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.