🗑️ End of year series, part 4: Chromebook projects

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🔥 Hot take: Why ‘authentic learning’ is the secret sauce schools need

Laura Williams has noticed something about projects in the classroom.

Some of them are fake.

Well, maybe a better word to describe them is “inauthentic.”

In her new guest post, Laura writes: “We have enough problems to solve. We do not need to make them up. And if we want students to get better at problem solving, we have to give them real problems to solve.

“They know the difference.”

In this post, Laura shares:

• the six student benefits when they work on real projects

• an incredible example student project

• three descriptive goals for authentic learning

• six fantastic resources to help with authentic learning

You can learn more about Laura’s vision for authentic learning in her book, The Improvement Game.

And in her guest post, you’ll get all of these examples, resources, and ideas. Check it out!

💡 THE BIG IDEA 💡

💻 30 creative Chromebook projects to try at the end of the year

🏁 End of year series: Part 4 of 6 🏁

For the past couple weeks, we’ve been talking about what makes the end of the school year unique.

Here’s another one: Sometimes, it’s the perfect time to try something new — like a new creative project.

But what if you only have 15 minutes? What if you have a whole hour?

Sometimes it can be tough to find a great project to fit your time frame.

In today’s post — 30 creative Chromebook projects to try at the end of the year — we break these projects up into categories based on time: 15 minutes, 30 minutes, and 60+ minutes.

PS: If you don’t have Chromebooks, never fear … these can definitely be done on laptops as well — and, in many cases, on tablets like iPads.

Here are some of our favorites:

15 minute Chromebook projects

• Write blackout poetry: You can do blackout poetry with Google Slides! It’s a fun way to look at text a little closer, to identify important words, and to remix something into your own creation.

• Color famous art work: One of the fun Google Arts and Culture experiments is the Art Coloring Book. Choose from many famous images to color.

• Create a meme with Google Drawings: Students can create custom memes using a Google Drawings template. They replace the existing text and background image with their own then after editing, they can download the meme as a PNG file to share with others.

30 minute Chromebook projects

• Create photo comic strips: Use the webcam on your students' devices to take pictures. Then add speech bubbles and turn them into comic strips to show what they've learned!

• Take a virtual field trip: In Google Arts and Culture students can explore by subject or location, search for answers, explore art or architecture from around the world and more. After exploring have students create a digital postcard sharing their experience.

• Create a learning dossier: In our Learning Dossier template, students take a photo or screenshot of work they've done and place it on the left side of the folder. Then, the student drags red numbered dots onto parts of the image they want to describe in detail.

60+ minute Chromebook projects

• Create stop-motion animation: Put a concept in motion with animation in slides. By flipping through slides, students can make their ideas move. It's not as hard as you think!

• Make an app with Slides: Google Slides can be a surprisingly effective, collaborative app alternative. Easily customizable and updatable by various school groups, it's a simple solution accessible on mobile devices and fun to create.

• Make a class scrapbook: Grab the template from SlidesMania and have students each take a page or two to create a class scrapbook of memories at the end of the school year.

There’s even more!

We have 30 of these creative Chromebook projects, and you’ve only seen a summary of nine of them! Check out the whole post to get ideas to use at the end of the school year.

👋 How we can help

There are even more ways I can support you in the important work you do in education:

1. Read one of my six books about meaningful teaching with tech.

2. Take one of our online courses about practical and popular topics in education.

3. Bring me to your school, district or event to speak. I love working with educators!