Google Apps in School – Week 1

It is great to finally get some of the Google Apps tools in the hands of the children in my year group. I have been thinking about their deployment to support my teaching and learning for a very long time. In this post I reflect on our first full week of use and explore some of the issues that were raised.

We are using the Google Apps Education Edition installed on a domain that I picked up during the sign up process. I have decided to focus the children’s efforts on the tools that I consider to be the most important, so we introduced them to Google Docs and GMail. The other Google Apps tools, such as Calendar, iGoogle and Sites will have their place and will come in time, but for now Docs are king.

Below I have recorded my thoughts and Google Apps related actions that occurred throughout the week.

Monday – 28/4/08

• Created a CSV file in Excel of both classes username, firstname, surname, password.
• Generated accounts for domain using “create multiple users” tool.
• Shared my excitement with all 60 year 5s!
• 20 minute introduction to Google Docs and Gmail for all Year 5s.
• Brief look at Docs homepage and looked at each individual tool – looked at similarities with MS Office.
• Explored Sharing facility in Docs.
• Talked about when we should share and when we shouldn’t.
• Discussed the importance of security and appropriate use.
• Talked about measures if there were any inappropriate behaviour.
• Explained that we would work together to form some rules/advice to make the most of G Apps.
• Emphasised the importance of Gmail as a way to communicate the sharing of docs.
• Children had no problems with Gmail – the rhetoric of email is very familiar to them.
• Explored what spam is and how we have to deal with it if we use email.
• Set challenge of sending an email and creating and sharing of a doc.
• Explained that we will have a Google Break Tuesday lunchtime 12.30pm to 1.00pm to give children who cannot access internet at home chance to use the laptops in class.
• Shared teacher email addresses and pupil usernames and passwords.
• Children made a note of these on info sheets to take home.

Tuesday – 29/4/08

• Responded to children who had already -approx 8- logged in and shared a document with me / or emailed.
• Provided children with 30 mins in the morning to login and offered appropriate support.
• Congratulated those who had independently accessed G Apps at home.
• Had a Google Break at the children’s lunchtime when the children from both Year 5 classes could choose to work on a laptop and access their G Apps account. A very successful session with more than 16 children accessing their G Apps acc.
• Observed how children are very good at discovering new features not yet explained. Within the 30 minutes children were accessing Google Chat and nattering away to each other. When they are working together as a group, on an individual laptop, and they make a new discovery they are quick to explain to their peers what to do and how to get to the same discovery.
• There was lots of excitement about using Docs and the majority of the children were keen to tell me that they had either worked on it the previous night or were planning on doing so very soon.
• During a Geography session about the location of India the children were given a choice about how to present a piece of work and it was great to see the range tools that they turned to: SMART Notebook, MS PPT, MS Word, MS Excel, Google Docs. Many of the children chose to use Google Earth as a way to support their learning. They are making better and better tech choices.

Thursday – 1/5/08

• Had a conversation with teaching colleague in Year 5 about his concerns and thoughts about using G Apps.
• Discussed the issue of managing 30 docs that are shared with him. I talked about RSS feeds for doc changes but it seems that Apps Edu Edition does not currently support it. Boo. We talked about making folders in Docs home and I talked him through the process. We made a First Attempts folder to collate initial docs shared with us in this early stage.
• Marking and assessment of work is an important issue and we discussed the realistic merit of typing a document, pros and cons. We felt that if the children could record an idea for a sentence in audio form and have that embedded within a document adjacent to their typed effort there would be great benefit for review, support and editing. Unfortunately GDocs does not allow embedded media at present. Perhaps Presentations will soon as it allows video.
• We explored how we could assess the children’s writing if they have used GDocs. We discussed the grammar and spell check indicators in MS Word and I explained that these were not present in the GDocs so the children’s mistakes would not be flagged up to them as they work. This is a good thing when doing an assessed piece. They could use the spell checker but we could ask them to bypass this so the work is a true reflection of their writing ability.
• Time is a key issue when thinking about how children work when typing. They cannot produce as much as if they were handwriting the piece due to their slow typing speeds – I explained that perhaps we need to just give the children more time.
• I explored our next literacy unit from the Primary Framework based on the compilation of poetry “Sensational“. Throughout the unit the children add to a poetry journal. I discussed with my teaching partner the possibility of everyone creating a GDoc for this instead of a paper copy. I want the children to engage with GDocs in a structured way ASAP within the frame of a subject or topic. This is a good opportunity to do so. Taking it from exploration and an immersed approach with free reigns to a structured application of the technology to support the curriculum.
• I produced 2 documents that form part of activities within the first week of poetry unit. One of them needs to be a shared doc so that everyone can contribute to the same space – looking at alternative titles for a poem. The other needs to be a doc that each child can have a copy of and work on individually or in a pair. The solution for the first doc is easy as I can share with everyone in the year group. I think to distribute a copy for everyone for the second doc can be done by emailing it as an attachment. The children would then see the email attachment and open it as a GDoc. I need to check this.
• The ability to share a doc with a peer is also a useful way to share ownership of work. So even though when the children are working in a pair – if you only have access to 1:2 laptops, or the activity was to work with a partner, then the final step of the work would be to share it with the child who did not start the doc.
• I discussed with my colleague the use of email contacts to create sharing groups. This can be done in two ways. The first is in GMail contacts and then creating a group by adding email addresses, but you cannot see a list of who you have in your contacts so you have to go down a class list and make sure you have added everyone. The other way is when you share a Doc with someone you get the option to choose from your contacts. You tick them off and then there is an option to create a group from that bunch.
• We have created different email groups for whole year group, whole class, differentiated literacy and numeracy groups. This way we have lots of flexibility to share different documents with appropriate groups.

Friday – 2/5/08

• Checked against class list those who had not completed the challenge of sending an email and creating and sharing of a doc.
• Directed those who needed time to get online to use the 30 mins in the morning.
• Asked those more confident in G Apps (often those who had logged in at home independently) to offer support for those who needed it.
• Explained to these children that when you provide support not to take over but to carefully direct. Could we have some children to be Google Experts?
• Discussed guidelines with whole year group for sharing docs and created a simple set of positive statements to help children know when it is best to share a doc with the teacher.
• Created and shared a doc about sharing guidelines with all children and encouraged them to add to it if they thought of any new statements.
• Explored with the year group avatars and online identities and why it is sensible and safe to use something other than a photograph.
• We used the Simpsons Movie website to create an avatar and save the icon to their network folder. Some children in my class had already made theirs and emailed it to me after a brief chat with them the previous day. One child had preferred to use a Star Wars avatar – some of them had already worked ot how to upload the avatar image to their GMail profile 🙂
• We uploaded avatars to their GMail account profiles, the children worked really well together to help each other with this. Learning together.

Overall reflections on Week 1

The children’s attitude towards the introduction to Google Apps has been the most positive aspect this week. I was excited to see them engaged with these tools and their enthusiasm throughout the week has been great to be caught up in. It is clear that the procedures for distributing documents and work in a primary classroom needs refining and exploring, I am sure there is much to learn about what is best. We have spent 5 days in an immersed state, the children have been sharing their docs with me without any boundaries. On Friday we discussed guidelines for when it is best to share docs with us. I wanted the children to have freedom and space to practice the process of sharing docs without restriction. Now they are familiar I want them to think more carefully about what is shared.

It has been very interesting looking at the units of literacy we are yet to teach and planning for the implementation of Google Docs in a structured way to support our work. Many of the Tweets I received this week about GApps use in school has centred on the question of email and whether the children have it or not. From my own experience the sharing and notification of documents is driven by the power of GMail and so it is important for the children to also understand this. I look forward to having a better appreciation for the practicalities of working in GDocs from our work next week.