Exploring Culture with Google + Schoology Course Pictures Hack

Google Cultural Institute

The Google Cultural Institute has a huge number of engaging resources for teachers and students to explore. Think of it like an online museum. Their content is arranged into collections within three different categories, art projects, historic moments and world wonders. Tools such as gigapixel photos, street views, and videos are used to tell different stories throughout history. 

Gigapixel Photos

These are extremely high resolution images that let you zoom in and see all of the miniscule details of famous paintings and artifacts.

 

          

 

One of the best features of the Cultural Institute is that you can organize items from the public collections into your own galleries. Annotations can be added to the items that you save. Creating a personal gallery would be a great feature to have students use during a project as they interact with content and add their own reflections or explanations. 

Get started with this intro video (1:49) and then head over to the site

Schoology Course Pictures Hack

I've had a few people ask me if it is possible to change the section name of each Schoology course so it is easier to figure out which hour it corresponds to. Unfortunately, you are unable to change that because it will revert back to the original every time it syncs with Skyward. The work around for that is to change the Schoology course picture for each class to include the hour which you teach that class. See the example below.

Follow these steps to make that happen:

1. Create a new Google Drawing in your Drive by click New then More and Google Drawing.
2. To resize the drawing to a profile picture size click File --> Page Setup and then select Custom. Enter the dimensions 170 x 170 pixels.
3. Add a picture by using the Insert menu and then clicking Image. You can upload an image that your already have or search for one. 
4. Crop the picture to fit in the square
5. To add the number to your picture click Insert and then Word Art. Type the number that you want on the picture and then hit enter. Change the font, size and color settings to your liking.
6. After it looks good, click File --> Download As and then select JPEG image. Choose the location where the file will download to your computer. 
7. Open Schoology and navigate to the course that you wish to change the picture for. 
8. Hover your mouse over the current course picture and you will see the Edit Picture button pop up in the top right corner of the square. Click that.
9. Select Attach File and then find the picture that you just downloaded. 
10. Repeat for any course that you wish to change.