Posts tagged Google
3 Educational Web Applications I’d Like to Make
Feb 19th
I am sure you have had moments when you discover your inner inventor too. Here are three web based applications I have much pondered and if I had more time, money, expertise would probably have made by now.
The old Story – A2 by h.koppdelaney
Attribution-NoDerivs License
StoryBook Earth
Inspired by my work on storytelling using Google Earth and WeTellStories, StoryBook Earth would be a place to share, develop and create geotagged stories. When we write or tell stories we are picturing a location, a setting. In combining the imagery of Google Earth, the ability to add text, audio and even further media to specific places, you have a powerful storytelling form.
StoryBook Earth would develop the idea of “story” and “narrative” and to connect students in different parts of the world. It would also be an attempt to explore how the local becomes the global: to provide an appreciation of students in other parts of the world. It would provide an alternative way of “seeing” and “reading” the world, and possibly introduce students to young people who have experienced:
- Very different lives and personal circumstances
- Conflict
- Natural hazards
- Different climates and natural environments
- Alternative cultures and traditions
I remember watching a 9 year old in my class tell a story to a friend whilst looking at his street in Google Earth, there is something very immediate about such narratives – similar in part to historical walks that explain a story in the places they occurred.
In partnership with the Geographical Association, StoryBook Earth was entered into the Google GeoChallenge grant application process but unfortunately was rejected.
(Thanks to Alan Parkinson at the GA for all his help developing this idea.)
On the platform, reading by moriza
Attribution License
My Reading Diary
In our school the children use little paper reading diaries, similar I am sure to many other primary schools. In it they record the books they are reading, their progress and there is a place for pupils, teachers and parents to make written comments too
So for this one think: Shelfari for kids. A learner centred online tool that would allow children to do all they could with a paper diary – without the worry of losing it! But it would also have a database behind it that would allow children to tap into further reading recommendations. Children could read reviews from other users and discover new genres or books they may not normally.
I would imagine that My Reading Diary would have the potential to integrate with library management systems, so children could read a review or see a recommendation and immediately know if it is in school – and if it is available to read or someone else has it out already!
A further unique feature of My Reading Diary would be as a reading portfolio for children as they progress through school. With simple book profiling it would allow teachers and parents to see the types of books any child is reading and make future suggestions.
I think there is huge potential in this to not only provide a manageable online system to track reading progress throughout school but to also engage children with reading and a social, smart, personalised reading diary.
This idea was sadly rejected by Channel 4’s 4iP which is an innovation fund to stimulate public service digital media (beyond television) across the UK.
Firespeed by kwerfeldein
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
Connect Collaborate Content
I don’t know what I would call this application but I think it could be very important in the way teachers work in the next 5-10 years.
I would propose a single online place for teachers to find curriculum resources and ideas, connect with colleagues teaching the same topics and a platform for collaboration.
Ian Yorston quite rightly said that this place is the web. It perhaps is a matter of pulling streams of different information together, but I just don’t think there has been a purpose built online space that does all of these.
I am doing some work on the Victorians next half term – with my proposed web idea I want to be able to do a single search for “Victorians” and see a multitude of things that we regularly look for and seek out in further web queries elsewhere.
- Resources - planning, images, video, notebook files, PPTs, worksheets, that sort of thing.
- Ideas - the resources found on the web do not often come with the narrative behind it, I want to be able to read blog posts and summaries of experiences from those who have taught my topic already. My search results would draw in comments from Twitter and other platforms too.
- Connections - so many schools, teachers and pupils are working on the same topics, I want to know who is actively doing them too.
- Collaborate - once I have discovered that XYZ are doing the same topic, I want to have the means to collaborate and work with them.
We have a myriad of educational blogs to cover the ideas, places like Gareth Pitchford’s Primary Resources, Classroom 2.0 that does much to connect teachers and then there is simple tools like Teachers Connecting from Ben Hazzard that is a platform to connect and work together.
But we need one place to do all of this from a single search query, that would be the unique feature. You enter a single topic key word and your search results provide everything.
Another aspect that is important is what happens as we share our current classroom work. From blogging about my topics at school this year, for the first time my network has brought resources and ideas to me. Not as a result of me asking, but because they “read a post a few weeks back that I was doing sealife”. If we are all more aware of what topics colleagues are doing in their classes our sharing of ideas and resources can be more purposeful.
It will be intriguing to see what develops with mycurriculum.com from the QCDA and whether it will be able to build the critical mass of users to make it truly worthwhile – and also if it is smart enough to do some of the things I have outlined.
It has been an interesting process getting these ideas down in a post – let me know what you think of them and if they would have value in the educational world we work in. The ideas are there, feel free to go ahead and make them, just let me know you have so I can use them.
Class Blogging – Joining Up the Dots
Jan 23rd
When I first began my own blog nearly four years ago I also had set up a class site too. We had a year of great fun and connections. The experience made me realise how easy it is for classrooms to have a global dimension through the power of this technology. No doubt many of you with class blogs experienced this realisation too.
I have had a fantastic week returning to classroom blogging and starting our new class blog >> Priestsic5. Before Christmas I wrote a post asking for teachers to share their experiences with class blogs. To explain what platform they were using and to share some reasons behind it’s use. As you can see from the link I have decided to use Blogger as our platform.
Why Blogger?
The two main reasons are ease of use and sustainability, and I think that the former directly effects the latter. I want the blog to be a well established feature of the classroom and for it to be sustained into the future. Blogger is extremely easy to setup especially if you have some blogging experience of your own – but even if you have not.
One big plus is the associated services and tools that can be utilised alongside your Blogger (Google) account. The most important is perhaps image hosting in the form of Picasa Web Albums. Used alongside the desktop Picasa 3 application it is a good solution. Amongst other things I can blog directly from Picasa, synchronise local image folders to the web automatically and upload photo videos directly to YouTube.
Synchronise
Just to unpick the image folder synchronisation a little further – on our blog I have created an Art Gallery slideshow in the sidebar. I want this to be a collection of all that the class create and so I will be regularly updating the set of images. Currently all I have to do to add another image to this slideshow is add it to a local folder on my class computer – that’s it. I think this is a really useful feature as we are often managing lots of images from a whole class set of work. Using the Art Gallery example here’s how to do it:
- Upload you images to your computer, Picasa should automatically pick these up and display them for upload.
- Create an Art Gallery folder for the images (usually done during upload process)
- In Picasa next to the folder, on the right hand side of the screen, click the Sync to Web button.
- Sign in to your Google account.
- Your images will be uploaded to a web album.
- Click on the newly created online album – click on “Link to this Album” in the right sidebar.
- Select “Embed Slideshow” and copy the code.
- Paste this code in your blog. For ours I used “Add Gadget” (HTML/Javascript type) from the Layout settings.
- Save and refresh your blog to check it is working OK – you can manually change the size in the code.
- Now every time you add an image to the original local folder (on your computer) it will automatically update to the web and consequently update your slideshow too.
In the remainder of the post I will be explaining a few additions and changes I have made to our class blog that I consider to be important.
Next Blog Link
One of the features of a blog with Blogger is the top navigation bar that appears. This has a “Next Blog” link button which takes you to a random blog. Naturally this is not ideal for a class blog as you have no control over what you are linking to.
The first thing I did was find out how to remove it. It is a pretty simple case of adding a small piece of CSS code to the Template code. I found this site’s explanation exactly what I needed. Here is a short screencast from the same website illustrating the process:
Remove Blogger Navbar – More free videos are here
How Many Visitors?
By simply tracking the number of visitors you are able to illustrate to your class that we have an audience. There are people out their in the world reading what we post. These numbers are important in helping you establish rules for writing posts and comments. Children have a better appreciation that their work is going to be viewed by more than just “us”. A visible visitor counter like StatCounter provides some useful analytics for your blog that you could use in maths further down the line
Dots on a Map
In my experience one of the greatest ways to hook your class into the use of the class blog is to display a map of your visitors. In the past and in the last week I have found this to be a great focal point for the class when they are looking at the blog. I have used ClustrMaps for years on my own blog and with classblogs.
There is something so powerful and yet so simple and wonderful in allowing your class to realise that those little dots are people who have just visited your blog and read about work you do in your classroom. They begin to realise the connections we can make and begin to develop an awareness of things beyond their own community.
I know it is only a little map, but it really is a powerful aspect of class blogs and I would strongly recommend you display something too. Can you think of any other way that your class would willingly look at a world map every day and ask questions about where places are? Have your class blog displayed when the children come in first thing and leave room for their geographical curiosity to shine through. What you do with that natural curiosity afterwards is up to you!
Is a Google Teacher Academy Really Such a Good Idea?
Jan 2nd
Over a year ago I began writing about how disappointing it is that in the UK and Europe there isn’t a version of the US Google Teacher Academy (GTA).
Since then we have started a UK group, with over 120 members and much discussion has taken place. It is that discussion and debate that I want to focus here in this blog post.
Some consider Google to be a heavy handed corporation, riding rough shod over it’s competitors and assimilating those it can’t compete with. José Picardo wrote about the way the Etherpad situation was handled and points out that:
Google makes its living by offering free services with the only aim of attracting huge amounts of users to whom Google can then show their customers’ adverts and sell their premium services.
My dad used to tell me stories of free cigarettes being given away by tobacco companies outside the school gates to pupils on the way home. Google’s strategy surrounding free web apps for education is very similar: hook’em while they’re young.
He goes on to qualify such a comparison by saying that,
the desired outcome is the same: to get young people conditioned to using a product from an early age.
Marketing Google Apps for Education is a long term strategy to bring in younger users of Google tools, to create habits in work and life so that eventually more ads can be clicked, maybe years later. That’s surely the bottom line.
So is it right that we are using Google tools at all in the classroom? I rarely get into this sort of territory but we have been using Google tools in a myriad of ways in the classroom and I think it is worth debating.
Google logo render – Mark Knol by mark knol
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License
Many people have questioned whether a GTA is a good thing as we may just be perpetuating the “Googlisation of Education“, as Josie Fraser puts it. Is it right to hold a professional development event purely based on one company’s products, especially one that reaps a huge proportion of it’s revenue through adverts?
On the other hand Google has produced some of the most powerful learning tools currently available in the classroom. A GTA in the UK would be a great opportunity for teachers to learn from each other and find out about best practices.
The event should be clearly focused on learning and the ways that Google tools can enhance that. But it would also be a good opportunity to further debate the title of this blog post and the privacy issues surrounding Google in education and the ways young learners use their products.
I would focus on the ideas and the learning at such an event and not get too bogged down with whether or not it is right or wrong. Are you going to stop using Google products in the classroom altogether based on your moral objections? I would prefer to see Google tools and services just one part of a broad and balanced approach to web products in the classroom. Perhaps the event should be similarly balanced – but then it wouldn’t be a GTA it would be just another conference and could be about thousands of web related products.
What do you think? Is a Google Teacher Academy a morally flawed concept or a long overdue professional development event for UK teachers?
10 Improvements to Google Squared
Oct 30th
Google Squared is a wonderful search tool, undiscovered in my opinion, for the primary classroom due to the structure it provides – but also because of the flexibility to work directly in the search environment.
(Read Google Squared: A Complete Guide for more information about how to use it in the classroom.)
Ponte stretto by DanielaNob
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License
As it is still in the Labs I think it is important to contribute in a small way to the changes that could take place so based on my classroom experiences, here are mine:
- Search for values and add back to the square - would be great for children to decide that the presented values are not accurate enough, go to a regular search and then have a little button beside the source to ADD TO SQUARE.
- Change source for images too – when values have other possible sources we can change them. Sometimes the image is not as useful or appropriate as it could be. Would be useful to change the source or select a different image. Would also be great to integrate Creative Commons licensing for the images.
- Confidence rate the data used – some of the values presented show a confidence rating, would be useful for us to be able to rate that info too. If it isn’t relevant to the search we have done then we can say.
- Colour change for added search – when you “Add to Square” it would be useful to be able to have a visual cue to the separate searches you have added.
- Embed - would be great to be able to grab the code to embed the Square in a blog or other site. You can do it from the exported Spreadsheet but would be nice to be able to add it straight from the Square.
- Send the Square – would like to be able to grab the link or email directly from the Square.
- Suggest a category from a duff search- rather then having to build from scratch after a duff search – it would be good if Squared was able to suggest a category from what you added. Did you mean…
- Other media – please add Youtube and audio clips – we have been looking at Whales using Squared and would have been great for the class to see and hear these amazing animals right there in the search results. Maybe you could add Twitter as well – tweets from users about the category. “I just saw a humpback whale on our boat trip…”
- Description source – changing the source of the description would be useful to allow greater access to the text. Especially useful when using Simple Wikipedia for example. Perhaps you could also change language as well for the whole Square.
- Fix the Image insert for exported spreadsheets – when a Square is exported to a Google Spreadsheet the image appears as the URL. As Spreadsheets supports images it would be great to see these right there in the sheet so what you Square is exactly what you export.
I hope that the engineers at Google find them useful. Please let me know how you think Google Squared might be improved, especially in light of classroom experience.
Google Squared: A Complete Guide
Oct 25th
Google Squared is a product of Google Labs. It displays your search results in a grid format. Each item found for your search term populates the rows and their common attributes are shown in the columns. Rather then listing the web pages, your results are organised. Read the rest of this entry »
Google Search Curriculum and the Apps Education Community
Jul 16th
Where we would be if say tomorrow you couldn’t access any of the tools provided by Google. None whatsoever, how would our classrooms change? How would our work as teachers be effected? Interesting thought eh? Obviously we would cope right?(!!!) But it certainly highlights how important the tools they provide are to the way we access and organise information and the way our children do the same.
In this post I wanted to quickly summarise some Google related developments that have caught my eye recently and may have an impact on the classroom.
Google Search Curriculum
This was announced during the recent NECC conference in Washington DC (Checkout these Google related presentations from the NECC conference). When I first saw this Tweeted I thought it would be a bit obvious, but clearly there is much more to it when teaching it in the classroom.
There are three modules covered: Understanding Search Engines, Web Search Technique and Strategies and Google Web Search Features. Each course has lesson plans that are detailed and differentiated: Basic, Intermediate and Advanced.
Furthermore the lesson plans provide a variety of links to specifically created presentations that support the lesson. For each lesson there is reference to the ISTE Standards for Pupil and Teacher. I have not used these before but they look straight forward enough and would be easy to tie into what is happening here in the UK, whether skills based or through the National Curriculum.
My Year 5 children are very good at using online resources to find information but I think that they could be much more adept. They could certainly cope with the the Advanced level lessons and I think there is lots to offer, especially in the third module about different types of searches as it doesn’t take much to scratch the surface beyond a basic keyword search.
They have been created by teachers and seem to be well worth a look and I hope to find some room next year to incorporate some of the ideas.
Apps Education Community
The support for Google Apps Ed users has finally graduated out of Google Groups and now has its own dedicated community space. (Powered by Google Sites of course) It is early days yet but they have currently added areas for:
Tutorials & Tips - “View videos and tutorials on how you can use Google Apps at your school and in the classroom. Have an idea? Submit your own tips & tricks!” Not much here at the moment other than existing Google tools videos. There is a link to a webinar about Ed Apps that goes into great detail about the tools and platform available. I think the idea is that users will begin to generate video content – maybe I should resurrect some of my ideas and stick them in a film!
Join the discussion – “Participate in the Community Forum by reading posts, asking questions, helping others, and choosing and sharing the best answers to your questions.”
Google Apps in Action – “Vote and submit on the best examples of using Google Apps in education.” An interesting concept using the Google Moderator tool. Submit an idea and then the community are meant to vote on it. Yet to see really whether it works, I suppose the better ideas will surface to the top.
Along with being able to add your own details to a map, you can also stay up to date with Ed Apps news and spread the word about the site.
One feature that is worth looking at is the Apps Lesson Plans, a link is provided on the left menu. Each lesson plan is linked to a Google tool if appropriate and although they may not all be appropriate for all age ranges, it is worth looking at some of the ideas and concepts explored. This will certainly help you to find the most appropriate ways to use the tools in the classroom.
Google Earth is our Paper – Part 4: Improve the Story
Nov 26th
In today’s literacy lesson, the third in our Google Earth storytelling unit, we made the leap from audio or spoken parts of the story to some written work.
The use of the mapping in this story has provided us with a structure through the escape route we chose and also it has provided us with a rich visual stimulus for story content. The bushes James has to break through in his bid for freedom have caused scratches and bruises and ripped his clothing. The building site we have seen has caused James to be covered in dust and mud. In our story he hides between two large lorries and we stretched out with our senses (Jedi style!) and saw workmen chatting on a tea break, heard drills banging into the ground and the smell of diesel fumes from machinery. All of this has been generated from studying the satellite imagery in our story location.
Over the last few days we have been working on generating a bank of good vocabulary for the escape, which we have on our WOW WORD display. Through discussion and thesaurus work we have gathered lots of verbs and adjectives that have already proven valuable for the children to use in their stories. We have also tried to generate lots of different alternative sentence openers – many of the recorded audio sentences began with “I”. We used the verbs we had generated and coupled them with adverbs to generate powerful sentence openers. Again these are displayed on the wall for the children to see and use in their work, and in fact many of the improvements made today included many of the examples you can see.
![P271108_16.07[01]](http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3039/3062194918_f968467886.jpg)
Today the children used this language work to improve the sentences they had begun in their Vocaroo audio. Underneath the code for the Vocaroo player they added <p> for a paragraph and then wrote an improved version of their audio. We encourage them to make small changes to the original sentence, so just add a WOW word or begin the sentence in a more interesting way.
Here is an example of what one of the placemarks looked like and a second image of what the same item had included in the placemark properties. You can listen to the audio for this example here. The children coped well with writing in this way and had no problems with the coding as it is so simple.
The combination of audio and written text has allowed the children to really improve their writing. I have always been very encouraged when the children have used Voicethread and I think that a technology based audio element can be a powerful way to scaffold the writing process.
I believe that in this unit there have been a few ingredients that have contributed to improved storytelling:
- Google Earth’s imagery provided the class with ample inspiration for what to be creating in their story – they could see and explore it in front of them. They were not looking at a piece of paper and trying to drum up something.
- The confidence and comfort that they have with the main character and the background to the story.
- A clear and purposeful backbone to the tale – James is escaping.
- An agreed escape route. The whole class can then discuss the various moments in the escape. The sharing and peer support is vital.
- Easy audio recording has provided the children with a quick avenue into generating story content. There is no password/login/signup/complex method/knowledge/skill barrier to using Vocaroo. The children were recording their ideas immediately.
- Audio and text situated on the image at where it happens in the story brings, often disparate, storytelling elements together.
Google Earth is our Paper – Part 3: Consolidate and Empower
Nov 25th
In our writing sessions today I took both classes, all 60 Year 5 children, over two sessions and we continued and completed our work begun yesterday. The children were completing the task of adding 6 audio recordings to the correct placemarks in Google Earth, please see Part 2 for details of the process.
This post is concerned with some issues that have arisen from working with Google Earth and some classroom strategies I have found effective during my work with the application.
Consolidate
There is no better way for children to be successful then to have time to complete their tasks – today was a chance for them to consolidate the process they had begun yesterday and to once more practice embedding code in the Google Earth placemarks. All too often we want to rush the children onto the next great thing, it was useful today to take a breather and just ensure we had done a good job of the audio we worked on for our escape story.
Although a powerful and popular application, Google Earth is not used daily and so some children struggled to find their way around the different task panes and views. Having more time allowed them to become more confident.
As both classes were running into difficulties about what they could or could not see. Often they would think that all of their work had gone, or it has just disappeared – when in fact the placemark had just been unchecked in the Places window. Today I consolidated their basic understanding of the task windows and how to switch between them. I demonstrated the different possible views you could have within the Places window – and pre-empted some of the possible problems based on situations that may or may not have already arisen.
An issue that is well worth knowing about prior to working in Google Earth on a class laptop set is that of multiple content. For our escape story we have 7 placemarks and a path that loads up and is visible – when another child begins their own work another set of the placemarks is loaded up. Today some laptops had 3 sets visible. Children were saying they could not right click any of the placemarks but they had not realised (as the placemarks are identical) that there were multiple placemarks on top of each other. Again I reinforced checking only those placemarks which you need to be visible in the Places pane.
Empower
One of the disadvantages of working in Google Earth is that it is intended to work on a local level – as in the placemarks and items saved in My Places remain on that machine. This causes every laptop to have a different looking Google Earth Places pane, which naturally leads to some confusion. It is worth spending some time keeping on top of what files should and should not be there. My children would be using different laptops everyday and it is unfeasible to try and work with the same one everyday which would have been a time sapper of an organisational problem. Saving work is a little tricky due to the nested nature of the placemarks and content, however this is what we had to do.
I gave myself a good slice of time at the end of each session over the last few days to walkthrough the saving process with both classes.
- Any opened work from a network drive will begin life in the Temporary Places folder.
- Find the main folder for your work, all of your placemarks should be below it in a list. Select it.
- Right click this main folder to bring up the sub-menu.
- Click “Save to My Places”.
- The folder moves up and out of Temporary Places.
- Find the main folder for your work again. Select it.
- Right click this main folder to bring up the sub-menu.
- Click “Save as…” or “Save place as…”
- Navigate to your network folder.
- Name the file appropriately so you know what it is.
- Save.
- If saving over the top of previous work allow it to replace the older file.
- The slightly tricky nature of local content in Google Earth and saving work can cause younger children to get a bit disorientated.
- Take plenty of time with younger students to demo and walkthrough the save process to a network folder.
- With panes and folders open or closed the views can be very different on different machines so it is worth having confident children to help support their peers and to try and pre-empt some issues.
- As everyone in this set of activities is altering the same placemarks, multiple copies can arise and can confuse. Ensure the children only have one set of placemarks checked.
- Take time to consolidate Google Earth skills and confidence – use outside of the writing time and just allow them to explore. Reinforce the basic layout and structures.
- Encourage a general sense of independence in problem solving – ask 2 friends for help before an adult. Do not underestimate the impact low level informal peer support can have on a technology rich lesson or environment.
- Empower those confident students to actively support their peers, call them experts and make them feel special.
My Proposal to use Google Docs for Online Reporting to Parents
Oct 18th
What follows is a proposal I submitted to my headteacher regarding a trial of the use of Google Docs (as part of the Education Apps) to deliver online reporting to the parents in my class. I have spent considerable time working with Google Docs both on a personal level, organising planning files and within the classroom as a tool to support learning. The ease with which you can share a document is central to the idea that I could share a collaborative report throughout the whole year – updated at times when units of work are completed or at opportune moments of review.
My headteacher gave me his consent for me to explore the idea and I suggested to him posting the original proposal for reaction from a wider audience, he was also keen for this to happen – as this post and hopefully your reactions will help us develop and refine the whole concept.
What is the proposal?
I am proposing to use Google Docs as a platform to trial the delivery of online reporting to the parents and children in my class for this academic year 2008/2009.
What is the National Picture?
It is clear that the government is positioning itself to deliver real-time online reporting by the target year of 2010 for secondary schools and 2012 for all primary. According to Schools Minister Jim Knight:
“Real time reporting will deepen the school-parent relations and is not a substitute for regular personal contact with teachers. Effective technology systems can actually significantly cut the staff workloads – but it has to be to be manageable for individual schools and meaningful for parents.” Jan 2008
The aim is to develop a real-time reporting system that means parents will be able to access frequently updated information on children’s achievement, progress, attendance, behaviour and special needs wherever, whenever they want.
According to this announcement from the DCSF Primary schools must meet the basic requirement to provide information to parents covering achievement, progress, attendance, behaviour and special needs, on a timely and frequent basis – this should be at least once per term by September 2010 and the real time requirement by 2012.
According to Tanya Byron:
“Schools already using online reporting methods have noted that teachers spend less time in total producing three reports each year online than they did when producing just one by hand. The anytime, anywhere aspect of online reporting allows teachers to have greater control and flexibility of the use of their time. And, importantly, online reporting allows teachers to see the ‘bigger picture’ for each student because they are able to view grades and progress in other subjects.”
Why Google Docs?
This tool presently has three main advantages:
- It is already in place to be used within school, therefore no new software or programme has to be installed or found.
- It is free – we will not need to buy into any contracts or purchase new software.
- It delivers the real-time aspect of the online reporting requirement. This is because parents and children will have complete access throughout the year to the document. It is always on.
What will be the differences with the current end of year system?
We will have to unlearn some things. The sense of a formalised report at one time of the year will no longer exist. In this proposed system the parents (and children) will have continued and timely access to a single document that is the child’s report. That document will be periodically updated by the teachers as various units of work are completed and key assessments are finished throughout the year – not just at the end of the year. There will be key contributions from the children as they also comment on the work they have done and explore their own targets for improvement. Parents will have room to make comments based upon the contributions from teachers and children.
Will it increase the workload for a teacher?
For many their first reactions will be that it will, as you are in effect reporting throughout the whole academic year. However in my opinion the timely nature of reporting extends to the teachers too. I believe I will be able to better report to parents if I have the opportunity to just write comments about, for example, a history unit completed at Christmas time. As opposed to doing it 2 terms later alongside all of the other subjects. I believe I will find it easier to write subject comments if it is all fresh in my mind, consequently this will increase the quality of reporting to parents.
When would the report be updated?
I would expect that comments are updated when major units of work are completed in Design and Technology or History for example. Specific times throughout the school year must be negotiated for adding comments about Literacy and Numeracy and some of the other subjects.
What about parents who do not have access at home?
Although more and more families in the community have access to the internet, due to lowering costs, not all of the children in my class (2008/09) have access at home. For the 2 or 3 families that do not have access I will operate an open door policy in terms of the access to the report document at school. The parents will be welcome to come into the classroom immediately after school and access the document.
What is the teacher’s role?
As the year progresses I will schedule times that I will add comments about particular subjects – at the end of units of work, after major pieces of work in the unit are completed. I will also plan time for children to add their comments about the work that has been completed and support them in adding examples of what they have done. I will also collect evidence that is suitable for the online form of the report. I will notify the parents when these updates have been completed or if there is something that needs their attention.
What is the parents’ role?
In the document there will be room for the parents to add comments and feedback about the examples of work and subject comments about their child.
What is the children’s role?
The children will take an active role in updating the document with examples of their work and comments about their learning. At the end of units of work a structured class activity will see them remark upon what they have learned from a subject unit and the highlights from it.
What is the headteacher’s role?
The fourth collaborator on the report document will be the headteacher who will act as overseer on the process throughout the year. A final end of year comment will still be present but the document will be open to any comments from the headteacher throughout the year.
What might the report look like?
The report will be similar to the existing paper version with areas for subject comments. Room must be made for comments from all of the different stakeholders. Photos of the children working will be able to be included as well as examples of work. Links to other online documents and work examples will be used.
What needs to be in place if we were to begin?
- Parents consent.
- Email addresses need to be collected from the parents.
- Schedule of commenting mapped to curriculum.
- Information letter to parents.
- An agreed report layout in Google Docs – what would we want to include in the report?
- What will happen to effort and achievement grades?
- What do we need to unlearn about the current reporting system.
Unobtrusive Collaboration in Google Docs
Oct 10th
We have been using Google Docs with our students for over a year now and I have spent some time writing about our experiences so far. One of the key questions that I have been exploring for a while now is “How do you mark and manage student work in Google Docs?” but this simple question is applicable to most other online office tools. In this post I explore a facet of this type of assessment that I would call “unobtrusive collaboration”.
On a number of occasions in the last year I have taken the opportunity to conduct a “live marking” session with the children in my class. They are working on a piece of work that is shared with me – I open it at the same time and add comments and marking to the piece of work. I would often also back these comments up by talking to the children involved, going over to them to reinforce what I had commented on – actively engaging them in the collaboration.
In some of these instances I would just nip into the doc and take a quick look around to check the progress, leave a comment if appropriate and leave them to it. I think this is an interesting type of quiet monitoring as the children are working. In the online document I can mark, highlight and leave comments without intruding on the flow of work that is taking place.
With paper based tasks or work that does not allow synchronous editing I would have to interrupt what the children are working on to inspect their work more closely. I might have to ask them to scroll to different sections or simply to move their writing hand so I can see what they have done over their shoulder!
Of course we must always find time to talk to our children face to face about the progress of their work, and I am not disputing the value of this, but often it does intrude on the flow of work. This sense of passive collaboration offers us the opportunity to access all of the children’s work very quickly and to quietly monitor progress and to add our comments.
I think that this sort of unobtrusive marking or monitoring is especially useful when my children are working in a small group or a pair. They are often busy talking about what they are doing or about to move onto and I do not want to stop that communication, or break their train of thought. Last Wednesday I quietly added comments and thoughts to my class as they were busy working in pairs on an activity in Religious Education. They picked up on those comments, adjusted their work, responded if they needed to, but it essentially did not halt the immediate process – it was a tacit collaboration.
What experiences have you had of marking and managing the ongoing assessment of work in Google Docs or other online office tools with your students?
Related posts:
- 10 Google Forms for the Classroom
- So can I use Google Docs at home?
- Marking work in Google Docs
- Creating an emotion graph using Google forms
- It’s about the communication, not the tool
- Tips for introducing online collaboration to students
Image: ‘a perfect circle‘
