Tag: googledocs

My Proposal to use Google Docs for Online Reporting to Parents

Google DocsPublished on34 Comments on My Proposal to use Google Docs for Online Reporting to Parents

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:

  1. It is already in place to be used within school, therefore no new software or programme has to be installed or found.
  2. It is free – we will not need to buy into any contracts or purchase new software.
  3. 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.
I have much to iron out but would really appreciate your take on the idea, pitfalls that you might see and your general commentary on the proposal. Your comments will help us to develop the proposed system.

Unobtrusive Collaboration in Google Docs

Google DocsPublished onUpdated on7 Comments on Unobtrusive Collaboration in Google Docs

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”.

1326786748 84b469d0f4 mOn 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?

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Image: ‘a perfect circle‘

Fruity Forms

Google DocsPublished on5 Comments on Fruity Forms

This week we used Google Forms to collect and share preference data about fruit. We spent Wednesday afternoon’s design and technology session learning about different fruit as a precursor to creating a healthy fruit smoothie.

The children had the opportunity to taste about 15 different types of fruit and record their thoughts and preferences. I used a Google Form to collect this data into a spreadsheet so that the children could use this information to help inform them of their peers’ preferences. That is why this was so useful, the form acted as a simple data entry point to contribute to a wider pool of data. This larger set provides the children an insight into the a wider range of preferences which we will use to help plan the ingredients for their smoothies.

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We are working in Google Apps for Education and there are a number of ways to share both the form and the spreadsheet, in the screenshots below I explain some of them because there are a few different options.

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I used this feature when I shared the fruit form with my class. They accessed it from their email and the form was included in the message. However be aware that when the children completed the form and clicked submit from the email message ironically the Google toolbar blocked the pop-up that opens as conformation. The form data is not submitted.

In order to sidestep this quickly during the lesson without having to ask the children to edit pop-up settings I asked them to access the form via the link that is included in the email. In the future I will just send the link to the kids and get them to access it outside of their email. 

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Remember that the form and the spreadsheet can be shared separately – once we have collated all of the data we need, I will be sharing the children into the document so they can access the results. I displayed the spreadsheet data on the IWB so the children could see what was happening I highlighted the live update of the data as forms were submitted.

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This final option to share the form will allow children access to it from their documents home screen. We had great fun sharing the fruit preferences we had by using Google Forms and we will soon be all set to average out the data to help with our smoothie recipes. 

With a week passing since we began using our docs accounts the kids have experienced the use of sharing and working on documents, forms and spreadsheets – on Friday the children worked in pairs on a piece of work in RE, shared with each other as the pair were co-owners and then handed into me by sharing too. I showed the children how I star the documents that I need to mark and how to filter their docs home view in different ways. It is still enjoyable to see children sharing Google Docs to hand work in, it is just so simple and effective.

Important to note the pop-up problem if you share the form embedded in an email – next time I will probably use option 3 rather than email.

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So can I use Google Docs at home?

Google Docs, VoicethreadPublished onUpdated on5 Comments on So can I use Google Docs at home?

Absolutely. One of the children in my class had waited to the end of the session to ask me if they could access Google Docs at home. This afternoon we introduced all of our Year 5 children (60) to Google Apps and we had lots of fun exploring the tool with our new classes. 

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We discussed with the children the make-up of their usernames and then the syntax of their email. I use a little information sheet (see above) for them to record their data on, I asked the children to come out to me and I tell them and write down their password. Simple and effective.

Please use this document to support your own introduction to Google Apps in the classroom.

With the laptops already running  back at their tables they then go and login. (It is worth noting that they also have to go through some security questions before they access their Docs home.) As we had last year we had the usual problems of not typing things in correctly but otherwise the children all managed it well.

I decided that a simple data entry spreadsheet would be one of the best ways to introduce the idea of sharing a document. I created something that would accommodate the results we have collected during our circuit training in PE, number of repetitions in a minute for steps ups and star jumps, that sort of thing (see the header in the film clip). Once I created the document I shared with all of the children in our year group, this way when they login they will see a document in the home screen.

All the children had to do in this intro activity was to find their name and add their data they had recorded on paper to the shared resource. Just before they began I asked the children to try to imagine what it would be like if I asked every child in the class to record their data on one sheet of paper – their bemused looks helped me to emphasise the power of working in an online document and how we can all access it at the same time.

We began to explore the spreadsheet and as we opened it we could see that the other Year 5 class were well on their way in terms of adding their data. Again I took this opportunity to help illustrate the live update of the document and how the different coloured cell outlines signalled different users (Incidentally if you roll over these coloured cells you will see the username pop up) I asked one of the children in my class to enter their own data and we watched as it updated on the class IWB and all 16 laptops looking on. The children’s excitement was building, similar to the moment when they realise what all the fuss is about in a Voicethread.

 

This short screencast shows our spreadsheet being updated – a pretty dull video but useful to illustrate how it looks when being worked on by 16 users.

The children were buzzing by now and I felt we could push them on to learning about how you share a document, so once I had shown them how to do it I challenged them to create something and share it with me. I displayed my inbox on the screen and watched as the message alerts came rolling in. I realised the children loved to see this, they got so excited to see their email alert pop into my inbox – before their friend had managed it! I remember this being the case last year. I am going to explore the idea of incidental writing opportunities using email this year.

I showed the children GMail and asked them to send me an email and once again they were very adept at what they were doing, highly accustomed to it all already and were clearly enjoying it. I once again observed, even in this first session, the community of use that appears – children helping each other out, a supportive word, children asking their friends. And of course children empowered to be a mini-expert.

We have gotten off to a flying start and this week I have declared it a sandbox week, in that the children can email me and share any documents they create, a time to play and get used to this great set of tools. At the end of the week we will rein in this activity a little and discuss some simple guidelines for sharing docs.

Last year we only had about 7 weeks of work with Google Docs, today it begun in our classes and I am really looking forward to digging even deeper into what we can do with the tools to support learning in the primary classroom. And we have a got a whole year to dig!

Who knows what we will find?

Some related posts from this blog that you might find useful too.