Life after Office...

Chromebooks - a Life after MS Office...

Pointless Preamble...

Having each student in school with their own computer presents lots of opportunities to enhance learning; be it through students' collaboration online, our ability to make learning more accessible to those with additional needs or our ability to provide instantaneous and personalised feedback, or to tailor the learning journey for individuals in a way that was previously much more challenging.

A number of years ago, we decided that Chromebooks would be the most effective way to deliver such goals. They're relatively cheap, extremely easy to manage and - most importantly - they're connected devices which are built around cloud computing and storage. Using a Chromebook means that students are in a position to share and collaborate with their peers and teachers naturally, with no real learning curve.

On the other hand, those of us that learned to use computers some time ago (and are also tied to Windows machines due to our dependence on legacy software such as SIMS!) have options in how we work. Too many options!

It's easy to type up a document, save it on your hard disk and email it to the relevant person, because it's what we have always done. But by the time you're receiving Department_Handbook_v3finalFINAL.docx by reply and you're not sure if another colleague hasn't already just sent Department_Handbook_v4final.docx, it becomes a little less straightforward. Likewise if you want 30 or more students to complete something akin to a worksheet. You certainly don't want each of them to email you back with work.docx, tom.doc, Untitled.docx, science.docx, etc, etc.. - Hence the need for a more cloud-centric approach, via Google Drive/Classroom/etc.

When we chose the Chromebook route for the students, we accepted that there would be some fairly significant training needs for staff. I'm afraid the need for technical nous shifted directly from student to teacher at the point we put the simplicity of the Chromebook at their fingertips.

The good news is that, once you're fully up to speed with the Chromebooks, you will be glad that you've not got to support 30 supposedly-'digitally native' Year 7's in how to save their work in a shared network folder, with their own name and class in the filename - or chase them with your soon-to-be-lost USB stick - all before they miss their bus home.

The point is, there is no PowerPoint...

I'll get on and address the reason for this page appearing at this point in time and, I hope, some potential solutions. For those with a penchant for waffle, I'll add some further information at the end that might further enlighten your journey into our post-Office existence. The utilitarians can stop reading once they've got what they need!

Constructive Criticism

Some of the initial feedback we've had from Year 10 students on review day is that the presentations we're sending out via ClassCharts don't 'look right', and that this is interfering with their ability to complete work. Not a bad excuse, I suppose.

This is because Chromebooks don't have Microsoft PowerPoint on them. See the example below:

Windows Machine with PowerPoint

The PowerPoint file in all its glory. Oozing style and readability.

Chromebook

We've hit a brick wall. This one is actually particularly weird. I'm guessing that somewhere in this slideshow, the bricks are used as a background and it's actually 'hiding' beneath the white when viewed in PowerPoint.

For reasons of user experience and Chromebooks sales, in a world where MS Office is still ubiquitous, Google have made it possible to view and edit PowerPoint files on Chromebooks. Microsoft, for their part, have made their file formats more 'open' for other software developers to use. However, as you can see, it's not an exact science and you will often have some differences between how they're displayed on the two platforms, especially if using the older '.ppt' filetype instead of the newer '.pptx' filetype (beware the TES downloads!).

Possible Solutions...

Cheaters Never Prosper

There is a shortcut here. Use it as you see fit but the path to enlightenment lies further ahead.

It is possible to export a PowerPoint file to PDF.

This approach would mean that it will display as expected on virtually any device. The drawbacks are that you can't easily have interactive content such as;

animations that hide/reveal answers,
embedded video or audio,
a box in which students are two write an answer.

If being able to see and read the file is enough, feel free to head down this road. Just do the export as in the screenshot above and attach the new PDF file to the ClassCharts assignment. Job done.

The Path to Enlightenment

If you want to really make this work for yourself and your students, it's time to embrace Google Slides. Here are a few reasons why:

You will be able to utilise interactive content,
You know how they will look on any device, including a mobile phone,
If used as a kind of 'proforma' for students' work, in which there might be information followed by a slide for students to write into, you can distribute them through Classroom, using the 'Make a copy for each student' option.

Remember that, if you do utilise Classroom as your mode of distribution, school policy dictates that you still need a quick message on ClassCharts along these lines: "This week's work is on the Y9 Science Google Classroom (code: xyz). You will be producing a report on the fascinating vascular system of the humble dandelion." (I jest!)

How do I know if I'm going wrong?

Having attached a slideshow to a Google Classroom assignment, you might think you've cracked this Google Classroom malarkey but if you don't take the extra step of converting to Google Slides, your students might be hitting the above brick wall.

I should stress that the majority of PowerPoint files will display just fine.

As you can see from the image above, it's possible to store presentations in two distinct ways within Google Drive (which is where Classroom finds and stores all files associated with your assignments). The orange ones are PowerPoint files and the yellow ones are Google-native Slides files. The orange ones may have issues when displayed on a Chromebook.

So what's the plan?

Converting is relatively easy. You upload your slideshow to Google Drive using the "+ New" button seen in the screenshot above. Once it's done, you'll have one of those orange files to click on. Go for it! It will open as follows.

It's in Slides!

But it isn't Slides. The clue is the yellow box towards the top left. It's being displayed by Slides but it is still a PowerPoint (pptx) file. This is your opportunity to look at and resolve any problematic differences in how the file is rendered. You could fix those, (making all the text readable, etc) and have done with it if you wanted. You would have a PowerPoint file that you know displays nicely in Slides and therefore displays nicely on a Chromebook. It's also on Drive so nice and easy to share on Classroom. If you really want to keep your file as a PowerPoint and you want to deliver it directly through ClassCharts rather than Classroom, you would need to either re-download it from Drive in its new, edited form or use Google Drive Filestream so you can upload it directly to ClassCharts (it's already installed on your work laptop. Find it in the 'Start Menu').

- but if you've come this far...

You might as well continue down the path of enlightenment. If you click on 'File'->'Save as Google Sides', it will turn it into a Google Slides file for you. It might include some of the imperfections that prompted the writing of this page. Start dragging stuff around if you need to. It's actually simpler than PowerPoint, and saves itself with every change you make.

The real advantage comes if you're going to publish this through Classroom as an activity for students. You will now have use of the "Make a copy for each student" button.

If you're not going down the Classroom route just yet, you will simply want to hit the "share" button and make the file viewable to people with Tarleton Academy accounts. You can then paste the link into your ClassCharts homework for the students to read without issue.

Share button

Top right.

Get link

Click "change link to Tarleton Academy" to let everyone see the file.

Are we done here?

Yes. If you're content with the following ideas, you're good to go:

PowerPoint files uploaded to Google Drive are similar but different to Google Slides files
Slides will run in any web browser and will have a good go at displaying your PowerPoint files
Slides makes a mess of displaying some old or complex PowerPoint files
Slides is the only option for students on Chromebooks*
We can check if our PowerPoints are going to look 'messy' on Chromebooks by uploading them to Drive and opening them in Slides
We can touch up any 'blemishes' in Slides if needs be. Using it is similar to using PowerPoint.
Your PowerPoint should then be ready to share.
Tim says you'd be better going one step further and converting it to an actual Slides file. Trust Tim.

Q&A

For the sake of completeness, I'm going to conclude by answering some of the questions that I would be asking around now. If you're happy you've got to grips with the above, there's no great need to read this section! As ever, if there's anything else, please get in touch.

How is it we're only figuring this out after 4 years?

A number of reasons but Home Learning itself has tipped the balance. Lots of us have got stuck in with the Chromebooks, utilising them for a plethora of purposes but the presentation of information has generally remained on our projector screens, powered by Windows machines running PowerPoint. This particular facet of our delivery has been somewhat insulated from change. Now the presentation of information is happening on hundreds of Chromebook screens across semi-rural West Lancashire, we're in at the deep end. - but we're not out of our depth, as many schools will be nationally!

Does this apply to Word documents too?

Yes. To a lesser extent but documents with incredibly complex tables, with merged cells within merged cells within merged cells can come out a bit 'wonky'. Also 'diagrams' with lots of floating text boxes often end up disfigured. Just follow the same process. Upload it to Drive, take a look at it and go from there. This one is probably more crucial in some ways but, hopefully, more of us will already have figured it out. Don't fall into the trap of adding Word documents to Classroom assignments. Make them Google Docs first, make a copy for each student and watch the submissions roll in.

*Can't we just use PowerPoint Online?

You could - and it might render your file better but there are still files that don't display well (or at all). The web based technology is just very different to the traditional desktop applications. There are other drawbacks to consider too - You wouldn't be able to benefit from Google Classroom and you'd be banking on the students knowing their Office 365 login details. If they're logged on to a Chromebook, they're automatically logged in to Google services like Slides.

Tell me more about this Google Drive File Stream

As an evangelical proponent of web-based technologies, I have slightly mixed feelings about this one but it is a smart solution to a problem that does exist. File Stream will make your Google Drive appear in 'My Computer' just like your computer's hard disk or your USB drive. My own reservation is that it makes it too easy to cling on to the 'old' ways of working. It does clever things like, in the desktop version of Word/PowerPoint, it will tell you if someone else is editing the file so you can wait until they're finished. - But that's nowhere near as clever as both being able to edit at once and see changes in real time (as in Docs or Word Online). If you're embarking on what is likely to be a lengthy collaborative process, and the starting point is a bunch of PowerPoint or Word files, I'd suggest getting File Stream running, upload the lot and transition T&L-related material to Google Slides and Docs gradually as the need arises.

What about OneDrive?

A perfectly good alternative. If you like that sort of thing. Believe it or not, OneDrive and Office 365 are both the result of Microsoft playing catch-up with Google in the cloud-based collaboration sphere. They have a tougher task to achieve though, in that they have up to 1 billion users of the desktop software to accommodate. Google don't have that baggage and have been in a position to develop a 'cloud first' approach. The result is that Office 365 is a rather more complex beast, with tight integration between the desktop versions of the software as well as access to your files through Word/PowerPoint Online (which are akin to Docs and Slides). It is, at this point, undoubtedly an impressive package!

My reservation here is the same as for File Stream - it let's us fall into the 'old' ways of working far too easily. You share a file with a colleague, who's really doing well with their IT and they edit it in the desktop version of Word. In a momentary lapse, they save it to their hard drive and now there are two versions. Confusion ensues.

Putting my own reservations aside, it has one major benefit and one major drawback. The good news is that everyone in the Trust has access, so in some ways it is the natural partner for your collaborative activities. I hope that we'll be in a position to say the same thing about Google Drive by September. The drawback is that, if you resource a whole curriculum in Word/Powerpoint and store it on OneDrive, you will be forever stuck with the two-step process I have described above; converting to Google-native formats before you assign work to students via Classroom/ClassCharts. I say cut out the middleman - but it's up to you.

What if I work somewhere else one day and all the resources I've created are on Google Drive as Slides and Docs files?

Worry not. There are a few approaches to this one. If you're a Docs/Slides aficionado by that point, you could simply duplicate your work and transfer the ownership of it to a personal gmail account or a G Suite account at the new workplace. If you're heading off to one of those dusty old places that don't have G Suite, you can use a service called Google Takeout to download every file as Word, PowerPoint, Excel and so on, in just a few clicks. Neil can support with that process if needed.

Hang on, I'm a subject leader and you've just given me a worry that our scheme of work is in a shared Google Drive folder owned by a team member that could leave one day.

Nobody likes to think about the fact that colleagues move on but it's a natural part of any workplace, and the above could cause you a temporary issue if you don't see it coming. There's no major concern as Neil can recover files and transfer ownership of them, even after an account has been removed from the system. To avoid the need for any of this, I implore you to use Shared Drives.

Just right click on the Shared Drives one the left hand side to create a new one. The team becomes the owner of files within the Shared Drive and people can come and go without any complications. Much preferable!

It's subtle - but there is a difference between this and a shared folder, owned by a team member.

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