Google & Feedback: Organizing My Toolbox

I've felt simultaneously overwhelmed and pumped about continuing to grow in how I effectively use Google to provide feedback for students. Because I've been taking a Google class and participating in more online PD discussions on Twitter and Facebook, I feel like I keep adding tools to my toolbox, but my toolbox is becoming really full and overflowing onto the workbench. 

It's exciting, but I also need to take a breath and sort through what I want to put into action (and how). 

I've already used Classroom and Docs for leaving comments for students, but even though I've used that tool for years, I'm still continuing to learn new tricks! I mean, how 'bout those keyboard shortcuts?! I've known about the Command + Option + M (Ctrl + Alt + M on PCs) trick to open a new comment; however, I recently learned you can easily post/enter the comment by hitting Ctrl + Enter. !!! Even that little trick can add up to SO much saved time. Love it! Google even loves us enough to create a whole beautiful list of Google Docs keyboard shortcuts :)

I also recently watched a Google On-Air Session about feedback and learned about the potential to use Screencastify to leave voice comments for students (here's the full session led by Oli Trussell--it was awesome!). Since Screencastify works so seamlessly with Google, I can easily record myself talking as I look over a student paper, save the video to my Drive, and include a shareable link to the video directly in a comment on the student's paper. I would file this under the "have yet to try but am VERY excited to explore" tab. 

Shifting to Classroom, I've done a little with using Questions to check in on student understanding and provide some quick feedback as needed. However, I feel like the Questions feature is one area I always seem to forget about for individual feedback; I tend to use it more for students to either discuss with each other or for me to get a quick vibe for trends on how the class is doing as a whole. 

I really want to focus more strongly on teaching students how leave feedback AND how to use feedback they receive, though. I've done better with this in the past few years, but this year I've kind of dropped the ball. Investing the time in teaching students strategies for leaving constructive and effective feedback helps them learn the skill better themselves. 

Helping students become more metacognitive about how they're using feedback on their work is super important, too. One feature on Turnitin that I've loved is being able to see whether a student has opened their document to view my comments; to my knowledge, Google doesn't have this feature. However, what Google does have that Turnitin doesn't is the ability for students to engage in conversations in the comments on their paper (which is even more enticing to me than the Turnitin feature--what's to say the student just opens the document and closes it right back up without ever reading the feedback?). However, I want to be purposeful in teaching students how to engage in conversations about their writing: paraphrasing to show understanding and questioning to seek further knowledge. 

Looking ahead, I also want to use Forms more frequently for quick weekly (or daily) check-ins on student understanding. Lindsay Welch's Slides presentation succinctly presents some useful options for using Forms as formatives, but in the spirit of keeping my toolbox manageable, I'm most interested in the idea of making a quick check-in to give students on a routine basis, asking a few broad questions:

• What is your biggest takeaway from class today?
• Why do you need to know today's learning target(s) for this class?
• Why do you need to know today's learning target(s) for your LIFE? 

Or something along those lines. Goals--one step at a time for implementation!

Blending Tech and Face-to-Face in Small-Group Discussions

My sophomores were prepping this week for a timed writing in which they explored perspectives on the definition of "risk" to start off our Risk Unit. For the writing, they needed to select three different "risk" essays to read as a small group: essays about experiences people had that could be seen as risky in some way. The small groups would discuss their selected essays, leaving each student with ideas to explore further in the timed writing.

Kind of inadvertently, I wove technology throughout this live discussion. To prepare for the discussion, students needed to read their essays and prepare some quick reactions to what they read. They took notes on these ideas in a Google Doc submitted to Classroom:

Students had three "response options" for each essay to prepare for their discussions.

On the day of the discussion, I used Google Slides on the overhead to establish a clear protocol to keep kids on task and purposeful as they talked. Perhaps subconsciously inspired by recent United Airlines events, I analogized the discussion protocol to a flight on an airplane. The first stage of the discussion was our "Taxiing on the Runway":

I like timers in small-group discussions only because I've found that they help students stay on topic SO much more than without that clear boundary of time. With this first stage, most groups said they needed another 1-2 minutes more, which wasn't a problem at all--I appreciated their awareness and communication. 

Then we got into the deep part of the discussion: flying! (Although, we had a short discussion in class about how that's where the analogy really falls apart--if we're flying high in the sky, we're not really "deep" per se, right? Oh, well.) 

Walking around the room, I heard students theorizing, questioning, referring to their prep notes, and offering connections to the text. Hooray for clear focus!

We closed the discussion with, you guessed it, the landing.

I had reviewed the whole protocol with the class beforehand. While the Padlet was originally supposed to be a processing opportunity post-discussion, I found that many students appreciated having the Padlet open during the discussion to jot down notes from what they heard in the discussion and new thinking they had about the essays:

Overall, investing the time beforehand to structure the discussion (but to still allow for flexibility during class) paid off in fruitful student conversations and clear organization for their ideas so they could reference them later. I love when technology and face-to-face time can work hand-in-hand so smoothly!

How can I balance screen time with non-screen time?

While we have lots of Chromebooks in rooms throughout my school right now, next year we get to go 1:1 with all students carrying their own Chromebook. I’m excited--and not just at the prospect of no longer having to make sure the CBs are all plugged in at the end of the day :)

However, students sometimes share that they feel like they’re on a screen all day long. I try to keep this tidbit in mind when planning, particularly when I’m thinking about how I’m applying the SAMR model in my classroom. If I’m hitting only the Substitution level, is it really necessary to put the kids in front of their screens? Or will a different mode of expression (posters, handwritten annotations, discussions) help kids understand in the same way and alleviate some of that extra “screen time”?

I don’t always feel confident in my decisions to opt out of screen time or stick with it for a given activity, but here are a few times where I’ve recently felt that the use of (or lack of) technology was the best decision for my students:

Script Annotations: Better by hand

My freshmen are currently working on a speaking and comprehension assessment in which they record themselves reading an excerpt from Romeo and Juliet. They’re focusing on conveying a clear tone in their speaking and practicing smooth fluency.

Here’s one example where a combination of technology and handwriting proves best. Students need to annotate their scripts for “actor’s notes”: speaking notes to help them make connections between the character’s motive and feelings and how to convey the tone clearly in their speaking. I know there are apps that allow students to annotate texts online; to be honest, when it comes to very individualized quick notes or reflections woven within a text, I find those apps to be too cumbersome. If I’m able to make paper copies for students to annotate, that’s where I find they do the best work.

To do these annotations well, students can’t rush through the reading; rather, they need to take time to understand the context of the scene, the character’s motives and feelings, the relationship between characters in the scene, any and all words they don’t 100% know. That’s where a processing document on Classroom comes into play.

This student is annotating his text by hand but using Dictionary.com to help with meanings and pronunciations of words he doesn’t know. 

This student is beginning her annotations by identifying all the words she doesn’t know and will need to investigate further. 

Poster Walks: A great "live" activity

Can you do virtual gallery walks? Absolutely! I don’t discount those at all. However, sometimes a live get-up-and-go walk around the room to add ideas to posters helps get the blood flowing and allows for a convenient reminder of student thinking that can be hung in a classroom throughout a unit.

Before reading The Odyssey this year, students gathered context surrounding the story: its time period, Ancient Greece, the Trojan War, Greek Mythology. After gathering the context, they came to class to share their ideas on three big posters: “Facts,” “Visuals,” and “Questions.” We asked students to walk around the room to add at least one idea to each poster. After they finished, we hung them up and asked everyone to point out interesting ideas they noticed on the posters. Funny visuals and interesting questions led to helpful discussions and clarifications before getting into the text.

Amazing Apps & Tools: Yay, technology!

My sophomores are currently engaged in the “Risk Olympics,” a yearly competition we hold to kick off our risk unit. As the unit progresses, each student will craft an individual “risk” with the purpose of improving him/herself as a person, and then we write reflective narratives about the experience.

The “Risk Olympics” preps kids to step out of their comfort zones. In the past, they’ve formed teams, and I’ve facilitated the competition by collecting photos and videos (to prove they did their “risks”) in a Google folder, calculation point totals by hand.

This year, we’re using an AMAZING website to organize the competition and track scores. I’m super thankful to have the technology to make the logistics of the competition less of a headache and more interactive for the students!

Goosechase organizes the “missions” cleanly and easily!

Students and I can all see the Leaderboard, keeping live track of the competition as students complete “missions.”

Data Collection: Yes, please, technology!

My quick formative check-ins have become so much more meaningful with Google Forms. Here, I did a quick check-in with my sophomores a few days before a big paper was due. I wanted to observe overall trends in what we still needed to review more as a class and to identify individual students who needed more one-on-one support in the closing days.

Because Google Forms loves visual learners, you can see the results to many of the objective questions through bar graphs or pie charts:

Overall, students were feeling pretty okay about their close reads (with some stragglers). However, the confidence levels on conclusion paragraphs were a tad lower--I knew I needed to work with the class more on that skill.

Then, I can also see individual responses for each student, particularly for the open-ended question at the end. The form provides a safe place for students to quickly let me know if they need to talk more one-on-one or need to let me know something.

Using technology to promote positive building culture!

Besides using Google Apps and technology tools to improve lesson design within the classroom, I love when I see (and am able to use!) these tools to promote positivity, community, and excitement among students and staff in a building.

I'm part of a committee in our school called "Roots & Culture." We help facilitate staff events and work to improve cross-departmental activities and relationships. Here are a few things we've done using technology to enhance our building's culture:

Staff Potluck

For years, our staff has come together before winter break to share heaps and heaps of food with each other. It's a glorious, wonderful day that my tastebuds spend 364 days looking forward to. In recent years, we've used a Google Sheet to help organize food sign-up (instead of "Oh, hey! Bring whatever you want!" and then we get 12 different spinach dips). It's great! We offer designations of roughly how many entrees, appetizers, and desserts we need, and people sign up accordingly:

We filter food and dishes in and out of the staff lounge throughout the day during our off periods, and the room is filled during all lunch hours with teachers enjoying each other's company. I even met someone new at this year's celebration!

Last year, someone suggested we find a way to label names on the dishes so we could ask others for recipes. The LRC Director on the committee created a Google Slides presentation for people to add photos, recipes, and names--a great way to share!

Battle of the Books!

This wasn't a Roots & Culture endeavor; rather, our National English Honor Society students helped organize a "Battle of the Books" to coincide with March Madness. I borrowed the idea from a SAMR Camp session last year run by @spartanlynne from Granger Middle School. Inspired by her March Madness book celebration in the LRC, we posted some brackets on our English bulletin board and a committee of NEHSers picked 16 novels popular among their peers:

Using Google Forms, we created a quick survey to share with the English classes and LRC staff at our school. By the end, we were looking at about 300 votes per round! Much dissent followed Round 1 of voting, particularly from some feisty English teachers who were highly displeased that The Lightning Thief beat I'll Give You The Sun. 

A few weeks and four rounds of voting later, we had our highly controversial champion: The Hunger Games. Yup, that's right: The Hunger Games defeated Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire in the championship round. Scandalous!

Photo/Video Hunt

Roots & Culture is currently in the midst of hosting a two-week Photo Hunt among staff members. After a harrowing March, we wanted to build some enthusiasm and camaraderie as we returned from spring break. Again--technology to the rescue!

We brainstormed 16 different photo/video "tasks" for staff to complete and created the list on this Google Doc. We also created folders in Drive for each department; staff could upload their documentation into their respective folders.

We still have four days left of the challenge, but the results so far have been hilarious and inspiring! Lots of smiles, cross-department adventures, and school pride.

Building staff culture is SO important in student learning. I firmly believe that a staff that enjoys working with each other and takes pride in their work environment will model enthusiasm in their classrooms and see more buy-in from their students. Events woven into the school environment--like the potluck, photo hunt, and book battle--are subtle ways to help develop that culture. And anytime you can use technology to streamline those activities, you pounce on it :)

How can I improve my Classroom pages to best meet my students' needs?

Five years ago, teachers within our building had several options for platforms to use as a base for their online class management. Blackboard and Edmodo were popular choices, and Classroom was a little-known tool that a handful of teachers were using. Not shockingly, student (and parent) feedback shared that the options were overwhelming; with some students in eight classes throughout the day, they found it difficult to keep track of which teacher was using which platform (including teachers who used more than one within the same class).

Today, Blackboard is obsolete in our district. Edmodo is still used by some, but the large majority of teachers in our building use Classroom to organize content for their classes. I’ve seen some of my students’ Classroom home pages, and, including sports and activities, some of them need to do a lot of scrolling to get through all the classes they’re a part of.

I’m totally happy (and, from what I’ve heard, students and parents are, too) that as a building we’ve mostly shifted to a common platform. However, I’ve been curious about how my Classroom page holds up to other Classroom pages. Is it confusing for students? Am I using the best possible methods of organization for my materials? Do students know where they need to go to access everything?

To explore these questions, I created a Google Form for student feedback. I shared the form with others in my department, but the large majority of responses are from my classes. Here are some of the responses and my observations:

I knew my students were avid users of Classroom, but I’ll admit I was (pleasantly) surprised that over 90% of the students were part of six or more Classroom pages! Props to us for common technology platforms to ease student stress!

This question led to the most diversity in responses. I’ve loved the Topics feature since it came out, but sometimes I’ve felt like I’m the only one in my classes who uses it. Based on the responses, roughly 50% of the kids never use Topics at all--and over half of that group does know that the Topics feature is there! Only a small percentage of the students use Topics with regularity.

I’ve also been intrigued by the different ways that teachers organize their topics. I struggled with how to phrase this question--I’m hoping the choices came across clearly to students. Assuming they did, however, 60% of students liked organization by type of assignment. I’m curious, though, whether these responses are skewed by the fact that that’s how I organize Topics on my pages (and these were primarily my students answering). I did have one student offer feedback in a later question that it might be helpful to organize topics by post number (e.g. “Posts #1-10,” “Posts #11-20,” etc.). Once Google allows us to tag multiple topics to a single post, I’m all over that idea!!

First and foremost, I really enjoyed the pretty symmetry in this pie chart. This answer seemed the funniest to me, particularly in contrast with the answers to how frequently students use Topics. Although less than a quarter of students said they use Topics with regularity, 50% of students said that the best way to share lots of resources was to post to the Stream and use Topics to find what they’re looking for :) I might like to follow up with some of my classes on this contradiction--could we work together to figure out how to use Topics effectively?

I also asked a couple free response questions to see what students found overall helpful and confusing about Classroom. MANY students said they appreciated the Stream and the About tab: having everything in one place, easily accessing due dates and assignments, having all their resources in one place that they can access from everywhere. The feedback is a breath of fresh air after hearing complaints for so many years about trying to find resources in 12 different places!

Most students said they couldn’t find anything particularly confusing about Classroom. However, hearing about some confusion was helpful. A few students said they get lost if posts aren’t labeled clearly (or seem vague or redundant). Several students commented on struggling to search for what they’re looking for on the Stream (yargh--the trouble with Topics strikes again!).

The other common trend in “confusing” responses had to do with teachers mislabeling or being unclear; for instance, one student said that sometimes they get assignments posted in the About tab, so they don’t have any sort of notification about it. Others commented on getting confused when the post numbering system isn’t consistently used. A couple responses noted that Classroom is only helpful if teachers use it consistently. If their teacher is inactive for several weeks, it’s tough to remain familiarized with that page.

So these results have led to a few thoughts for me:

1. I feel a lot less disconnected from how students are feeling about my Classroom page. I love surveys that remove the feeling that I’m on a remote island :)

2. Students seem to struggle the most with finding materials, perhaps for a number of reasons, which leads me to a question I want to continue working on: How can I encourage the use of Topics to help students find their information efficiently? Here are some strategies I want to try:

• Remind students more frequently of the Topic I’m tagging to each post: “Your homework is Post #55 on Classroom, and please note that I’ve tagged it as a Homework Topic for you to look up in case you can’t find the post.”
  
• Be a tad more specific with my Topics. Yes, the most popular response indicated that students like that I tag general types of posts (Homework, Formatives, Summatives), but I’m curious about seeing if moving to be more specific might help (perhaps instead of just “Formatives,” I could try “Grammar Formatives,” “Vocabulary Formatives,” etc.).
  
• Try to be more physically present in watching as students interact with Classroom. I’d really like to notice a student is scrolling endlessly through the Stream so I can show them the power of Topics in their moment of need!
  
• Incessantly send feedback to Google to allow the option for tagging multiple Topics to a single post. Just kidding--I won’t do that. I’ve already sent the feedback once, but YOU can sure send it! Just click on the little question mark in the corner of the screen on your Classroom page to send some quick feedback/suggestions to Google.

How do I better organize my Google Drive and Gmail (and model that organization for students)?

I’m not always proud of my Drive and Gmail pages.

Usually at the beginning of the year, I’m at inbox zero and my Drive is clean (mostly). Everything’s in its place, easy for me to find.

As time progresses, though, organization takes a back seat to creating and collaborating. All of a sudden, I’ve added ten new folders to my Drive (some of which, let’s be honest, were only necessary to keep for a two-day project), and emails are buried deep within my inbox, patiently waiting responses.

I’ll admit--I do get around to my emails much more frequently than my Drive. I try at least weekly to sort through the lingering emails (the dreaded emails that I read once and then forget about because they’re no longer marked as Unread. And yes, I know I can “mark them as unread,” but my ambition nearly always tells me that, no, I’ll respond in a few moments. Lies!).

So what gives? Are these battles worth fighting? I think so, at least to some extent. I feel better when my desk is clean. I feel more ready to be productive when I have a clear list and focused plan. Does that style work for everyone? Nope. But for those of us who thrive on at least some semblance of order among the chaos, investing time to pretty up our Drive and Gmail can prove quite useful--and, not shockingly, that same train of thought often goes for our students as well.

Here are some strategies (some I’ve tried, some I want to try) to do a digital clean-up:

• Folder Color Coding. Kind of a basic trick, but I’ve found that color-coding my most frequently visited folders helps me navigate much more quickly. To change the color of a folder, simply right-click and select “Change color”--you have a rainbow to choose from! You can also color-code labels in Gmail, although I haven’t found that to be particularly helpful in any way.
  
• Quick Doc Preview. I just read about this tool that’s been under my nose this whole time. When scanning through several documents and trying to find the one you want, you can get a quick preview box to open up of the document (rather than opening up a bazillion tabs to find the right link). Just click on a file and hit the little eye button at the top:

• Add the exact same document to multiple folders. This tip was revolutionary for me when someone pointed it out last year. Sometimes, as is life, one document doesn’t always fit into only one folder; they’re complex and have several places they might need to go. But instead of having to make a copy of the file to place in three different places, you can place the same live document into several different folders. It’s easy: click once on a document file in Drive (don’t actually open the document, though). Then, hit Shift + Z. The window that pops up will ask you where it should add this file. Find the additional folder, and click “Add here.” Now you can always find that same live document in multiple places! Wahoo!

Super easy! After I hit Shift+Z, I have a whole world of places where I can add this Vocabulary file. The slideshow will stay right here, too, but now I can access it from elsewhere, as well.

• Streak Extension. According to the Streak folks, this extension was “born out of the frustration of constantly switching between our inbox and external systems.” This tool is clearly more intended for the marketing/business world (it’s actually called “Streak CRM” = “Streak Customer Relationship Management”), so I haven’t found a ton of use with it quite yet. However, the Snooze feature has been interesting: I can “Snooze” an email, which archives the email but then pops it up again as Unread at a designated time. My inbox gets a little cleaner, and I can help future Alice with reminders about old emails.

• Stop caring. Okay, that sounds harsher than intended. But a colleague recently shared with me that actually, at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter if or how your documents and emails are organized--to find what you’re looking for, you can always just Search for it. So really, there’s no need to organize. For years, I’ve diligently sorted my emails into virtual folders. And I just counted--I would put each email into one of 58 folders. FIFTY-EIGHT FOLDERS. Parent emails went into the “Parent email” folder. Department information went into the “English Department” folder. Emails about NEHS went into the (wait for it) “NEHS” folder. “I’m so clever,” I would think. “Next time I need to go through my NEHS emails, I’ll easily be able to find this one.” Guess when “next time” was? “Next time” was never. I’ve never “gone through” my email folders to find an email. I always just search for keywords in the search box. So, now, when I want an email out of my inbox, I just hit “Archive.” (Note: I am likely way behind the times on this strategy, but I’m still going to celebrate my new learning!)

The next step is, of course, to share this learning with students to help them feel the same satisfaction and sense of productivity with a clean Drive and Gmail. Time is usually a restraint in doing so, however. In the past, I have used little bits of class time to share organizational tips, and I still do; however, I’ve found that the most powerful attempts to help students with organization (via Drive, Gmail, or even with the 12 folders/binders in their backpacks) are through one-on-one conferences outside of class. Usually we’ll be talking about an assignment when the student opens up his/her Drive to reveal a series of documents titled “Untitled” and no folders in sight. Investing those ten minutes in the conference to help the student reorganize does two important things: the student benefits from learning strategies for digital organization, and you model the importance of taking time to organize by giving up some of the conference time to help. That modeling has been really important in holding kids accountable and showing that I value their time and education.

Here are some other sites to check out for tips on organizing Drive and Gmail:

• PC Magazine’s Best Chrome Extensions for Gmail
• 10 Tips for Folders in Google Drive by Alice Keeler