Google Classroom--From Tinkering to Committing, and Reflecting

For about the last five years I've been fully committed to using Google applications with my students.  From Sites, to Docs, to Chrome, to Blogger, I've found the the Google ecosystem can work pretty well to support all different aspects of learning.  So, of course, when I caught wind of Google Classroom, I enlisted the help of my students to help me figure out if and how it could work.

Like with any new web tool, at first, I'm a tinkerer...and while each tool is different, there's a certain process that I'll typically go through.  I'll try it out myself, signed in as a student.  Then, maybe I'll have a student who finishes an assignment early try it out and report back to me.  And, depending how that goes, I'll determine the next steps to take.

With Google Classroom, the initially tinkering I did went pretty smoothly, but I continued with this tinker-er mindset a bit longer because, well, Google Classroom was more than a web tool that I may have students use to compose a project.  Classroom could be THE web tool that would connect just about everything else digital that students did in my classroom. This is a quite a commitment, and, after a couple of months of feeling it out, it's one that I'm happy to make.

I'd like to devote this post to writing a bit about why I'm sold on Google Classroom, as well share a little of my thinking about what it enables and constrains.

Prior to this year, I had been playing with the idea of shared folders in Drive for class assignments.  Creating and sharing folders for each class and different assignments where students could "turn-in" work.  This wasn't ideal for a classroom environment (for a few reasons that I'm not going to go in here), but I did like how it created a shared digital space for students' work that also took advantage of the features of Drive.  Google Classroom takes this organization method a bit further, making everything more tightly integrated. Assignments are easily distributed, progress is easily tracked and feedback is simple to give, and everything is stored in Drive.

Below are a few ways that Google Classroom has already changed things for me:

Type up an assignment on a Doc, and Classroom will make each

students a copy that gets stored in Drive and can be easily 

turned in when students are finished. 

• Making the paperless workflow smoother. While I like the idea of using technology make much of the classroom paperless, most of what I've tried has felt disjointed for me (and for students as well, I'm sure).  I've struggled to find a simple and organized way to keep track of assignments, attach grades and meaningful feedback, and post resources.  Google Classroom has changed that, as it provided us a single space in  that allows for both posting and turning in multiple types of digital files. I can post assignment that contain resources from Drive, the web, or my computer.  I can make a handout in Docs, attach it to an assignment, and with one click have Classroom make a copy of that Doc for each individual student so they can type on it and turn it in when they are done (a cool turn in button appears on the top of the Doc!).  

  

  Classroom allows for multiple types of
  files to be attached and shared by the
  teacher, or turned
  in by students

• Broadening students'  use of digital tools. What I especially like is that the work students' turn in is not limited to that created in Drive.  I can let students create a project using any digital tool they like, as Classroom also gives students' the option of turning in their work as a link. 

• Increased flexibility.  A big part of the reason why I don't always have multiple assignments and projects going on in my room at once is that I just can't keep up.  Maybe it's because organization has never been my strong point, but it seems that whenever I let my learners lead me and have the tasks grow organically (something that I often do), I eventually find myself at a place where I'm not quite sure what's happening where, who is starting and who is finishing, which end is up, and which is down. Of course, I still put myself in this position from time to time anyway during the school year because this is when the best learning happens. But now, with Classroom, I can dive headfirst into the mix more often and let Google sort it all out. 

There is a lot more that Google could do to Classroom to make it function more like classroom network sites such as Schoology or Edmodo, but taking it too far in that direction would compromise it's greatest asset....simplicity.  Simplicity keeps the learning curve small for teachers and students, simplicity allows it to meet a wider array of teacher needs, and simplicity enables it to both stand on it's own or be integrated into a teachers existing digital hub.

I hope that Google decides to keep Classroom simple.  Of course, it will evolve in response to the needs of teachers and functionality of technology.  I've already sent them quite a few suggestions, a couple of which I've seen them quickly adopt. Below are a few others that I'd also like to see that I think could work while still maintaining the platform's simplicity.

• Integration with forms.  I frequently use Google forms for class assignments (quizzes, surveys, exit tickets), but in classroom a form cannot be added from Drive as an assignment.  Rather, the form has to be added as a link.  This may not seem like a big deal (I didn't think that it was, at first), but it has caused quite a bit of confusion on the part of my students because when the open the form and complete it, the assignment is still marked as unfinished.  If I give an assignment as a Document, a button appears on the document that the student can press to turn it in, and when they do, the assignment is marked as turned-in on their Classroom dashboard.  It's a cool feature and it's what students are used to.  It would be even cooler if forms could be made to work this way too. 
•  A customizable notification system. (connect to the idea of differentiation and flexibility discussed above).  I don't want my email inbox filled up with notifications of students turning in work.  That something that has annoyed the heck out of me with other teacher workflow tools.  But, in classroom, if a student turns in an assignment late, I have no way of knowing apart from the student telling me or going back and checking old assignments.  
• Integration with add-ons and scripts.  I'm just now figuring out the beauty that is the world of add-ons and scripts in Docs.  For example, I use the Flubaroo script to instantly grade assignments that give through a Google Form, and currently I'm getting ready to try out Doctopus and Goobric to attach completed rubrics to students' work in Classroom (here is the tutorial that inspired me).  It's all really exciting technology, and it'd be even more exciting if Classroom were to integrate it within its ecosystem.
  
•  An app  Before I could publish this post, this changed.  The Google Classroom apps are now available in iTunes and for Android.  Woot woot! I've got them both freshly downloaded and will be tinkering with them in class next week. 

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As I've mentioned at the start of this post, I'm sold on Google Classroom.  They've got a winner with it, and I'm sure that teachers will realize it.  In a lot of ways, it's what I've been searching for since the first post I published on this blog in '08 (really...it is....read it).

                       

The Chromebook learning curve

Initially, my students' response to the Chromebooks was mixed.  Some were excited about the opportunity to use new and unfamiliar technology.  Others wanted nothing more than to have their iPads back in their hands.

But after two days of using Chromebooks, just about all of my students are team on Team Chromebook.  That's not so say that novelty or peer influence isn't a significant variable affecting students' present attitudes.  I'm sure that it is.  This transition, and pretty much universal shift in opinion, is significant though.  That's what this post is about.

The Chromebook is different than anything my students have seen before.  It's not a tablet or mobile device.  It's not a laptop or netbook.  There is no server or locally stored files and programs.   The touchpad and keyboard navigation isn't completely foreign, but it's different enough to be just a bit confusing and a little bit weird.

Initially, I thought that I would just allow students to figure out how to navigate their Cromebooks as they used them...sort of like I did when we started out with iPads. But, in a last minute decision, I decided against that approach.  Not all the features of the device are easily learned through tinkering and intuition, and students would also want to play around with this new technology.  I decided to postpone the lesson I had planned (which involved students using the devices for some web research), and have students do an activity that would give them the opportunity to learn how to use their Chromebooks.

That Chromebook 101 activity was a scavenger hunt that I modified from this one I found on the web.  I tweaked the original to better fit with how I envisioned using the device with my class.  I'd like to shake the hand of whoever made it because it's awesome.  It introduces students to the navigational features of the Chromebook, the capacities of Google Drive, and...importantly, it guides students in playing around with the one feature they are most interested in using: tweaking their profile picture and background.

When I completed the activity, it took me about 20 minutes.  I figured an hour for my students, since they were completely new to Chromebooks and they could work in groups.  It ended up taking two hours, but it was two hours very well spent because it enabled both the students and I to quickly work through the initial learning curve and gain a sense of control over these new devices as well as a sense of the cool stuff that can be accomplished through them.

Chromebooks!?

Two years ago, when I learned that I would be receiving a set of iPads, my classroom use of and personal learning about technology underwent a paradigm shift.  It was a process that, from the beginning, I was exited about.  It led me down the pathway where I was able to learn about iStuff (before this, my experience was limited to the pc/andriod realm), teaching with mobile devices, and composition across platforms and apps.

Now, I'm finding myself an another (really, really, really exciting) spot where I'm going to be able to figure out how to make Chromebooks fit into teaching and learning, as I was recently told that my class was selected to pilot a class set of them for the district.

Before I begin writing about what is sure to be my next edtech paradigm shift, there is a secret that I need to share.  One that I have never before told anyone...

Back when I was told that I would be receiving a set of iPads, part of me was a little sad. I was at a place where I could have a set of netbooks in my room on most days.  I was excited about how well different Google apps were working in my teaching, and I was feeling like I had a great handle on making technology work really well in my classroom.  I felt like I found excellent balance of different Google apps,  a host of web tools, and a whole lot of writing.  I had also just began using the Chrome browser more purposefully in my class, teaching students how to make different Chrome extensions work for them.

With the iPads, the typing required for large scale writing assignments would become arduous, and since most the web tools I had been using didn't work (or at least not as well) on the mobile device, I would have to go out and find free apps that would sort of do the same thing.  The iPad was new and shiny, I definitely would have liked them in my students hands for some tasks, but I was worried that if they were the sole device my students could use then the pace and quality of students learning (and my teaching) with technology would slow way down.

Around the time when I found out that I was receiving iPads, I heard about these devices that had just hit the market called Chromebooks.  They cost way less then iPads, were purposed around the Chrome browser and Google apps, and would seamlessly fit into the system I had going in my class.  I secretly wished that it was these devices that my students would be receiving instead.  This is something  which I have never told a soul, because as any teacher knows: you just don't complain about getting a class set of iPads. You just don't.

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Of course, as I learned about the capabilities of iPads, my attitude towards these mobile devices changed. There was plenty that they could do that a netbook couldn't (or just couldn't do as well), and I was really starting to like the way that these features were reshaping my class.

It was about the time that I was feeling pretty glad about not telling anyone about my initial doubts about iPads, that I got an email from my district's tech person that I would be receiving a class set of Chromebooks as part of a pilot, and that the iPads I had been using would be relocated to another classroom.

Part of me wants to keep in my initial feelings (a lesson I found valuable in the anecdote above). But a bigger part of me knows that I should write them down, because I think that it would have been really valuable of me do more of this the last time.

I'm not going to get into all the particular details about what I'm thinking about doing with the Chromebooks. Those will have to go in their own post later.  My initial feelings, I think, are what I want to get down here. So yea,  I'm a little sad to no longer have the set of iPads in my classroom.  That my students won't be using all these cool creation apps and smashing them together to compose, and I won't be continuing to read and write into an educators' conversation that I feel like I'm just getting to know and find a place in.

So now that that's said, documented, and out of the way, I also need to say that the other 80 percent of my initial feelings are pure excitement.  I'm excited that my students get to pilot new technology for the school, That I can re-immerse myself in the thinking I was doing about the Chrome browser. My students can access the full version of Google Apps and type on a full keyboard (which, by the way, almost all of my students swear up and down that the prefer to type on a touch screen...having watched them do this for a couple of years, I'm really interested in seeing how they write with physical keys).

Lastly, and most importantly, I'm excited because I know that there is so much I don't know about Chromebooks in the middle school ELA classroom, and that is soon about to change.

From Blogger to Kidblog to G+ and now...back to Blogger

Blogging serves an important purpose in my class...it has for the last five years or so, and I've written quite a bit about it.  At first, I had my students use Blogger because I wanted them on a real, public blog. I wanted the to be able to feel the same sort of experience that I have with composing my ideas to the world.  But two years ago, this changed. I made the switch for my students over to Kidblog. Blogger was great, but Kidblog afforded me something that I couldn't get with blogger: a stream of student posts as they were published that all students were able to see, as well as the complete ability to moderate students posts, drafts, and comments.  I tried to make the shared visibility piece work with Blogger through teaching my students how to use Google Reader and to follow each other's blogs, but considering the death of Google Reader (and the limited success I had with teaching students to use it) I gave in, adopted the Kidblog platform, and haven't looked back.

In tinkering with Google+ in my classes this year, though, I've made a few discoveries that have got me contemplating the move for my students back over to Blogger.

Tinkering with Google +

At first this year, Google+ was an experiment. My students and I are involved in a collaboration with a couple other schools and this work would require the creation and sharing of all sorts of media...text, images, videos. A private G+ community was the space that we all planned on using to make that sharing and connecting possible.

Google + worked well for this purpose. Really well, actually. Here are a few of the high points I noted about using it:

• Upload speeds were super quick, if not immediate.
• Students were able to include text with the content they posted. So, for example , they could post an image of their project and type in commentary about image in their post.
• The display of the content feed allowed students to quickly browse through and view the work of their classmates without having to open individual links.
• Viewers can comment on posts as well as +1 them, giving authors two ways to receive feedback on their content posted.
• Notifications. Love this feature because of how well it keeps users connected to related activity in our digital space.  Someone posts in the community, students receive a notification. Someone leaves a comment or +1, the poster gets a notification. Someone gets mentioned in another post or comment, the person mentioned receives a notification.  Notifications allow a tighter community to happen in a vast digital world.

Of course there are also some drawbacks. Even though we operate in closed communities that I have the ability to moderate, G+ is an open social network with all sorts of activities happening on it. Because of this I have to be real clear with students about my expectations for use and monitor them closely as they use it.  This makes for a little more work on my end.  I have had to have a few individual conversations already with students about appropriate use of the site in school, and I’ve had to be more active in teaching safe and responsible social media use. This is something schools should be teaching anyway, though, and what better teaching context for these skills is there than a real-world social network.  This is the same truth that drove me (initially) to use Blogger.  It is what causes me to feel a little bit bad about switching my students over to Kidblog, and it’s part of what’s causing me now to consider having them switch back.

Rethinking Blogger

In addition to the needs that G+ is already meeting for my class, I think it may also provide a solution to one of the main reasons I veered from Blogger in the first place. This being making student posts readily accessible to classmates as they get published.  Both Blogger and G+ are Google products, and Blogger makes it easy to share a post on Google+ as soon as the publish button is pressed.

If G+ works for other types of media sharing in my class, why not also integrate student blogs?  Students can publish their posts on Blogger, and select the option to share on G+ in the community I’ve created for my classes. Doing so puts their published writing in a place where it can easily be read by students in the class, and because of how the two sites are connected activity on the posts (+1, comments) on one platform is visible in the other.

This, I’m hoping, would give students real experience and skills with using real tools for composing, connecting, and learning in the types of social environments that people use in the real world...not just in a closed school community.  I’m looking forward to piloting this move to Blogger and G+ sharing with my first period class next week. 

The experience will surely give me plenty to reflect on in my next post here….

Tired and Inspired: Reflections from a classroom makerspace

I spent one week making with my students in October for our second make cycle. At the end of every day, I tried to do a little written reflection on the experience. Towards the middle of the week, I came to some important realizations that I captured in this reflection. The following post is one I adapted from the reflection I wrote after the third day of making with my students.  

I was going to post on day two, but to be honest, I just didn't have the writing in me at days end. I don't think that I have it in my today either, but the inspiration I’m feeling from the events of today is driving this post on.  Something special happened...something that wasn’t there on the first or second day...or at least not to the same extent.  There was widespread flow...that space where the subject and the object had come together and it becomes difficult to tell where the artist ends and where his or her art begins.  The kids were into it….the completely-lose-track-of-time-and-space sort of into it, and what they were making was no longer a set of boxes and pipe cleaners, papers and paint.  Kids had direction and purpose. There was still tinkering, yes, but there existed a sense of ownership that before today was only apparent in limited amounts. Today was awesome.

I was talking with other teachers before today...talking about the concern I had that the requirements that I had set forth for the project...about it being connected to students histories, future career interest, and science...were sort of falling to the wayside.  Kids were making cool stuff, but it really didn’t seem like what they were doing was considering these elements. And their makes sure as hell didn’t look like they fit anywayshapeorform into our broader Cycle theme of mapping.

But this disconnect seemed to shift today. Once students had an idea of exactly what there make was to be, they seemed to move forward with it with a greater consideration on these requirements that I had given them. This observation is important for the making classroom and teacher. This idea of “backwards planning” (or in our case backwards making), or making with the end object in mind, is closely tied to the common approach to teaching.  There is an objective, a lesson gets designed around teaching that objective, and in the end students are measured on how well they mastered that objective that was clearly understood by all involved beforehand. Yes, I do see some faults in the model (because learning is a complex thing based on more variables than can possibly be considered, and regardless how clear the objective is or how well the instructor designs the lesson, no two students are going to see something exactly the same...let alone the objective as the instructor sees it), but still, I’d be lying to say that I didn’t adhere to it a little….the fact that I was frustrated and confused when I saw that the requirements weren’t shaping students' make is a testament to my holding this belief.  

This school model, though, runs counter to the making (and learning) process.  The learner does have some vision, yes, but as the composition as formed that vision is revised and revised based on the makers' experiences, struggles, and new learning.

So, coming back to this topic of requirements.  I don’t think that they were a bad thing.  I’m just seeing now that students’ not adhering closely to them in the first days of the project was perfectly fine. I didn’t beat the requirements into them when I noticed they weren’t being considered...and I’m seeing now that was a good thing. Requirement beating wasn’t necessary. Space, encouragement, and freedom to make was. Before students fully understood exactly what it is that they were making, they weren’t yet ready to consider the requirements.  Now, with direction in place, I’m seeing all sorts of deep thinking happening on the parts of students about just how those requirements (and even how the idea of mapping) applies to their make, and this thinking is shaping the final vision...or revision, about what they are composing.

So my take away….requirements are OK, so long as they do not become restrictions. It’s fine to plant the requirement seed in the beginning, but give it space for it to grow.  It’s not possible for students to develop a close connection and vision of their make if they are making it to meet a focused objective. Let the connection happen and the make become personal. Forget the vision of what it should, or even could, look like.  Let them discover it for themselves and then figure out how the requirements should apply.

And oh, here are a few other things that I noticed.

• space for collaboration is valuable...because of it, students draw on each other for their skills, experience, and expertise. Partnership form between individual makes already started, forming new, more complex integration of ideas.
• Painting...it’s messy, but seeing it in the hands of students makes me even more sad that art was cut.  It allows for more than just a creative outlet, it brings about really deep and complicated thinking...like Maria’s Pink Floyd album-looking painting that speaks to the disconnect between humans and machines when it comes to her knowledge of the medical field...or Sebaistians' black box that connects his knowledge of minecraft to his future in computer engineering.
• Time. An hour a day for five days is hardly enough. I worried about this before we started, but I was thinking we’d have too much. Nope, not at all.
• Cardboard is the ultimate making material.
  

Excited about Subtext

Seems like I change my lesson plans every year. If I don't scrap the previous years' content, I usually at least do some heavy duty modifying. The process keeps me fresh, and there isn't a lot in my classroom that is the same year to hear...how read the Tell Tale Heart is an exception, though.  About 6 years ago I came across this interactive website where students can read and listen to Poe's story, while they also add their own annotations to specific parts of the text.  The annotations we then save and use for class discussion on subsequent days. It is always an engaging and productive where students' literacy is concerned.

But this year technology forced me to change up this lesson.  The website uses flash, our iPads don't.  In searching for a solution, a replacement for this website that I liked so much, I came across an app that met the same needs for the interactive reading piece of the lesson, and even opened up some new possibilities for interactivity and social interaction.

With Subtext, I was able to create a group for each of my classes and having students join them was a breeze.  They just signed into to Subtext with their Google account (a great recent update) and entered the group by typing in the code that the app assigned to each class. I uploaded and shared a pdf version of the Tell Tale Heart, that students in each class were then able to access.

The lesson that I planned had students re-read the text (we had read it the previous day, before I started experimenting with Subtext), and insert their own questions and reactions directly into the text of the story. These annotations could be seen by the rest of the class as students entered them, and during and after students' rereading of the text, they took time to read and respond to the questions posted by their classmates.

While the asynchronous online discussions that transpired in response to these questions lacked the energy and flow of our face to face discussions (which we still had the later part of class), I really liked how this feature of Subtext facilitated conversation that was closely connected to the text and enabled students to move between questions, revisit the text as needed, and respond at a pace that best worked for them. Often during the f2f conversations, some voices get left out and the flow of the conversation keeps students from being able to revisit and/or dig further into ideas. 

I played a little with the feature that let me create, distribute assignments connected to the text.  I made one where students had to select and tag lines that contributed to the mood of the story, then explain how the author's word choice in those lines contributed to the overall mood.  This was also awesome, but I didn't like how that since this was a premium feature, I had to distribute and redistribute student licences every class period because Subtext only provided me with 30 for free. That was about the only complaint I had. I'm a big fan of free.

Overall, I'm way excited about how Subtext met the need I had for finding technology that allowed for an interactive reading of the text. It's on my list of keepers for our class, and I'm looking forward to trying it out for other texts and purposes in the months ahead. 

Transitioning to an iPad classroom

It's been two weeks since iPads have been in the hands of the students in my class, and the focus of the work we have been doing can be summed up in one word: transition.  Much of the work of my class has been carried out through various free web tools accessed via netbooks, so for my students and I, moving from pc to Mac and one device to another, we have focused on becoming acclimated by using it for processes and tasks that were already familiar.  Here's a quick recap of what we did and how it went:

Writing spaces

We use Google Docs regularly for drafting and collaborating, and Kidblog for our blogging platform. While both of these tools can be accessed from the web browser, they both also have apps for the iPad.  Overall it seemed that students had very little trouble at all moving from using these cloud-based tools on the netbook to the equivalent iPad app. Though the apps did not look the same as the interface students were used to, they were simple and user friendly so students didn't have much trouble making the change. 

The Kidblog app was a little buggy, as a couple of students lost posts that they had started writing, but the Drive app worked smootly, was reliable, and eventually most studnet who were using their blogs to draft theri writing switched to Drive, then copied and pasted in their blog to publish.  The Drive app was missing some features available on the desktop version that my students had come to love (like the ability to chat and post comments), but the writing we were working on this week didn't necessitate collaboration, so this didn't come up as an issue. I'm interested to see what happens when students do come back to writing collaboratively.  I asked one class if they were concerned about loosing this feature, to which they replied that they would find a way to make it work.  I'm sure they will.

Browsers and Bookmarking

Recently our school had made Chrome available as an option for internet browsing.  The experience of using it in my classroom has been a huge success. It was faster than the version of IE we were using, worked seamlessly with all of the Google apps, and had a Diigo extension that was awesome for bookmarking.

The mobile version of Chrome, while a great app to have, doesn't have near the features of the full version.  I do like that with Chrome you can view bookmarks and history across browsers, but not having that Diigo extension available was a huge drawback for the research that we were getting into.  My students were familiar with Diigo, and while bookmarking in Chrome is fairly simple, it doesn't offer the handy annotation features of Diigo, features that we've built our research process around.

The solution: installing the Diigo web highlighter on the iPad Safari browsers.  To do this, I had one of my classes go through the steps of installing it as directed by the app.  Of course, what I thought would be a five minute process ended up being about 30.  I eventually figured out that I could save one iPad, whose browser I already set up, as the back-up in Configurator, then when I applied this back-up to all devices the web highlighter would show up in Safari.  I've got to remember that for next time.

Students didn't seem to have much difficulty using the iPad web highlighter to bookmark and annotate, though with the touch screen it did seem to take them a bit longer to select the text on the webpage they wanted to highlight.  And as for the actual Diigo app, I ended up deleting it from the students' iPads.  About the only thing that the app was useful for was making the process of installing the web highlighter a bit easier.  The web-based version of students Diigo libraries seemed be fully functional and more user friendly.


Learning the basics of iPad navigation

I assumed that since the iPad was fairly easy to use students wouldn't have a whole lot of trouble figuring out how to use it.  And for the most part, that has been the case. iPads don't have the same ability to multi-task, but students seem like they are figuring out how to use the gestures features to swipe between different apps they are using.  For example, when when created annotated bibliographies, students had to move in and out of their Diigo library, the Bibme site, and their blog, while also occasionally referring back to model and requirements that I had posted for them on my website.  This was a bit more time consuming than what they were used to, but it was also a good exercise in learning the multitouch gesture feature, and most students when I asked them didn't seem to mind.


Next steps....

The transition from working in spaces where we had already been has thus far gone pretty smooth.  What I'm most excited about is venturing into tasks that take advantage of capabilities that are specific to the iPad.  As I'm finishing up this post, I've got some of my students in a reading class experimenting with using the apps Flipboard and Zite to create personalized magazines around topics of their choice.  In class we are also working on creating documentaries with iMovie and Explain Everything.  I'm also getting acclimated with Apple TV.  It's been a pretty awesome experience, and I look forward to writing and thinking more about it in my next post.