Countdown to NETA: Organizing Google Docs Tricks

My school has been using Google Apps Education for the past 4 years. Over this time Google Docs has seen a lot of changes.  This has been a little frustrating at times, but ultimately has lead to major increases in productivity.  In this post, I’ll explore a couple of tips that have helped me and my students increase productivity and make integration of Google Docs into daily activities seamless.

 

Shared folders, collections (or whatever Google calls them now)

A little less than two years ago Google updated docs to let you to share entire folders (now called collections) the same way that you could share documents.  To do this, just create a new collection, then share it with whomever you like.  Now, whenever you add something to that folder it is automatically shared with the entire class.  You can give the folder editor or viewer priveleges and any document you place in the folder will inherit those privileges.  With the most recent update of Google Docs, you can start a document from within the collection and you won’t even have to place it in the folder.

Tip 1

Have all your students share a collection with you.  Now they can put documents in the collection shared with you instead of having to type in your email address (lots of possibility for error) every time they share something.  Make sure they use a strict naming convention, however.  I have my students use “Firstname_LastName / TeacherName”.  If students don’t identify themselves and you in the collection name, then you’ll have a whole bunch of collections named “Science” or “Language Arts” and won’t know which folder belongs to which student.

Tip 2

Create two collections for each class you have – one that they can edit and one for just viewing.  Collaboration is what sets Google Docs apart from software based programs, but typing in the email address of everyone in your class everytime you want to share something is a waste of time.  A shared collection with editor privileges is great for documents you want the whole class to collaborate on (spreadsheet are great for this).  It is also very handy to have a collection with just viewer privileges for the class.  I use the views folder to share worksheet or presentation templates I’ve created for the students.  They just make a copy of the document and are good to go.  If you share something with editor privileges, some students will forget to make a copy and start editing on the shared document, which messes it up for everyone.  This isn’t possible if you share with them in the viewer folder.

 

Tip 3

Collections can go inside of collections – it’s very helpful.  Everytime I have a new assignment that will be submitted on Google Docs, I create a collection in which I place the students’ assignments.  That collection goes into the class collection.  This makes it easy to track and refer back to assignments throughout the year.

 

Use the Stars and More Options

Stars can be extremely helpful for things that you use regularly.  I star documents that I use regularly like class notes or my lesson plans.  It makes it much easier to find and I don’t have to dig through collections or do searches just to get to the document.  For other documents that I may have misfiled or not filed, I use the “More Options” dial to narrow my documents to “Not in Collections” or “Owned by Me.”

 

 

 

Daily instruction: Failures (and remedies) in a 1:1 environment – Part 1

It’s been a while.

For anyone who follows this blog (admittedly, not too many) – I haven’t written in over a month. Time seems to be at a premium these days and the transition to a 1:1 classroom has certainly been a factor.  The year has been a challenge and I’ve had to re-tool the way I conduct class.  I’ve decided to share some of my tribulations here in the hopes that someone might learn from my mistakes.

Issue 1: Starting class

Pre-netbooks: Before I had netbooks, students completed a boardwork question in their  notebooks everyday when they came into class.  I posted the question on a google document (that students could access online) and added any notes from the day under the opening question.  Even if we were in the lab, I could just write the question on the board and they could answer it in their notebook.  This was the opening routine for every class, every day.  Every 2-3 weeks I would collect the notebook and grade it for participation.  It helped bring order to my middle school classroom and kept the students relatively organized.

Netbook failure 1 –  No Consistency: This year, I wasn’t sure how to do boardwork.  I decided to skip the notebooks since all the students had computers.  The problem was, I never established a consistent procedure.  Initially, I used Answer Garden a lot, but the 20 character limit was too short for some questions.  If I needed something longer, I switched to a google form.  Other times, I had students enter data from the previous day’s experiment on a shared spreadsheet.  Some days, they didn’t need the netbooks, so I just had them come in and sit down (never a good starting class procedure for middle schoolers).  The problems with this were two fold: Students never knew what to expect on a day to day basis and I was spending a lot of time creating forms and Answer Gardens and then posting them on my classroom blog.  Everything was generally disorganized from the get go and students had to ask each day what they were supposed to do.

The remedy: My remedy has only been in place for about two weeks now, but it seems to be working.  I thought long and hard about bringing back the notebooks, but ultimately decided against them.  In many respects though, my opening procedure is much like it was two years ago, it just has a netbook twist.  Each day, I post a question (on a google doc linked to my website) that students have to answer when they come into class.

They submit the answer to the question on the same google form (linked on my website) each day.  I have  a separate form for each class and they have to be signed into their school Google Apps account to answer it.  Since the answers on the form are time stamped with their name, I can check to make sure each student answered the daily questions over a designated period.  This saves me the time of creating a new form each day and provides students with a regular routine.  To make sure students don’t take too long, I set a classtools.net or online-stopwatch.com countdown timer going once the bell rings.  When the timer goes off, they need to have their netbooks closed, which keeps them from playing around on iGoogle or something else.

Inquiry Based Science in a 1:1 Environment

Note: This is the third reflection on my experiences in a 1:1 environment.  The Qwest Foundation funded a grant proposal I submitted called ‘Science by the Netbook’ last April to help pay for sixteen Acer Aspire 1 netbooks (which arrived this summer).  This post is part of a 1st quarter reflection for the grant committee.

We’re now almost two months into our first year of 1:1 science classes.  After working out the kinks in the first weeks of school, the students and I have really hit our stride with the netbooks.  We’re using them for a wide range of activities from online labs (Blobz Electricity is my favorite), to Prezis, to Glogsters, and online assessments (using thatquiz.org).  The most important tool we use, however, is Google Docs.  We collaborate on class notes, use forms for assessment, and use the docs and presentation apps for all sorts of lab reports.  While the goals of the science program remain the same, the netbooks provide us with infinitely more tools to research, collaborate, and evaluate the topics we cover.

Most importantly, the netbooks have helped facilitate an inquiry based approach that was limited by a book based curriculum in the past.  This year, each lesson (or series of lessons) starts with a question.  Students do their own research to gain insight and formulate a hypothesis for a lab (the next step in the process).  While doing their research, they use Diigo to highlight text on webpages, save pictures, and add notes.  After completing their research and formulating a hypothesis, students complete the lab for the lesson and track their results.  Sometimes the results are done on the computer and other times they are completed on paper – it depends how messy the lab is.  Once everyone has their results, we often use a shared spreadsheet in Google Docs to compare all the numbers, temperatures, weights, or times from an experiment.  Below is an example of how this process was used in a unit on trash and recycling for my 6th grade earth science class.  (You may need to click through to see the video above – it’s pretty short and worth the click).

Step 1: Research

Question: What do people put into landfills?

Using Diigo, students highlighted a variety of things about landfills.  Initially, most students focused in on the parts of a landfill but as they got going many found a variety of statistics on the things that get thrown away each day.  Many had never seen pictures of a landfill before and it definitely got some reactions.  The students spent about 25 minutes highlighting before we came together as a class and reviewed some of their findings.  During this part of the lesson, I had all the students bring up their Diigo homepage to review the things they’d highlighted.  Check out student samples here and here.

Step 2: The Lab

In this lab, we collected the trash cans from all the teachers’ rooms and the students had to document all the items in the trash can and identify any items that could have been recycled.  This lesson was facilitated by a pair of student teachers in my room and went over very well.  Once the students got over the initial gross out (they all had gloves anyway), they dug through the trash without hesitation.

Step 3: Analyzing the results

After completing the lab, the students shared their results on a spreadsheet in the next class.  The key to using a shared spreadsheet is having a specific column or row for each student to enter their data.  Without a designated place for each student to enter data, things can get crazy.  It’s important to create the spreadsheet (I have one that I just keeping adding new sheets to) before class and get it shared with everyone.  The first few times I did it, there was a little trouble with some students getting in the wrong cells, but by the time we did it for this lesson everyone had it down.  Once the students entered their data I summed the totals and we analyzed which teachers had the most trash, and who had the most recyclable items in their trash.  For homework, the students had to complete a full lab report and draw a conclusion about what sorts of things the teachers (and their classes) throw away at our school.  As part of another lab for this unit, we created a landfill out a shoebox and are keeping track of how much various materials biodegrade.  In the coming weeks, the students will create some signs and give some presentations to the younger students in the school about trash and the importance of recycling.

Old Site, New Trick: Part 2

Crocodoc was released earlier this year and I didn’t give it much consideration.  After all, I’m a Google Docs junkie and didn’t need an app to help me collaborate on documents with my students.   This summer though, while teaching EDU 601, I realized that I probably needed to provide the student/teachers with some options beyond google docs for document collaboration.  Most schools don’t have google apps, though several states have signed on to use it, and other “collaboration” methods are clunky at best (emailing word docs back and forth, submitting to Angel or Blackboard – yikes).

New Features

Crocodoc, luckily, provides a great alternative for schools without Google Docs.  If you’ve never used Crocodoc, it’s very simple – just upload any word, powerpoint, or pdf and share the link with whomever you want to collaborate.  When it first came out, the layout of it made things a little messy when too many users commented.  It also wasn’t as easy to share as it could have been.  I returned to the site in mid-July to find some significant improvements that makes it much more ‘multi-user’ friendly.  The comments have been re-structured so that they all fit into a sidebar (just like the new version of google docs).  You can also add drawings or annotations anywhere on a document.  Best of all you can embed any crocodoc as an editable document or a read-only document.

Educational Applications

For those without Google Docs, Crocodoc is an excellent alternative to emailing Word documents back and forth.  A student can upload a document and share the url with the teacher and/or anyone else with whom they need to collaborate.   It’s also a great way to share things with people who don’t have (or know nothing about) Google Docs.  The interface is very simple and self-explanatory.  I used it in my summer class to get comments on a student use policy that the previous year’s class had created.  See the document below and leave a comment on it if something strikes you. (you will need to click through to see it).

Science Fair Central

My students are in the midst of science fair madness right now, which requires a lot of organization. Organization is not a strong suit of mine, but I’m fortunate to have two awesome student-teachers in my room a couple days a week to help keep the ship sailing amidst students researching, experimenting, cutting, gluing, etc. There are three tech tools that have been invaluable in helping students and myself stay organized on this science fair journey.

Science Fair Project Ideas, Answers, & Tools

Science Buddies – This is, bar none, the best science fair site out there. It has everything you could imagine for teachers, students, and parents when it comes to science fairs. Science Buddies offers a huge repository of science fair ideas grouped by subject area and assigned a difficulty level from 1-10. This is my third year of using it and I love it. The best part of it is how well everything in it adheres to the scientific process. Though some of the experiments (and associated readings) are a little above the middle school level – it provides tons of ideas. They even have a form students can complete to find projects that suit their interest. I have all my students use this as a starting point – even if they don’t use a project from Science Buddies.

Diigo

Diigo – I’ve written about Diigo for education before, but it’s been especially good for science fair. Though I have to rotate students around to computers each day, it allows me to track their research and see if they’re getting the information they need for their papers and projects. If they need more or go down the wrong track, I (or one of the student teachers) give them suggestions or search terms that would help them. Here is one student’s research page for science fair.

Google Apps for Education

Google Docs – If it weren’t for google docs, I’m not sure how I’d get anything accomplished. My students and I would have also killed about a 1000 more trees and I would have pulled most of my hair out. There is no easier way to share content

Two birds, one stone

Note: I normally write about the things I do with the 6-8th graders at my school, but this post is an extension of a 1 credit class I teach to undergraduates. You can follow some of the things we’re doing in class at tech42s.pbworks.com.

Dear Tech 42s,

Over the past month we’ve covered a variety of resources and the purpose of today’s class was to provide a little review while modeling a way to incorporate technology in a room that isn’t full of computers. Keeping with the theme of student centered learning, I had you create the content for today’s class by reviewing some of the tools that stuck out to you in class.

Amanda, Wendy, Robert on Google Docs Drop.io

Colin, Kate, Ivona on Yola Drop.io

Gregory on ClassTools.net Drop.io

Though the voicethread didn’t work out as planned, your movies and podcasts (phoned in via drop.io) gave me a good idea of what is sticking and what isn’t. It also became clear that one-hour just isn’t enough to learn, practice, and implement the tools we’ve learned about. I realized that I’ve raced through some things in class without much explanation. While everybody is pretty psyched about google docs and drop.io, there are a few things that haven’t really caught on. One of the main things that hasn’t caught on is delicious. I started a list of sites that we’ve covered in class here (though it needs some updating) and listed some potential tags you could use to identify these sites. Below is a slide tutorial, that I’ll also add to the class wiki, showing how to start, use, and embed delicious bookmarks. I hadn’t planned on making delicious a required assignment, but I think it’s important enough to include at this point. See your assignment (previously unscheduled) below the slide show.

Assignment: Create a delicious account (if you haven’t already). Add 2 or more bookmarks to it and email me the link to your delicious account. Use some of the sites from the Delicious page on the wiki or find something new in your Google Reader. You should have subscribed to the bundle I made for you during class (if not see Class 6 on the wiki). I only included 5 blogs on it, but it should have a ton of great resources for you to peruse.

Extra Credit: Leave a comment on this post and tell me what you think. I’d also like to hear more about what else you’d like to learn about in class or what is challenging you.

Building on a theme

It’s snow day number two of the new semester and I’m almost stir crazy enough to go outside and film a re-enactment of To Build a Fire by Jack London.  Rather than freeze my camera as I fake freeze to death, I’ve been fine-tuning the course plan for a 1 credit class I’ll begin teaching in a couple weeks.  I’m looking forward to sharing and exchanging information with these rising teachers over the next several months.  In the first two classes I introduce two skills that I consider important for success with anything edutech related: Google Apps and Embedding. In those same classes I also establish the theme of the course – student centric teaching.

I consider Google Apps an essential piece of any rising teacher’s knowledge base.  From accessing RSS feeds in Reader to help build and follow a PLN to storing pictures in Picasa that students can access for projects, your Google account is a one stop shop – and it’s free.  Even though it can be difficult to untether people from Microsoft Office, once they see the utility of Google Docs they’ll never want to go back (in my opinion).  It’s difficult to help teachers gain a full appreciation of its utility in a one hour presentation or seminar – people need some time to use it and take it through the motions with real world tasks.  This is why I introduce it in the first class.  My school has had Google Apps Education edition for three years and I can’t imagine teaching without it.  It is often a centerpiece of my attempts to be as student centric as possible.  Google Apps makes it incredibly easy for students to create, collaborate, and receive guidance from the teacher.

The second skill, embedding, is a relatively simple one that many people familiar with educational technology take for granted.  Many young teachers (and experienced ones) can navigate Facebook with ease, but have no idea how to add a YouTube video or set of flash cards to a webspace.  There is so much great content that students and teachers can create on the web that would sit at a distant and hard to locate web address if it weren’t for embeds.  In my experience, this skill is usually embraced right away.  Show people how to embed a Grooveshark song on their site and hesitant tech students become instant webheads.  It motivates teachers to want to do more.  Below are some of the instructional companions to in class content on emedding.

Adventures in programming

My 8th grade Algebra class is in the midst of a unit on inequalities, which I’ve been trying to spice up with some lessons on basic programming.  Using traditional programming applications, or even programs like Scratch or Alice require downloads and take some time to get used to the environment. Since the programming lessons were only a supplement to the algebra unit, I needed something that allowed the students to program fast. Google spreadsheets provided the solution. In any spreadsheet  you can use simple If statements to make things pop up on screen or change colors when you enter a value or word(s) in a designated cell(s).

Using a google spreadsheet, each student could work on a different table on the same document at the same time. This allowed them to check out the programs that others were writing to get tips and hints. Whenever someone got stuck, I’d tell them to check out another student’s program and see if they could figure it out.  The programming was a hit.

Eventually we’ll move up to Scratch and then Alice, but I think the next step will be Zoho spreadsheets. Zoho spreadsheets recently added the ability to write Visual Basic macros into their spreadsheets. Though the students can also do this in Excel, it doesn’t offer the collaborative capabilities that Google Docs or Zoho offer. I can’t say that I’ve used Sharepoint, which might make this available, but why would I pay for something that’s already available for free.

Put this piece of code into a spreadsheet to see one of the programs a student wrote.  Type in “Door 1” in cell C11 to see what happens.

=IF(C11=”Door 1″, “Party”, IF(C11=”Door 3″, “Drive Away in Sports Car”, IF(C11= “Door 2”, “Fall Into Pit of Snakes”,”<——Choose Your Door”)))

Backchanneling on Google Docs

I witnessed backchanneling on Google Docs for the first time this summer and was immediately impressed.  Backchanneling allows viewers of a presentation to become part of it by writing in responses to slides or comments a presenter makes. 

Several people had inquired about this recently, so I decided to modify a lesson to incorporate backchanneling and recorded it.  It was my first foray into student backchanneling and I learned a lot from it. You can see a 2 minute highlight of the lesson embedded at the end of this post.  I’ve also included a short screencast of how to set it up below (you may have to click through if you’re in a feed reader).

Record your screencast online

If you’re planning on using backchanneling for a lesson, here are some things I learned from my first go at it.

• When logging on to the presentation, remind students that they need to click the “View Together” button to participate.

• Make sure you have the latest version of flash installed on student computers. My room has a motley mix of old computers and some of them couldn’t run the chat feature on the presentation. I ended up sending some students to another room and having some double up to expedite things.

• Lay down very specific ground rules on what is appropriate and what is not. When students first got on, they treated it like a random chat room. No one said anything bad, but they were off topic before the presentation even started. I then made a rule that all posts had to relate to the topic or they would have to sit and watch – 2 students ended up having to sit and watch.

• Watch out for the smiley faces (etc.). It’s probably good to have a rule about them.

• Give it some time. It took my students a little while to get comfortable with the environment. Initially, they wanted to verbally respond to other students posts or my questions, but eventually realized they could just message them back. Halfway through the lesson, all I could hear was quick keyboarding.

Set up security settings for Google Apps

A lot of administrators seem to be weary of letting students have a school email address – often times because it’s difficult to monitor/filter inappropriate content.   When we started with Google Apps at my school, we kept the email function off for the first year.  Later, we turned it on and it has been very handy.  Still, the specter of cyber-bullying and inappropriate spam makes me wish we had some filters.

It’s now possible to filter (for free) email and discussions within Google Apps for Education.  If you’re school has Google Apps Education Edition, you can sign up to get a service powered by Postini to filter your school’s email.  The best part is that it doesn’t cost anything and you don’t need to be a computer science major to figure it out.  Check out this post on the Google Enterprise Blog to get the details.