanish automatically.

=googletranslate(A2, “en”, “es”)

  • So let’s break this down. =googletranslate will let Google Sheets know that it needs to use Google Translate – pretty straight forward. Don’t forget the comma!
  • A2 tells Google Sheet where the word is that needs to translated.
  • “en” (yes you need the quotations) lets it know what language the original language is.
  • “es” (again don’t forget those quotes) let’s it know what it needs to translate it to. (ES = Spanish by the way)

So this is what it will look like.

Now all we need to is move your mouse to the bottom right hand corner of cell B2 (it should turn into a + sign) then click and drag down like in the GIF below.

BOOM!

Google Sheets (any spreadsheet program really) understands the pattern and automatically replicates the googletranslate formula all the way down properly changing the cells as needed.

Now we are ready to turn this into interactive flashcards

Flippity Add-on

The next thing we need to do is get the Flippity add-on. To do this open a blank Google Sheet and then click on Add-ons from the menu bar. Then select Get Add-ons.

A new window will pop up and from here search for and add Flippity to Google Sheets. You only need to do this once. After you’ve added it, every new Google Sheet you open will have the ability to utilize the Flippity add-on if you want it to.

To activate the Flippity add-on, click on Add-ons and select Flippity and select Pick a Template.

The template you will want to chose is, surprise – surprise, Flashcards. Go ahead and click Use.

Flippity will do some magic and then create a new worksheet with whole bunch of info that you do NOT want.

Do not be alarmed. This is merely an example of how and where to put your data. So go ahead delete all of their information and copy and paste your data. Your data will be on another sheet (probably called Sheet 1 like mine). You can find this at the bottom of the page.

You may also notice that you can customize the flashcard color and the text color. This is not necessary but a nice touch. Here is my finished flashcard spreadsheet.

The Flashcards!

To get to the flashcards, click on Add-ons, select Flippity and then select Flippity.net URL.

A pop up will appear with a web address. You can click that and it will take you to your very own custom made flashcards!

You can also check out my flashcards and get your Spanish learning on!

https://www.flippity.net/fc.asp?k=1OZQDpvkTNQYPHRGmplqIxI88WnGxgmHAC3kswYPPcL4

Helpful tips and parting thoughts

You can do this on Quizlet, but I find the translation part much faster with Google Sheets and with the URL you can easily share out your flashcards with multiple people and there is no need for an additional account (though you can sign into Quizlet with your Google ID) tp sign into.

All in all – this took me around 5 minutes to make and I think you can make this as large or as small as you would like – have fun with it! It could be a good activity for a class or a group of students to help study and quiz one another.

Flippity can also make some other cool things like a Jeopardy so be sure to explore and see what else you can do with Google Sheets and Flippity.

When it comes to Google Sheets, small mistakes in the formula can lead to big errors so it is always good to double check the translation and make sure that it is indeed correct.