Collaborative Online Planning

Collaborative Online planning

28th July, 2016

Alex shares some of his recent experiences in online shared planning

At my current placement each year level works together to collaboratively plan what they are going to teach for the term, from that they decide what to do each week. This is the usual method of schools in regards to planning and has a number of benefits; cohesion across the year level classrooms, discussion of ideas, and support for beginning teachers. However, many schools are also adopting the use of online methods to share their planning with each other. My placement school currently uses Google Drive, Google Docs and Dropbox to allow its teachers to share resources and collaborate on their planning. It works wonderfully; here are a few reasons why.

Everyone can contribute during planning. Gone are the days of one teacher hunched over a computer acting as the scribe, typing into a closed document while several other people squabble about ideas. With Google Docs everyone can be writing in the same document at the same time. It seems like a small thing but it balances out the power of group dynamics and allows people to quickly brainstorm ideas.

Resources are always shared. One of the main problems with sharing resources is finding the time to actually give them to other people; you need to scan them, send them and sometimes teachers feel they just don’t have time to do that. With Dropbox, you store your resources in one communal online location, which means that people can share resources quickly and ultimately it lightens the burden for everyone.

There’s cohesion as everyone can see what’s coming. My placement creates term planners which are available to be viewed and edited in Google Drive. This has been fantastic for me, and the other teachers, as we can all see what is coming up in the next few weeks and anyone can add in more information as we progress. It means that everyone is clear about what is happening and people have the freedom to plan ahead.

Although many schools have already taken to using some form of online planning tool, it is clear that not all of the teaching community has made the transition. I would recommend getting familiarised with the available online sharing platforms, as they provide numerous benefits when planning and will be of great help when you start teaching!

- Alex

Google Forms and Flubaroo

 Google Forms and Flubaroo 

22nd June, 2016

 

Will provides a short run through of one way to use Google Forms to quickly collect, mark and grade assessment data.

As a pre-service teacher, I am sure you have heard about or engaged with Google Forms before. They are becoming increasingly popular in the classroom and I have seen 4th and 5th grade students use them effectively. This post will share just one way to use Google Forms as a pre/post assessment tool that I have found extremely helpful.

I am not going to discuss how to actually make a Google Form test – this is self-explanatory and there are numerous tutorials already available. I enjoy the flexibility of the types of questions – short/long answer, multiple choice, checked boxes, drop down menu and more.

You want to make the first two questions of your test “What is your first name?” and “What is your surname?”. Once the test is created, you need to complete the test with the correct answers. You are now ready for students to complete the test. After they have finished, you want to click the Responses tab and the View Responses in Sheets button. 

Once in Sheets, you need to download the Add-on that will automatically mark the test for you. This is called Flubaroo and can be found under Add-ons > Get Add-ons. Once you have this installed, head to: Add-ons > Fulbaroo > Grade Assignment

Step 1: The first questions (What is your name/surname?) can be used to identify the student. Other options allow you to change the value of each question but the default is 1 point per answer. A new feature is manual grading for those questions that you need to read individually before marking. 

Step 2: You now chose a person’s response to grade all the other submissions from. This is where you select your response which will have the correct answers. Once you continue, Flubaroo will work its magic. It will produce a new sheet with some valuable data for analysis including:

• There is a nice little summary at the top. A good place to see how many students completed the test, the average score and summative grades can be recorded.

• Vertically you can see student names with their score and percentage. Flubaroo goes the extra step by highlighting in red any students who scored below 70%. This is excellent data to see the range of student abilities on the topic and help in forming focus groups.

• Horizontally every question is listed with the answers. Boxes are highlighted orange if they were poorly answered across the group. This can be used for key concepts to focus on in future lessons. For example, students may easily answer a multiplication question with 2-digit numbers but struggle with a question using a 3-digit number.

At the end of a unit, complete the same test and compare students’ before/after scores and clearly identify questions/concepts that they are still struggling with.

I encourage you to try out Google Forms and Flubaroo. This was just a short introduction to some powerful software that is valuable for assessment practices in the 21st century classroom.

- Will

Approaches to Technology in the Classroom (2)

14th January, 2016

Will looks at a welcoming approach to technology and draws on recent first-hand experiences.

To continue from my previous post, today I will be exploring a welcoming technology teacher and what it looks like in a classroom. I have been lucky enough to have experienced this first hand in my recent placement so I will discuss the aspects of technology which I saw and learnt about. To set the scene, the school was trialling 1:1 Chromebooks in Grade 5 and I was in one of the three classes. A Chromebook is essentially a laptop that runs on a Google Chrome Operating System and a connection to the internet is necessary for them to work properly. 

Before I delve into the incredible learning benefits which I witnessed, I do acknowledge that this type of program requires a lot of planning, research and above all, funding before a school can implement 1:1 devices for students. However, I believe that most schools are constantly working to improve student access to at least some type of ‘device’ (computer, Chromebook, iPad etc…). 

Obviously I was very excited to have been placed in such a classroom. However, I was intrigued to see my first 1:1 classroom and questioned if too much access is ever a distraction for the students. My teacher ensured me that they use the Chromebooks appropriately and in my 4 weeks in the classroom the students proved themselves to me. The first benefit I noticed was the amount of time we were saving each lesson. No longer is there a 5 minute scramble at tubs to get a workbook or a student standing at the bin sharpening their pencil. In seconds students can open their Chromebook and be straight into the activity. It should be cautioned however that this can lead to an overexcited and rapid switch between lessons. I found it important to still stop and have a ‘brain break’ in between lessons and not just ‘close literacy’ and ‘open religion’.

The super-fast access was due to students having all their work stored on the cloud in Google Drive. Students had been taught to organise this into subjects and terms but work could easily be located using the search bar. Working on the cloud meant work was automatically saved so it was hard to ‘lose’ and nigh impossible to blame the hungry dog. Students completed most tasks using Google Docs, Sheets, Slides or Forms. Documents can be shared between teacher-student and student-student for group work tasks. The collaboration of learning spread across all three Grade 5 classes and students were definitely learning more from interacting with each other. Moreover, they were experiencing a flipped classroom where they took control and responsibility of their own learning.

I felt like a true 21st century teacher when it came to assessment and feedback to students. As mentioned, work can be shared with each other with set privileges of ‘can edit’, ‘can view’ or ‘can comment’. The comment feature was wonderful in allowing the teacher to comment on student work, providing instantaneous feedback and clear indications of areas of improvement. For new units a Google Form was created and used for a pre/post assessment. This saved time in marking and generated data that was be analysed to help guide small group foci, whole class tasks and spot individual students who need extra support. I may do a future ‘how-to’ post for these online pre/post assessments.
 

I could go on about what I saw for many posts but I simply want to highlight this perfect example of a 21st century classroom. I saw students using skills that they will ultimately use in the workplace and performing tasks that many people in today’s workforce would be amazed by. Yes, this school were fortunate to have this 1:1 access but they did not take it lightly. They are continuing to push the boundaries, try new approaches and set challenges for staff and students as we move into a world loaded with technology. 

- Will