Mandate Update- PD Funding and Grants

I wanted to take a minute and update the mandate of this blog. Although the primary focus will still the integration of Google Classroom and GAFE into a one-to-one device classroom, I have recently been approved for two PD grants that will become part of this blog.

The first is a grant distributed by the Ontario Teacher's Federation. The approved proposal is comprised of a multi-disciplinary team of teachers from my school including science, computer engineering, Canadian World Studied, Food and Nutrition, and English. We will be using the funds to purchase key devices that will facilitate the integration of other, board provided technologies into the classroom. We hope to provide some valuable insight which will be published on this blog and on the OTF website.

I was also approved for school board sponsored PD to work with a teacher from a different school in our board. We will be investigating the use of GAFE to better allow for collaboration between students and teachers in a decentralized, highly independent learning situation, like an Interdisciplinary Studies Course, or during Independent Study projects. As suggested by my Principal, we may also look at how this could form the basis for asynchronous professional learning communities among staff throughout the
board and province.

I am very excited to tackle these new projects and hope that they will create valuable resources to be shared here.

Thanks for reading!

Adobe Voice is iPad Magic

If you are looking for an app that makes the purchase of an iPad worth while, look no further than Adobe Voice. Not only is this app simple enough for young children to use, but it is versatile enough that one of my Master's classmates uses it with great success; and it's FREE!

The App

The app is a very simple presentation creator which not only allows you to attach images, photos, or text, but also voice recordings to each slide. The app has a great variety of good looking themes, easy to use templates, and background music. Here is a video that shows the app in action.

Why it is AMAZING?

This app allows weaker or younger students to follow different types of stories which prompt them what to put on each slide. It also allows more advanced students to create presentations from scratch.

How I'm Using it.

I have been using Adobe Voice with my grade 10 English students while studying poetry. We have been working on developing deductive arguments. My students have been struggling with connecting textual support to their topic sentence/thesis. With poetry they work at identifying the purpose of a poem inductively and then trying to explain the purpose deductively. Instead of having them write their analysis, which they don't want to do and i'd rather not read, they create an Adobe Voice presentation in the same or less time that it would take them to write the paragraph. It is far more engaging and easier to share with the class.

My colleague was also very impressed with Adobe Voice after she used it with a very low functioning grade 9 English class. The students are reading at a grade 3-5 level and have a very difficult time sharing their ideas. They were able to use Adobe Voice after only a short introduction and created a presentation in less than an hour. This has allowed the students to be successful in an area that they have experienced little success in the past.

Update

The current version of Adobe Voice will now allow you to download the video to your iPad to then be used and shared in any way you like.

Using Google Classroom as an Assignment Dropbox

While in discussion with my colleague Nicholas Keller, he showed me an alternative use for Google Classroom that for him, as a Cooperative Education teacher, helps him stay organized and in sync with his students who are working throughout his community.

Because of the scheduling of Cooperative classes, Nick has decided to create three different Classrooms for his one course. Each Classroom deals with a different stage of the class, including Pre-placement, Logs and Journals, and Integration assignments. This unique use of Classroom has several benefits and disadvantages.

Benefits

1. By using the assignment dropbox feature of Classroom and by only having the assignments listed in the Stream, students are easily able to see what needs to be completed before and during their placements. Students are able to see what needs to be done and what they might have missed for the entire semester all within two or three page scrolls. 
2. One of the challenges for cooperative education teachers is managing the paperwork of students completing their work logs. Traditionally, this was done by having students hand in paper copies of the appropriate work when they are at the school. This can quickly become an organizational nightmare and can allow students to slip through the cracks. By using Classroom as a dropbox, teachers can quickly and easily see which students have not completed work and can then react accordingly, all with one click.
3. The thing that struck me most about this use of Classroom is that it doesn't utilize the Stream function in the same way that I have been using it in class. One of my main criticisms of the Stream is that material that students may need repeated access to quickly moves down the stream with daily updates. Using Classroom as an assignment dropbox, and for nothing else, keeps the assignments top of mind (and page) for students.
4. Not only will it keep material top of mind for students, but it also allows for the same Classroom to be used year after year. It should be nothing more then removing the students who completed the course and adding the new students to reset the Classroom and make it easily adaptable to the new semester.

Disadvantages

1. Because Classroom does not allow you to reorder Stream posts, if you want to change an assignment or just the order in which they appear in the Stream, you would have to delete everything and start again.
2. By not utilizing the Announcement functionality, and the fact that Classroom does not allow you to embed a calendar or create multiple Streams for one Classroom, students will have to go to more then one place to manage their course work.
3. Marking with a rubric is still an issue as there has been no functionality update to make this possible.

The simplicity of this approach and the ease by which teacher and student should be able to manage complete and incomplete work is an interesting and useful model for anyone in a highly independent and dynamic teaching environment. Thanks for sharing Nick!

On a side note, has anyone run into the problem of Classroom switching a student from one Classroom to another? This has happened to me twice so far this semester. 

Five Things You Should Know Before Using Google Classroom

If you are considering using Google Classroom as a part of your courses, here are five essential things you will want to know.

1. Google Classroom is a black box

Maintaining regular communication with parents is a constant challenge for teachers. Other online platforms I have used in the past made the arduous task of keeping 80+ parents informed on what is going on in their child's class a simple task. I could send parents a link the my course calendar, website, or wiki and that was the end of my effort. Google Classroom does not allow this to happen. You won't even be able to share Classroom with your colleagues or student success teachers without adding them as a student. I understand that privacy is the central driver behind this policy, but in my opinion, this will prevent Classroom from receiving mass adoption.

2. Google Classroom is not a course management system.

If you are looking for a place to set up units and prepare folders of resources ahead of time, Google Classroom is not for you; Google Drive is definitely for you, but not Google Classroom. Drive will allow you to set up files for units and plan resources ahead of time. If you want your students to have access to all of your files from day one you can share the folder with your students. You could share the folder on Classroom, but do not think of Classroom as a course website, but rather as a Facebook news feed or a Google stream.

3. Google Classroom is all about the here and now.

Google Classroom's Stream will make it easy for students to find exactly what they need for a particular moment in time. The teacher needs to update the Stream often so that the relevant information for class that day is at the top of the stream, ready to go. If you are in a one-to-one device environment, this can help simplify your day significantly.

This focus on the present can also cause issues. If, like me, you are planning on using Google Classroom daily you may find the format of the Stream frustrating. Throughout a unit I will provide information sheets and links that students need to access throughout the next couple of weeks. This information quickly gets pushed down the stream and ends up requiring scrolling and page refreshing (which has recently resulted in the page automatically scrolling all of the way to the top) to find exactly what a student needs. Students could "make a copy" of each information sheet, or copy links into their bookmarks, but in reality, this will almost never happen.

4. Assessment in Google Classroom will not work for everyone.

My single biggest frustration, and one of the key selling feature of Classroom, is its handling of assessment files. What I do like is that you are able to send assignment sheets to students with only a few clicks and that you can send a copy of that assignment to each student where it is stored in a folder in their Drive.

The key issue I have is that evaluating the work when it is finished is tailored to a very specific form of assessment. The built in assessment functionality only lets you mark the assignment based on an overall average or point system. Our school system marks with a 4 category, 5 scale rubric. There is no way to set a rubric as a marking schema, and if you do not attach the rubric when you originally create the assignment (perhaps you are co-creating your rubric with the students) you are not able to edit the assignment and add the rubric with the option of giving it to every student.

If, like in my department, you have students hand in work, provide feedback for improvement (without a mark), and then give students time to make changes and resubmit for summative marking, your assignment inbox in Classroom will become a disaster. Material will be listed as done, returned, and resubmitted. Because of this, my ability to comment or add items to their assignment sheets becomes a mixed up mess of commenting and 'making suggestions'. A little more versatility and the ability for teachers to end an assignment would make assessment much more functional for many teachers. 

5. Google Classroom's usefulness is dependent on your use of Google Apps for Education.

If you find that you use a wide range of websites, online tools, and applications, you may find Google Classroom is just another site you need to maintain. But, if you use Google Docs as well as the many other Google Apps, Google Classroom is the place for you. The ease of sharing Docs assignment sheets with each of your students and the ability to easily track who has submitted what and when by looking at the submission history, makes this a great tool. It also makes it very easy to share course content, whether it be a youtube video, a link to a webpage, or a variety of handouts and slideshows. Students will have no good excuse for not finding everything they need.

Gallery Tour Feed Back

A particular challenge that I face as an English teacher, which is further exacerbated by technology, is getting students out of their desks and moving around. I decided this week to incorporate some movement into my class while still using the available technology.

My Grade 10 academic students are working on creating an advertisement for a not-for-profit organization known as Give Them Light. This charity came to their attention after we watched the film Blood Brother. Students were tasked with completing some inquiry questions on what makes a good ad completed through the analysis of not-for-profit advertising focussing on the same issues depicted in the film. Students were then challenged to create their own advertisement for Give Them Light by connecting their analysis, our work on logic, and the character virtues they have been assigned to explore.

To get them out of their seats, students were put in groups and assigned a section of chalkboard in the room. Here the groups identified the success criteria for an effective ad. After 5 minutes, students rotated around the room looking at what other groups had identified. As a class we then co-created a Google Doc listing the most common aspects from the various lists.

We then went to the computer lab (I was monopolizing tech this day). Students pulled up their advertisements on the computer screen and left their device (iPad or Chromebook) on the desk in front open to a blank Google Doc. The class then rotated around the room providing feedback to students based on the success criteria identified in class. This allowed for a great amount of feedback in a short amount of time. Not only did each person receive feedback from 26 people, but they were able to see what others had done in order to learn what they could change in their ad to make it stronger. Finally, the success criteria we created allows me to better tailor my rubric to their understanding of the material covered in class, allowing for a more authentic assessment of what was learned, not what I thought they might learn.

This type of gallery tour could also be easily recreated online without the necessity of two computers each. Simply create and share a Google Slideshow, allow students to upload their ad to a slide, and then use the commenting or speaker notes functionality to do a virtual tour and have students provide feedback.

The physical gallery tour did allow students to get up and move around and also created a bit of excitement as students would group around particularly strong ads and comment out loud.

Classroom Functionality Update

Looks like Google has added some additional functionality to Classroom. There have been three changes that I have noticed so far.

1. Teachers now have access to a toggle switch in Stream to hide or show deleted items. 

• This would have been extremely valuable to me when I accidentally deleted an assignment in Classroom. I had to create another version of the assignment, which lead to multiple copies of assignment sheets and lots of confusion.
2. There are additional functions within the "Student" page. At the top of the page you can change permissions to allow students to comment in Classroom or to prevent all, or a few, students from commenting. It is labelled as muting students. If only this worked in the physical world as well.

• You can now also send group emails by clicking the check box beside the students for whom you want the message sent and selecting "email" from the drop-down menu.
3. Document permissions have also changed. If you create a document in a Google app and want to share, you now need to click on "Advanced" to change general permissions.

• Within this menu, you can be even more selective and allow certain Classrooms editing privileges whereas other Classrooms may only have commenting or viewing privileges. 
• I am very excited about this change. With two sections of grade 12 English I can have students from one class comment on work created in the other without the fear of things being changed or deleted. More to come on this.
• The only downside to the change in privileges is it does add another step if you just want to make a document editable or comment-able to all students. 

More than anything, it is great to see that Google is following through on their promise to roll out more features are they become available.

Google Classroom- Six Week Progress Report

As our students receive their week-six interim report cards, I think it's also time to assess my first six weeks with Google Classroom.

Achievement- Satisfactory

Strengths

• Classroom is a much nicer user interface than Google Drive previously provided.
• The real-time nature of Classroom's Stream provides a valuable way to share learning goals with attached media and documents.
• This is particularly useful for teachers who are in a one-to-one device environment, as well as for students who are absent on a particular day.
• The Assignment functionality within Stream makes giving and receiving assignments of all
  types of media easy, as well as makes checking progress a one click task.
• The "Students" page allows for easy email communication between the teacher and students.
• The "About" page allows for easy setup of course material for which students need regular access.
• The ability to share Announcements and Assignments with multiple "Classrooms" improves workflow and cuts down on copying.
• The user interface makes it easy for students to find what they are suppose to be looking for. There are no distractions, just the work and information a teacher wants them to have.
• The tight integration with Google Apps For Education is the only key differentiator of this product and unless a teacher fully integrates Google into their classroom, Classroom may not have broad enough appeal to be useful to him/her.

Weaknesses

• There is NO WAY to share your Classroom Stream with people outside of your GAFE domain. 
• For me, one of the greatest benefits of the connected classroom has been the ability to keep parents informed about what is happening in their child's course with little effort actually required on my part. Classroom does not allow this.
• Privacy concerns can be dealt with easily by removing user names from the view of people outside of the GAFE domain. This is no excuse for putting my course in a black box!
• Even if I wanted to show my colleagues how I am using Classroom I can't unless I add them as a student (which means they show up as incomplete assignments) or I log in and show them. The inability to allow Student Success teachers access makes supporting my students much more difficult.
• Classroom needs an automatic "Notebook" folder created for students.
• Much like how the teacher can set an assignment to "Make a Copy for Each Student", attaching documents to an Announcement needs the same functionality. One of my classes still refer to a handout given on September 4th, which requires several pages of scrolling to access. Hoping students will "make a copy" of information sheets and file them properly is not terribly practical.
• The real-time nature of Classroom can cause problems. There have been numerous times when Classroom has not been available or is extremely slow to load.

• Although occasionally this is the fault of the wifi hub, there have been many times over the past six weeks where I have not been able to access the Stream or Assignments despite having robust wifi.
• Customizability is extremely limited.
• The inability to rearrange the order of Announcements within the Stream or the About page may require you to delete and repost items if you need to add something extra.
• The About page, or side bars of Stream, would be infinitely more valuable if you were able to add gadgets like Calendar, in order to provide easy access for students. Unless it is in their face or you stand over them, many will not remember to check a second site for the class calendar.
• Classroom seems to have been designed by people who were trying to remember what their teacher did when they were students.
• The inability to attach documents to a student's assignment submission is frustrating. If a student has turned in their written work, there is no way for the teacher to attach a video of their presentation after the fact.
• There is no way to create Announcement or Assignment posts ahead of time. This creates extra steps and documents if a teacher needs or wants to plan ahead. 
• On a picky note, Google calling their service "Classroom" makes it very difficult to talk about in and outside of class. Telling students to go to Classroom, or submit it in Classroom has already lead to some confusion.

Next Steps

• Create a "Notebook" functionality as mentioned above.
• Allow outsiders a way to see what is going on in Classroom. 
• Give the teacher the option to break down the black box.
• Improve server support. 
• Many times I see the "Oops! This is taking longer than it should" message. This message only means something if it doesn't appear more often than not.
• Allow for greater customization. 
• Even the ability to change font size within the Announcements would be a vast improvement. Students can't read what an Announcement says if Classroom is on the Smart Board.
• Create some reusability functionality in order to make Classroom useful to a teacher teaching the course a second time. 
• I would suggest being able to reverse the timeline when a course is done to allow easy reference the next semester/year.
• Maintain a positive attitude, Classroom. You have made excellent first steps, but the only way to learn how to do better is to listen and act upon the feedback from your teachers.

Group Work Dynamics Tracking

One of the challenges I have with assessment is providing accurate and supportable evaluation of learning skills. In our board, learning skills are not suppose to be assessed as part of a student's term mark. If we are assessing knowledge, that assessment should be solely based on the student's knowledge and not whether they miss the first ten minutes

of class every, single, day. The obvious issues with that aside, my department has been working on developing a method for effectively tracking one of the key learning skills; that being, a student's ability to work effectively in a group, which we assess as either excellent, good, satisfactory, or needs improvement.

The challenge is that most of our record keeping, and time, is focussed on formative and summative assessment that is used to inform a student's mark in the course. So how can we use technology to better support the learning skills evaluation and inform our teaching practices all without adding a significant amount of additional paper work?

What I have done to help is modify a chart that has been developed by my department head and department members (who borrowed the idea from somewhere long ago), over the last few years. The chart is used to identify group dynamics when working in teams.

The issue that I have had with this chart is that when a completed chart is given to students they rarely look at it and they certainly do not keep it long enough to help in their next group work situation. And to be honest, when I use the chart with the intention of keeping it as support for report cards, I have misplaced them more than once.

By creating a Google Form, I am able to fill in the chart for each group and provide them access to the results spreadsheet. This allows them to receive immediate feedback that they can then refer to either the next day or later in the semester and reflect on how they can improve. This feedback is then also available for me when I am providing comments on report cards. Not only can I provide feedback, but because Google Forms can be set to automatically collect the respondents Google Ed email address, I can have groups self-evaluate and know the source of the insights, which in turn helps me better understand the disparity between what I see and what the students think they are doing.

This Group Work Tracking form is going to be particularly useful in a new, upcoming unit in my grade 12 English course where the students will be working on a team project for four weeks while they plan a pro surfing tour stop. The groups will receive daily feedback, be given time to reflect on the feedback at the beginning of each class, and the group-assigned project manager that week will be responsible for developing feedback as well. Not only will this Google Form allow me to make more informed decisions for report cards, but it will be a useful teaching tool that allows for hands-off learning opportunities.

Guest User!!! How did this not occur to me?

One of my main complaints about Google Classroom is that without a GAFE email account, students, parents, or colleagues are unable to even see the wall. It is additionally frustrating that the teacher is unable to see Classroom from the student side, and this being a new service, I was never sure what students had access to, or how attachments and assignments worked for them.

My cousin, a fellow teacher, suggested that I ask our Google Admin to set up a guest account to allow me access to the student side, as well as allow newly added students access to Classroom while we wait for their account details. I just received an email from our Google Admin who thought this was a great idea. This could be the single greatest suggestion to help alleviate many of the frustrations teachers will have getting Classroom up and running.

Thanks Chris!

The Quantification of Student Through Peer Assessment

One of the advantages of a networked and digital world is a nearly endless ability to capture and save data. And it is with the processing power that we now have that we can turn large data sets into something that is manageable and insightful. My first foray into the use of data sets in my English classroom (outside of marks) is the capture of peer evaluations every time a student is in front of the class.

In the past, I have handed out slips of paper for peer evaluation, but these were never looked at beyond a cursory glance after a presentation. So I've decided to use Google forms and Spreadsheet to capture and make this data usable to my students.

First, I took an existing performance chart of presentation skills I have used in my 2D English class and turned it into a Google form that quantifies each of the skills we are focussing on developing in the class this semester.

The link to this form will be shared to the class and every time a student presents, everyone will provide anonymous feedback. Like most data sets, a one time gathering will not yield particularly insightful information, but after 5 or 6 presentations throughout the semester, some patterns will emerge.

In order to identify these patterns, students will be able to use the data collected and sorted (using filters) to create a line graph or scatter chart to see consistencies of performance, or hopefully a steady improvement. With this data set, students should be able to identify areas of weakness, strength, and inconsistency in order to target skills development. This should also help eliminate the bias we all have of focussing on the good and the bad, but never the mediocre.

I have just started this process and will provide an update when I begin to see significant enough data to develop insight.

TIPS: When you are creating the drop down menu of student names (aka Choose From List), you can just copy and paste your digital class list into the first option and Forms will automatically create a new selection option for each name. HUGE time-saver.

Also, make sure that the "Name of Presenter" question is a "Required Question" (click box at bottom of question creation) or the students may not be able to find data intended for them.

Finally, if you are using Forms as part of GAFE (Google Apps For Education), you can choose whether the data collected is anonymous or has the student's account attached. I prefer anonymous to hopefully get a more honest response.

Google Docs- Decentralizing Learning with Comments

With the deployment of a one-to-one environment in my classes this year, a goal of mine is to remove myself from the centre of the classroom. I want to decentralize the learning environment so I am no longer the only source of course content. In the first few weeks I have found some amazing uses of Google apps to put the learning and student voice at the centre of the classroom.

Decentralizing Learning- Google Docs and Commenting

To change the focus from a teacher espousing knowledge and content, to the content and learning itself, I have had some great success with Google Docs. As part of our grade 10 academic English course, students study logic and rhetoric. One of the primary focusses is on their ability to identify 19 logical fallacies in literature and the world outside of school. What follows is my workflow in creating the space for student voice to help their classmates develop a better understanding of logical fallacies.

1. Using our paper handout of Fallacies in Logic, I scanned the document to a .pdf, uploaded it to Google Drive, and "Open[ed] with" Google Docs. This created an OCR scanned and editable document that digitized the handout with few corrections necessary.
2. The Logical Fallacies Google Doc was then attached to an announcement of the "Learning Goals" for the day on Google Classroom. In the sharing privileges, the Doc was set to be available to anyone with the link in our district (only people using the school administered Google Ed accounts) with privileges set to "Can Comment".
3. While I was at the front of the class providing explanations and examples of each of the 19 fallacies, the entire class was encouraged to highlight a fallacy and add a comment providing a further explanation, the teacher's example, their own example, or a question.

After class was over, I reviewed the comments on the Doc and was amazed to see what was happening while I was teaching. There was almost no example of students copying my examples or definitions verbatim, but a conversation with additional examples (most much better than mine, embarrassingly enough) and students building off each others' examples had occurred. The students were able to learn and share their understanding of the fallacies in real-time and in a way that I could not replicate on my own.

Google Docs OCR and Forms

While working at integrating Classroom into my courses this year, I decided to complete the Google Educator certification at the same time. Thus far, I have completed the exams on Gmail, Calendar, and Drive/Docs. I thought I would share two things that I have found particularly useful which I have already adopted as part of Classroom.

First off, as I try to move from a paper based course to a digital course one of my biggest hurdles is transferring handouts for which I do not have the digital copy. As it turns out, if you take a .pdf scan or even a picture (.jpg) of a text document, upload it to Google Drive and then "open with" Google Docs, the program will use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to create an editable version of that text. When the document opens you will see the original scan/photo with the text below. I have had good luck with both .pdf and .jpg; in both cases, they needed only minor editing or corrections. Very handy for teachers in transition like myself.

Secondly, Google Forms has provided a much needed bridge for students working on iPads. Having all of my students input information into a single Doc was haphazard and frustrating for many students. What I realized is that setting up a quick Google Form allows all the students to input information individually, but that information is then amalgamated onto one Spreadsheet. You can then share the Spreadsheet with the class so that everyone can see the results.

I have used forms twice already this week. Once was to have students sign out their devices. The second was to have students co-create a deductive syllogisms quiz and then that night teach a family member how to test the logic of a syllogism while they completed the quiz. By looking at the answers the next day we could identify the most inconsistently answered questions and examine why people had so much difficulty with those questions. It worked really well and I only had one parent send a message informing me that they are too busy to be doing homework assigned by their child's English teacher.

The Fine Line Between Awesome and Creepy

It has finally happened!! My ten promised Chromebooks arrived yesterday and I deployed them in class today. During my period two class, students actually cheered, despite having never used a Chromebook before, to be rid of their iPad.

I have to say that at this point I am very impressed, if not a little creeped out. The Chromebook starts up in seconds (even faster than my Macbook Pro) and takes you directly to a log in page to input your Google credentials (which then logs you into all of your Google apps). Once I was logged in I immediately went to the browser and started entering the web address for Classroom. The browser auto-completed the search with my previous web browsing history . . . from my personal computer. Did I mention it did this in a fraction of a second? Almost creepy fast. Kind of makes me wonder if I should be logging out of my Google account regularly instead of just staying signed in.

The ease at which the students took to using the Chromebooks was like a breath of fresh air in comparison to our fighting with the iPads over the last two weeks. To be fair, I am trying to implement all Google products on the iPads, but still, it was a very good day.

Several of my students, upon finding out the price of a Chromebook, are now seriously considering buying one of their own. Now to see if they stand-up against the teenage hoards.

The Google Docs Table Work-Around (iOS)

As was obvious in my last post, my frustration with the Google Docs app and its lack of support for editing a table made in Docs was intense, to say the least. This was only furthered when some of the iPads we use were forcing students to use the app, not allowing them to edit the table in Chrome where it is editable. Today, one of my students discovered the work-around.

To make sure that Chrome opens the Google Doc, simple click and hold on the edit button (as seen in the picture). This will bring up a menu that allows you to choose "Open in New Tab." I can't begin to express how significant this little trick is to my classroom. We use many, MANY tables to organize and show thinking, and without this trick I would have had to reconsider using Google Classroom and my iPads in any significant way.

In a few cases students were forced into the Docs app when they selected the file from Classroom. The same click-and-hold trick works in that situation as well.

The Inconsistent App- Google Docs

Image: http://www.bestappsite.com

Having used the "assignment" function of Google Classroom for the first time yesterday, I am, at this point, impressed with the ease at which it seems to work (not being able to set assessment with a rubric notwithstanding). Each student received their Google Doc assignment sheet in their folder, which they can edit and then submit. The part that I am most happy with is that students can also add other Drive files or attachments. For me, this means that students will be able to submit their planning and thinking work, as well as a video recording of their actual presentation.

Where things breakdown is in the Google Docs app for iOS. The assignment sheet given contained a few charts (created in Google Docs) which students needed to fill in to show their thinking. What we learned today is that the Docs app does not support the tables created in its own program. It shows up as an unsupported item.

The work-around seems to be opening the document in the iOS Chrome browser where it is editable. This is both frustrating and confusing. Why bother with the app if the browser has more functionality?

Learning Goals and Media

Although perhaps obvious to most, today I finally caught on to how I think the people at Google envisioned a teacher utilizing the stream in Classroom.

At the beginning of every class I layout our Learning Goals for that class. Typically this turns into a list of the tasks we are going to complete, but when it comes to learning specific skills, I try to articulate those as clearly as possible.

Today I listed my Learning Goals and then attached all of the media and documents for that particular class to that announcement. This allowed everything to be closely tied together and will certainly help prevent the stream from becoming too crowded. I think this will also make it easier for absent students to pick up on what they missed.

I still feel that the inability to create draft announcements (including media), with options for formatting, is a major drawback still to be overcome. If Google allowed me to create draft announcements, attach appropriate media, and format it in a Google calendar, Classroom would become a much more serious player in the Educational platform game.

First day in class with Classroom

The day is finally upon us and I just finished teaching three classes with Classroom integration. I thought I would comment on a few practical points that myself and a few of my colleagues have noticed about Classroom.

1. Although I realize that the intent of Classroom is to have students access it from their own devices, I am annoyed that the font is so small that students cannot read what is on Classroom when it is on the smart board. The ability to change font size is a must.
2. I also ran into the problem that I know is going to be the most challenging, students needing their Google Ed email accounts. All of my grade tens knew their account info, but only a handful of my grade twelves remembered. I requested their login information two weeks ago, but our Google admin, like most I am sure, is completely overwhelmed this time of year. The required Ed accounts also means that I cannot share what I am doing in my class with parents!!
3. A few of my colleagues have also noted that not being able to create drafts of posts makes planning a class much more difficult.

At this point, Classroom is creating more hurdles than it is helping. I have had to make all documents editable by anyone with the link and send students to that link through other avenues because without their Ed account, they can't even see the stream.

Tomorrow we will be co-constructing some documents. At this point I think I am going to have to work completely outside of Classroom to make it work.

"About"

It is amazing to already see some of the changes that Google is making with Classroom. The additional features are making organizing my courses this semester much easier. Here are three things that I am pleased to see today.

First, the "About" page for each course provides an easy way for me to add all of the first-day-boring-waste-of-paper sheets that students are required to have easy access to. Also, the "About" page allows students quick access to a centralized G-Drive folder and my email address. This makes life much simpler.

Second, my Google admin created a course so that I could see a course from the student side (a function that should be built in to classroom, much like Blogger's ability to "view blog"). On the student page it looks to be one click on a classmates name will allow you to send them an email. This should greatly improve communication and collaboration in the class.

Third, when posting an announcement to a Classroom, you can choose to post that announcement to as many or as few of the Classrooms that you are running. For me this means that if there is an alternate schedule for the day, a reminder of a special day at school, or a need to let students know I am going to be absent, this can all be done with one announcement instead of having to update each Classroom individually. Very pleased.

More to come, including what I think is still missing from Classroom by Google.

It Begins!!!

It looks like my problem of not being able to access Classroom has been resolved by my Google Admin. She did have to activate the app and informed me that it could take up to 24 hours for it to become live.

I have spent about 30 minutes exploring and so far everything seems to meet the expectations set in the teaser video, but nothing to wow me yet. Here are a few of the things I have noticed so far.

1) The home screen is set up like an social media news feed and allows two options for teachers. You can either add an "announcement" or an "assignment" to the feed. When adding an assignment you can choose whether you want to the students to view, edit, or receive a copy in their drive. What is missing is the ability to collaborate on an announcement. If I wanted to work on a document with my students in real-time, I would have to post it as an assignment, even though it is not.

2) I am very glad to see that there is a pin provided so that students can add the course themselves, as I have always found adding students via their email address to be a frustrating experience. There is the option to add students yourself though, if you prefer.

3) Problem #1. I decided I wanted to look at Classroom from the student side so I tried to add my personal gmail account as a student. I was informed "You cannot add students outside your domain to courses". I believe this means that all of my students must be using their ED account assigned to them by the school board. For me this could already signal the death knell for Classroom. Here is why:

a) We have one Google admin at our board and every September she is overwhelmed with requests for student passwords because many of my students use personal accounts at school instead; which they should. Why would you want to keep logging off and on as a different user all of the time? There is no longer a division between work and personal and there should not be one at school (unless students would prefer. They should have the choice).
b) When a student joins my class from a different school board it will take several days to get them hooked up with an ED account. If I am going to run my entire course on Classroom, this is a major barrier.
c) Google apps are great because they allow for decentralization. This student sign-up procedure forces centralization again. Frustratingly similar to what I feel is wrong with D2L. I have autonomy in my physical classroom, let me have autonomy in my virtual Classroom!

4) Looks and feels light and airy, not overwhelming with buried material like other learning platforms I have used.

5) When you want to make an announcement on your wall, it is very easy to add files from your computer or Drive. Two frustrations I can foresee is that you cannot access files that have been shared with you on your Drive, which means you have to leave Classroom, go to Drive, add the shared file to your Drive, and then go back to classroom. Especially frustrating if you are trying to quickly share exemplars of student work or materials shared by a teaching partner (this will lead to multiple versions of a file). Also, there is no way to quickly add a video or audio announcement. Being able to access your webcam and leave messages in seconds would be amazing and something I had hoped to see.

6) Last comment for today. Assessing assignments looks exactly like it did in the promo video which is disappointing and does not reflect best practices. We mark using a 4 level, 4 category rubric. Classroom allows you to select how many "points" an assignment is worth or leave it as no assessment. I need to be able to attach a rubric as an assessment tool, both when the assignment is given and when it is assessed. Also, the ability for me to record video or audio commentary would allow for better and quicker feedback.

If you are listening Google, please don't make me leave Classroom to upload files to then go back to Classroom to attach them to the proper assignment and/or student!!  

So far Classroom appears to be a basic resource for a teacher to post assignments and announcements that allows for easy access to Drive. I do feel that the forced centralization is a major concern, as well as a seemingly unclear sharing/collaboration process. Also, it seems that the purpose of Classroom is to be a resource for students at home and not really a learning hub to be used during class. Perhaps my hopes do not align with Google's vision.

More to be seen and explored.

Failure to Launch

It is nearly the middle of August, and I hate to say it, but it is time to get focussed and get back into my classroom. I thought this would be even more exciting because my classroom the year is/was going to be a Google Classroom.

After receiving an email last week from Google welcoming me to Classroom and telling me that "We’re excited to inform you that you have been chosen to participate in the early preview of Classroom by Google!", I finally sat down to login and and see if Google Classroom is as amazing as I hope it will be. I went to the proper web address, logged in using my Google apps email account and was met with:

Having already heard from them, this was disappointing. After some adventures in troubleshooting, it appears the issue may be that my Google Admin hasn't "turned on" the application. That's what I get for starting while the sun is shining!


I guess I should watch a movie instead.

In the beginning

As of yesterday, I have access to Google's new Classroom application. I am very excited to begin this journey, but thought I would start with an introduction of myself before I begin to explore what Google Classroom has to offer.

I am a secondary school teacher in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. I am in my tenth year of teaching and in my sixth school. I have been at Stratford Central for the last four years and it has been somewhat of a dream. We are a high achieving, publicly funded high school, with very few behaviour issues, which makes classroom management a simple task in comparison to many other schools.

This coming school year, I will be completing my last three semesters of my Masters degree in Digital Experience Innovation from the University of Waterloo. With this added demand, my Principal has given me an excellent schedule; I will be teaching 3 sections of academic grade 10 English and 3 sections of grade 12 college level English.

Starting this fall I will also be in a one-to-one device environment. I will have full time access to 17 iPads and 10 Chromebooks. With the reduced number of preps and the access to technology my goal this year is to be completely paperless by using Google Classroom as my starting point and to take advantage of Turnitin.com (and a variety of other sites) to help facilitate assessment.

Over the next year I will be posting about the rewards and challenges of Google Classroom, as well as any tips or tricks I pick up on the way. If you are reading this and have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to post.

Thanks and enjoy your summer!