Google Classroom
Classroom is the new kid on the block, literally. It was made public to the educational world in August and Google hasn't even finished updating their training site with tutorials for Classroom. I typically only like to share classroom tested tools, but Classroom is shaping up to be such a useful tool that I am going to spend some time talking about it. Classroom is a free class management tool that is tightly integrated with Google's Drive and Gmail applications. With Classroom you can quickly set up and enroll each class period as an individual unit. When I say quickly I mean 3-4 minutes. Once set up it creates folders in your Drive for each class in which each assignment is nested. You create the assignment and give it a due date. Classroom will notify the students. You can then track their progress, grade the assignment, and communicate with your students all from within classroom. Check out this short video on classroom to get an idea of how it could work for you.
Google Doc Tools and Add-ons
Google Doc is a great tool for classroom use even if it is only used as a word processor because it is free and allows students to easily share items with you and with each other, but there is so much more that it can do with Doc's tools and add-ons. I want to share just a few that I have used in the classroom.
The Comment Tool
The comment tool allows you or a student to add comments to a document without making changes to the document itself. To insert a comment you simply highlight the text you want to comment on (or place the cursor before the first word) and press the comment button in the toolbar at the top of the page. 
(Its the button on the right in that picture.) Simply type in your comment and press "comment". Comments will show up on the right side of the screen with your name and a time stamp. People can come back and dismiss the comment by pressing "resolve", edit the comment, or comment on the comment.
(Its the button on the right in that picture.) Simply type in your comment and press "comment". Comments will show up on the right side of the screen with your name and a time stamp. People can come back and dismiss the comment by pressing "resolve", edit the comment, or comment on the comment.
There are a few things I like to do with the comment tool.
- The obvious is comment on student's work. There are other tools I like better (and will share with you) but this comes in handy when I want to make a quick comment.
- I take a reading for the students and get it into a Doc. There are several ways of doing this but I don't really have the space to explain. I then use the comment tool to add questions at specific points in the reading. Next, I share the document using Classroom or the share feature in Docs so that each student has their own copy and can only comment. Then I have the students answer the questions in the comment section. Their answers will show up on my document as responses to my comment so that I can check that they completed the questions.
- I use it for revision practice. I share a student produced essay (with identifying information removed of course) and comment with questions about what I want them to focus on in that essay. If it is a well written example I will point out what was done well. If it is a poorly written example I will point out what should be improved. I typically comment with questions like "What was effective about this sentence?" or "What could be changed about the organization of the this paragraph to make it more effective?"
- It is a great way to let peers edit each others work. If you have them work in a group it can be even better because each student would get input from several students.
Suggesting Mode
In the upper right corner of the Docs you will see a button labeled "Editing". If you click on that you can change the mode to "Suggesting" mode and it will turn all changes made to a document into comments. This again is a great revising tool for students to use on each other assignments when doing peer editing, or for you as a teacher when working with a student. I wouldn't recommend using it with every student on every paper, but it is perfect for tutoring sessions.
Research Tool
Students can do all their research for an assignment from within Google Docs. All they have to do is highlight text they want to research and go to tools>research. A window will appear on the right that will allow them to research and cite information about the highlighted text. They can do the same thing without highlighting text by simply navigating to tools>research and inputting a query into the search bar.
Revision History
Revision history allows you to go back and see all changes made by every user of a document. This is helpful in the case where a student or you makes unwanted changes to document because you can revert back to an earlier version at any time. You can all use revision history to see how much work a student put into an assignment, and in the case of group work, who did the work and at what time. To get to revision history navigate to File>See Revision History.
Add-ons
Add-ons add functionality to the base Docs application much in the same way that extensions add functionality to Chrome. You add Add-ons by navigating to Add-ons>Get Add-ons from the menu bar in Docs. From their you can look through the different types of Add-ons available. My favorites are:
- Kaizena Shortcut which allows me to make voice comments on a document. This is great for commenting on student work. If you have several papers to comment on I would recommend using their site, Kaizena.com.
- DocumentMerge by PandaDoc allows you to merge data from a Sheet into a Doc. This is great for filling out form letters, SSTs, attendance changes, etc.
- Texthelp Study Skills is great for annotating Docs.
- Thesaurus is obviously a helpful tool.
- Translate will translate any or all of the text in your Doc. Docs does have native support to translate an entire document, but this Add-on lets you translate highlighted sections as well as the entire document.
Google Sheets Tools and Add-ons
Conditional Formatting
I am not much of a numbers guy anymore. That seems a little strange considering I started college as a computer science major. I guess too many years teaching English does that to you. Well conditional formatting allows me to preset parameters for color coding cells. I like to use it to color code data from unit assessment and other tests, but it can also be used to grade assignments submitted via a Form. This video shows you the basics on how to use conditional formatting.
Charts
Google Sheets has a robust set of charts that you can customize with any data housed in a sheet. You can use this to have your students chart trends in math, demographics in history, reactions over time in chemistry, trajectory in physics, etc. Check out this article for a quick guide to creating charts.
Add-ons
The Add-ons for Google Sheets are what I really like. Here are the ones that I use.
- Doctopus- Before Google Classroom I used Doctopus to send assignments to students and manage them once they are assigned. I would use Classroom if you have the ability to, but if not Doctopus is a great alternative.
- Flubaroo- Flubaroo is an easy to use grading tool. It can take any data in a spreadsheet and grade it. When used in combination with a Form it can take the place of using scantrons for instant grading.
- Template Gallery- This is exactly what it sounds like. It provides pre-made templates so that I don't have to spend hours making that calendar that I keep getting asked about.
- Schedule Generator- I use this personally but I am about to roll it out to my AP students in a few weeks. Schedule Generator creates Gantter charts from set data in your spreadsheet. You set up the project items, who is to complete what items, and start and end dates; the Add-on does the rest.
- Workflows- This is another Add-on I use personally but want to start utilizing in class. You create a series of tasks and assign a contact person for those tasks. I see this as a great way to have students submit research topics and the like.
Google Forms
Forms are useful for all kinds of tasks in a school. From simple surveys, to complicated exams, and even rubrics, Forms make it easy to do all kinds of tasks. Here is just a sampling of the things I have used Google Forms to accomplish:
- Workshop Registration
- Essay Rubrics
- Attendance Changes
- Discipline Referrals
- Multiple Choice and Short Answer Tests
Summary of Responses
The Summary of Responses (found by navigating to Responses>Summary of responses) give you an instant visual representation of the data collected by the form.
Pre-Filled Forms
Sometimes you may have to fill out a form over and over again with only minor changes to the form each time, or you may not trust someone to fill out the form as you would like. Google Forms lets you pre-fill sections of the form and then send out a custom URL to that particular person. In the former case you can fill out the information you want to stay constant then get the pre-fill URL by navigating to Responses>Get pre-filled URL. Now all you have to complete is the minute amount of information that changes. In the latter you can complete the items you don't want them to screw up and then send the person the pre-filled URL thus eliminating their mistakes.
Script Editor
Now this feature is not for the faint of heart. You can add custom scripts to a Form to make it do all kinds of cool useful things. For example, as part of a recent workshop registration form I sent out, I created a custom script that counted the number of people registering for a session. At a preset number that session would close and the option would be removed from the registration form. I said early that scripts are not for the faint of heart and what I mean by that is they require you to code. If you don't know how to code or are not patient/brave enough to learn as you go, this feature is not real helpful to you.
Google Slides
Google Slides is a very useful alternative to PowerPoint and Keynote. It works much the same way as both of those products but with the added benefit of real time collaboration. One feature that I really like about slides is how easily you can add videos and images from the web to a Slide presentation. The animation pane makes it a very quick process to add animation, and you can steal themes from any PowerPoint you have saved to Drive.
The following video show what you can do with a couple of friends and Google Slides.
The following video show what you can do with a couple of friends and Google Slides.
Enough said.
The Stragglers
There are several other apps that work closely with Drive and are worth mentioning here but won't get much air time here because I talk about them in another blog post. I just give you the links and let you discover for yourself.
That is it folks. Let me know if you found this helpful.
Cody
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