Unit 7: Bring Student Work Online

Online student work provides an engaging teaching and learning environment while also placing proper assignment workflows in place. This can all be accomplished by using Google Classroom.

Get Your Class Organized

Google Classroom is a platform for communicating with students, assigning and collecting work, and providing learning resources. All of the Google products are integrated within Classroom. Many teachers were asked their opinion of using Google Classroom and the following response resonated with me and I feel the same way. “I heard from a fellow teacher that Classroom was available at the beginning of the school year too, so I decided to try it out. I can now send all my important messages and reminders there, plus assign homework and classwork. My students are all in one place, each neatly organized in a class.”

Assign Work More Easily

A great aspect of Google Classroom is the ability to instantly create individual copies of a document for each student. This allows the student to take ownership of the document and make his or her own edits. When these assignments are shared, email notifications will be sent to the students along with due dates. Once an assignment has been created, links, videos, and files can be attached to the assignment. If a number of documents want to be shared with the class as resources, the best way is to share a folder and not each individual document. The creation of a folder should only be done as a view-only option so the students do not modify the original document. I do this with my students in regards to class notes and answer keys.

Collect Assignments Effortlessly

When applications such as Classroom and Drive are used, we can stay organized easier without the clutter of paper. Everything is stored in labeled folders, allowing for easy access to view and to grade. There are many ways to collect student work. Work can be turned in as videos, Sheets, Docs, or images. Once it has been collected, the teacher can use the work to complete the following:

• To make sure the students are on task and understand concepts.
• Watch the students edit documents in real-time.
• Have the students create slides to synthesize information.

When using the Classroom, there were three scenarios given along with the best practice:

Scenario 1

You want your students to submit a document they’ve been working on. Students can turn in work done in any Google Docs app, or other files such as PDFs, videos, images, etc.

• Best Practice: This can be done through the Web Interface, or Android and iOS apps for Classroom. Students click on Add (+ sign on mobile) to select a Drive file, local file, or URL to attach.

Scenario 2

Your students have to do/read/watch something, but do not have to turn anything in.

• Best Practice: In this case, students can mark their assignment as done without turning in a document or a URL. Just have them click on the Mark as done button.

Scenario 3

You create a copy of a document for each student (Docs, Sheets, Slides and Drawings). How should they turn it in?

• Best Practice: In this situation, students will see a blue button on the top right of their document marked, “Turn in.” When they click that button, they are prompted to verify their submission and can provide an optional message to their teacher.

For the use of Drive, a similar three scenarios and best practices were given:

Scenario 1

You have only a few students, and they will be working on just a few assignments.

• Best Practice: In this case, you can ask them to individually share the documents with you.

Scenario 2

You create shared folders for each student for them to submit their work with.

• Best Practice: Students can either create a document and move it to their shared folder or create a document within the shared folder itself. You can easily identify changes to these folders by viewing the activity information.

Scenario 3

You ask your students to send you a message when they’re done with the assignment.

• Best Practice: In Google Docs, students (and teachers) have the ability to send a message directly to a document’s, ‘collaborators.’

Give and Receive Feedback

It is imperative as a teacher to provide my students with meaningful and frequent feedback. This will allow students to know which areas they have mastered and which areas they need to improve. This can all be done within Google Docs by either commenting or suggesting changes. Feedback can also be in the form of peer-to-peer to build a flourishing learning environment. A “Comment Stream” can be created by going into “Insert → Comment.” These comments will be highlighted and pop-up on a winder in the right margin. Once the student sees the comment, he or she can mark “Resolve” or can comment back to the teacher. Feedback Forms can also be created to provide valuable and positive feedback. This Form is created by the teacher and the teacher can see the feedback that was given and received to all of the students. Both the teacher and the students can complete this Feedback Form.

Summary

In the beginning of the school year,  we as teachers were faced with the daunting task of using Google Classroom. Nobody had used it before and we were able to work together between departments to create a smooth transition for its implementation. Many of the topics in this section are tasks that I complete regularly through the use of Google Classroom. This makes all of the hard work and stress in the beginning of the year pay off!

Unit 6: Bring Meetings Online

Google Hangouts has many capabilities. I know the basic premise, but this unit focuses on its capabilities more in depth. This includes using Google Hangouts for online meetings, sharing your screen with others during a Hangout and managing bandwidth to maintain call quality on a Hangout. The most important skill I learned was sharing my screen:

Share your screen

1. On your computer, open Hangouts at hangouts.google.com or in Gmail.
2. Select someone from the Hangouts list or search for their name or email address. When you find the person you want, click their name.
• To start a group video call, for each person in your group, type in their name and tick the box before their name.
3. Click the Video icon .
4. At the top right of the video call window, click Options .
5. Click Share screen.
6. Choose to share your entire desktop or your browser window.
7. Click Share.

Make In-Person Meetings More Effective

Step one of making a meeting effective is making sure everyone shows up on time and is free. This can be done by using Google Calendar.  Step two is making sure everyone is prepared with the correct documents, including an agenda. This can be done by attaching a shared Google Doc for the meeting. Lastly, a Google Doc can be created during the meeting with minutes and any action items to follow up. Using Google Docs for keeping minutes is a good idea because:

• It lets every
• one in the meeting contribute if they want to
• Google Docs are hard to lose and easy to find
• They can be emailed to people who may have been unable to attend the meeting
• They can be set up so that some people can edit them and others can just view them

Use Hangouts to Hold Meetings Anytime, Anywhere

Hangouts are easy to use because it’s integrated with Gmail and Google+ contacts. The uses for Hangouts are endless and include:

• Curriculum planning with other teachers in a different school
• Speak to parents who are unable to attend teacher conferences
• Tutor a student who cannot come to class because of an illness
• Teach a class if students are in different locations

One great aspect of a Google Hangout is if chats are started, the next time you chat, the conversation will continue. This way, no information is lost. This information includes links and attachments. To manage bandwidth with so many people, there are a few tips. Two tips include manually reducing the video quality to a power setting or turning off the camera to just have a voice call.

Summary

The features of Google Hangouts and Google Calendar seem endless. A new “trick” I learned was the, “Find a Time” feature in the Calendar. This feature gives the ability to schedule a meeting time that fits to everyone’s schedule. This saves a ton of email correspondences concerning everyone’s availability. Hangouts can be conducted not only from a desktop or a laptop, but also a cell phone. Google does not limits itself and its capabilities!