getting started tutorial for · getting started tutorial for . . . last updated: june 2017 by...
TRANSCRIPT
Getting Started Tutorial for . . .
Last Updated: June 2017
By Travis Trombley
Contact Elliot Soloway at [email protected] for help or for further information.
We would love to hear from you - please let us
know if you are using Collabrify LessonLauncher. Thank you!
And learn more about Collabrify at:
http://www.imlc.io/
Introduction The Collabrify Productivity Apps, like Map and Flipbook, are intended to provide younger students simple, easy-to-use means to think and produce collaboratively with concept maps, images, multimedia documents, and more, but Collabrify offers a number of behind the scenes options to help teachers design and distribute digital lessons and units to students. This is where Collabrify LessonBuilder and LessonLauncher come in. Similar to Collabrify Map in appearance and navigation, these apps equips teachers with the ability to design lesson and unit Roadmaps. Teachers can assign activities using the Collabrify Productivity Apps, but LessonBuilder also enables teachers to include other learning activities in the Roadmap lessons, e.g., incorporate Google apps (Docs, Sheets, etc.), create a automatically-gradable quiz using Google Forms, put in links to websites, simulations, even include a link to a file stored in a teacher’s Google Drive. The Lesson Builder is intended to equip teachers with the ability to link a broad range of digital resources resources into a digital lesson to enable students to maximize their learning experiences. Lesson Builder is meant to be a “tiny footprint” application, i.e., an application whose interface is immediately familiar and is thus immediately usable, and an application where results are quickly achievable. A lesson is a “Roadmap” where the “locations” are “learning activities” that are, in turn, represented as familiar nodes in a concept map. You can easily build a Roadmap lesson with a couple of learning activities (nodes) in 5 minutes! Lesson Builder is one of the tools in the Collabrify Roadmap Platform, Once a Roadmap lesson is developed, a teacher then uses Collabrify Dashboard to distribute the Roadmap lesson to their students, who then use Lesson Launcher to work through the Roadmap. As cool as that is, though, remember that Collabrify Lesson Builder is just one component of the Collabrify suite, which contains a number of apps designed to promote digital collaboration in 21st Century schools. The apps range in complexity and function, from lesson planning to activity execution. You can learn more about the Collabrify suite by visiting us at our webpage: Intergalactic Mobile Learning Center. Importantly, Collabrify Lesson Builder is free, as are all the apps in the Collabrify suite! Furthermore, there are no limits to how many Roadmaps users can create using Collabrify. Roadmaps are stored in a teacher’s Google Drive, based Please, if you have problems, do not hesitate to contact us at [email protected] – or call IMLC co-founder Elliot Soloway at 734-355-4098. We can’t always foresee the missteps that might happen, and we apologize in advance for whatever glitches you run into! If a problem arises, please contact us and we will work with you to resolve the issue. In all likelihood, the glitch is something small that, with a bit of conversation, can be easily rectified. Thank you for your willingness to try something new! After you have used this tutorial, please let us know how it all worked out. We absolutely welcome suggestions for improving both the app and our instructions for the use thereof! Again, please send comments/suggestions to [email protected] Our sincerest gratitude for trying our apps! -The Collabrify team
Lesson Launcher
NOTE: If possible, use a Google Chrome Browser - while our apps work in other browsers like Safari and Firefox, they function most effectively in Chrome. Currently, we are not supporting the use of Microsoft browsers; we plan to provide such support in the future. Assuming the use of Chrome, it may be useful to use an Incognito Window in the Chrome Browser in order to negate any potential issues caused by being logged into multiple Chrome accounts. To do this, click on the “hamburger button” (three vertical dots on some versions of Chrome) in the upper right hand corner of Chrome browser, then click “New Incognito Window.”
1. Access Collabrify Lesson Launcher at https://lessonlauncher.imlc.io/. If you are
not signed into your Google account, tap “Sign In with Google” and follow the instructions in the pop-up.
2. You will need to AUTHORIZE your Gmail account to use the Collabrify Apps. Tap on the red button titled “Sign in with Google” and the following screen will appear:
Collabrify apps need access to various elements about your Gmail account in order for the apps to operate effectively. If you are comfortable allowing the Collabrify apps to access the Gmail information, tap on “Allow” – the blue button.
NOTE: You will only have to authorize your account once. All future attempts to access to Collabrify Lesson Launcher will immediately direct you to the menu ahead. NOTE: After authorizing, you may see a screen similar to the one below with a green CONTINUE TO… button. If you click this and nothing happens, try manually deleting the part of the URL that reads signIn?from=2%f and refresh the page.
3. After authorizing and continuing to the app, the screen below will appear momentarily. Click the red button to continue. This will take you to a homepage with a list of files. The files that appear are the roadmaps generated in Lesson Builder. Open a file by tapping on it.
NOTE: All Collabrify Home Screens allow you multiple options for organization: recent use or alphabetical. The default organization is most recently edited files at the top; however, you can change the organization by clicking on the Title and Last Edited labels at the top of the page. The activated organizing label will be indicated by the presence of a label; clicking the label again will reverse the order (i.e., clicking Last
Edited again will reverse the order, placing oldest stuff first). Check out our Collabrify Home Screen Tutorial if you have any questions about this.
4. Upon opening a file, you will see the Roadmap as it was last generated or edited
in Lesson Builder. For students, the goal is simply to navigate the roadmap, interacting with and completing activities as they go.
5. Before moving on, it will be helpful to get a hang of some basic navigation tools. a. You can move around the grid simply by clicking and dragging at any point. b. You can also Zoom In or Zoom Out at any point using the Zoom function -
portrayed as a magnifying glass - at the left end of the lower toolbar. Clicking the icon will open a zoom slide bar with a (+) at the top and a (-) at the bottom. You can click and hold on the slider (the green dot), then drag it up or down to zoom in or out, respectively.
c. Finally, you can recenter the grid at any time by clicking the Center option
( ), which is the icon just left of the Zoom icon.
6. To interact with a node, simply click on it to see a Drawer open on the left screen with available options. Simply click the left-facing arrow in the upper right corner of the drawer or click anywhere on the grid to close the drawer.
7. For simple text-based nodes, all you can do is read the message and mark the
node as “Completed” when done. Note the selected node gets greyed out, and a checkmark appears in it, signifying that you have completed the activity.
8. The other node types that come with links to other Collabrify app activities,
Google files, or internet resources offer the option to “Launch Activity” in the options drawer. Clicking this button will open a new tab in the browser for the associated activity.
9. As you progress through the roadmap, completing activities, you can also hide nodes by clicking on the links. This can be useful for demonstrating that you’ve completed the activities in that link, or that you need to focus only on the activities at hand. To hide node, simply click the link before them, then click the link again to uncompress it.
7. Additionally. you can add a collaborator to any Lesson Launcher file by clicking on the Share button in the upper right corner of the page, which will open the Sharing dialog box.
8. Enter the Gmail address of your desired collaborator, then hit the pulsating SEND button.
a. The address of the prospective collaborator should now be seen in the “Who has access” box in the Sharing dialogue box.
b. Click DONE in the lower right corner of the Sharing dialogue box to exit and
return to your roadmap. NOTE: Collaborators can edit the document in real-time with you. If you get a chance, have someone join you on the file and see what you can do together. NOTE: You will see a collaborator’s presence indicated by the number “2” (or however many collaborators you have working simultaneously) now in the Eye icon to right end of the upper toolbar.
And just like that - bingo bongo - you have completed the Collabrify Lesson Launcher tutorial.
If you come across any problems during your experience with LessonLauncher, please don’t give up – send an email to [email protected] and we will contact you to work out any issues. More than likely, your problem is the result of an oversight on our part and therefore an opportunity to improve the app. Again, thank you for trying Collabrify!
Collabrify LessonLauncher Toolbar Functions
NOTE: Refer to the figure below for tool locations. The letters correspond with the tool descriptions below. We used the LessonBuilder pictures because they are the same except for the name.
A. ‘COLLABRIFY LESSON BUILDER’ page title - Clicking the “COLLABRIFY LESSON BUILDER” name in the upper left corner will open the “Exit to Lesson Builder home screen?” text box.
a. Clicking “yes” will return users to the Collabrify Lesson Builder home screen. b. Clicking “Cancel” will close the textbox and allow users to keep editing the
current Lesson Builder file.
B. Collaborator List - In addition to displaying the number of users currently
operating on a Writer, clicking the eyeball icon will provide the Google account info (picture and Gmail address) of all collaborators.
C. Options Button - This toolbar functions allows users to access a number of common Collabrify features regarding communication.
a. File Share - As described above, the share button in the upper right corner of the screen allows users to add collaborators to their file.
i. Enter the Gmail address of your desired collaborator, then hit the pulsating Send button
ii. The address of the prospective collaborator should now be seen in the “Who has access” box in the “Sharing” dialogue box.
iii. Click Done in the lower right corner of the “Sharing” dialogue box to exit and return to your file.
iv. Once the user taps DONE in the lower right corner, the people with whom the document was shared will receive an email with a link to the document. The document’s file will also appear on their home page.
b. eHallway - This handy messaging function grants teachers and students the ability to communicate with one another digitally, ideal for collaboration when face-to-face access isn’t an option. eHallway conversations are also stored permanently on the app, making it a great tool for teachers to leave feedback directly on student files.
c. Contact Us - As the name might suggest, this button opens a contact form by
which Collabrify users can contact us at IMLC to report issues, seek assistance, or make general inquiries.
D. Center - Found at the bottom left of the page, the “CENTER” button ( ) automatically realigns the view of the Lesson Builder roadmap to its center.
E. Zoom - At the bottom left of the page, the magnifying glass icon ( ) controls the zoom function. Clicking the icon will open a zoom slide bar with a (+) at the top and a (-) at the bottom. Users can click and hold on the slide button (the green dot), then drag it up or down to zoom in or out
F. Add Activity - Found at the bottom center of the screen as a plus sign (+), the add
activity button opens the “Add Activity” window by which users can populate the grid with activity nodes. These are detailed at length in the next section.
G. Undo and Redo arrows - Found in the lower right corner, the right and left facing curved arrows allow users to “undo” actions, then subsequently “redo” those actions, if desired. If these actions are unavailable (an action cannot be “redone” unless first “undone,” for example), their arrows will appear in a faded color.
NOTE: The undo and redo functionality is user specific, meaning that the user can only undo or redo the changes that they made.