Adaptive assessments

Making adaptive assessments using Google Forms takes some getting used to.  You will basically be manipulating the Forms environment to do something it is capable of, but not set up naturally to do.  I imagine one day someone will write a script to do this in a more automated way, but for now we have to work within the constraints we have in Forms.

First, I'll start with some of the rationale behind using adaptive assessments.  Traditionally, we have all used linear, fixed form assessments--everyone gets the same questions in the same order.  The scores that students get don't always reflect the true level of students' understanding.  Some students may be able to answer questions at a high level but could make silly mistakes on the lower level questions.  Others may be able to answer the questions at a lower level, but miss the more rigorous questions.  When you make an adaptive assessment, you can set it up so that the questions students get change depending on their answer to the previous question.  You can also embed remediation into the assessment itself and give instant feedback on answers as correct or incorrect. This could be a really powerful tool once you get the hang of it!

There are a lot of limitations when you are trying to create an adaptive assessment in Google Forms.  If you are going to create one, you need to try to start small!  It becomes really cumbersome if you have a lot of questions.  Depending on how many directions you take each question, it can become really complicated really quickly.  You will potentially be writing many more questions than students will actually see. This process is best for short formative assessments, as opposed to a longer summative.  Plus, there is no way to remove the "back" button, so students could figure out that they are able to re-try a question.  If you are making an adaptive assessment in Google Forms, it needs to be multiple choice, which limits the way you can ask questions.  To overcome the fact that students can get a multiple choice question correct by guessing, you could ask a follow up--how confident are you about your answer?  Or add a text box in which you ask them to explain their thinking.  Be aware that your spreadsheet data that Forms produces will look quite a bit different than what you would normally get.  Not all students will answer all questions.  Data interpretation may be a little tricky.

When setting up an adaptive assessment, you can have various places for questions to go, depending on your goal for the assessment.  Ideally, the assessment responds to individual students' abilities.  For instance, if a student gets a question correct, you could have them try a more difficult question next.  If they get it wrong, you could send them to an easier question or to some type of support.  Some of the suggestions our facilitator had for landing from an incorrect answer are videos, notes, weblinks.  You could send a student to a text box to explain their thinking whether they got a question right or wrong.  You could set up the next page to tell them if their answer is right or wrong so that the students get instant feedback.   The assessment doesn't even need to adapt to their answers--you could have the same set of questions for everyone but simply have their next question on a page that tells them whether or not their answer was correct.  It sounds really complicated until you actually try it.  And it is complicated, but once you start to play around with it, what you can do with it will make a lot more sense!

Before you start trying to create your adaptive assessment, you want to create a map.  Sketch out how the questions will flow and where different answers will take students.  In order to make an adaptive assessment, you will need to make sure you put each question on a different page (add a Page Break between each question).  For the question, click "Go to page based on answer."  When I was creating my assessment, I changed the page title to tell me something about what question was on that page.  This helped tremendously because when you choose the page to go to after a particular question, they are listed by their titles and it's a lot easier to find that next question.  Do not require any of the questions (except ones that you know every student will see) or they will not be able to submit their completed form.

When you are mapping out your questions (and also when entering), I suggest working with the all "correct" track first to keep things simple.  That would allow you to work with a simple linear test at the beginning, and then go back to add in other directions.  A fellow teacher asked about a way to set it up if you want them to try all of the questions, and if they get any of them wrong, they still see the same next question BUT you want them to get remediation at the end if they missed any of the questions.  Our facilitator suggested setting up a duplicate of your "correct track."  Then students could be diverted to this duplicate set of questions once they miss any of the questions.  See a map of what this may look like below.

Another idea our facilitator suggested as an application, for a case in which you want to collect data on students and the data you are collecting may be slightly different.  On the first page, a student could select their name (or you could select) and then there would be a different set of questions for each student.  He suggested this could be used to collect data on behavior.

Here are a couple of tips for Google Forms that will be helpful for creating these assessments and in general that I learned during this workshop:

• you can embed a Youtube video in a Form
• if you are creating the Form logged into your organization, you can require students to be signed into their official account BUT if you want students to access from their devices, you may want to unclick and just have them enter their name on the first page
• you can zoom out on your browser to see a lot of your pages (or questions) within forms at once--this will help you from getting lost when making an adaptive assessment
• copy the form and rename the copy to give to a new class to keep data separate

A kind of side note here... this really reminds me of the Choose Your Own Adventure type books that I used to read as a kid!  There are websites that can be used to create that type of thing.  I wonder whether any of these tools would be useful for creating an adaptive assessment.  I am going to have to look into this further.  For now, here is a link of one that I found with a quick Google search: Create your own Choose Your Own Adventures!

Engagement for all

This workshop on engagement was very focused on cooperative learning, so there was a lot of review, but there were some new ideas that were presented.  I am basically going to dump it all here in the form of a list

• using colored table markers or some other identifier, like content-specific pictures (especially good to use so you aren't numbering the tables and seats, which could get confusing)
• facilitator referred to time that a student has to speak as "airtime" (I thought this was cute!)
• when a student runs out of things to say in their allotted time tell students they should sit in the silence, feel the silence--so they don't just jump in and rescue each other (this would be good to employ at certain times, other times focus may be on training students to ask productive questions)
• when doing an activity where personal sharing time is not structured, remind students to make sure to involve everyone--if you notice someone that is not participating, ask them questions
• hogs vs logs (those who dominate vs those who don't participate in a group)
• using any of the following as an eraser for dry erase boards: fabric glove that you would use to wash a car, swiffer pads cut up, felt (what I use), an old sock, pom poms glued to markers
• tell students to work on making sure that every voice is being heard and no voice is dominating the conversation
• let students know that these are skills they should be using out in the real world (even if they are in kindergarten and the "real world" is just recess)
• roller coaster high five (make a roller coaster motion with your hands before high fiving)
• make sure that learning is collaborative and not competitive (don't pit one table against another)
• some students need a "personal invitation" to get started on a task (I really liked this phrase)
• in the PIES for cooperative learning (see below), when you are trying to ensure individual accountability, do not give group grades

• a whip around (every students gives an answer) is good when you want to reinforce something important--students will likely hear similar answers multiple times
• when doing a card sort, assign cards to each student so that each student only touches their own cards
• a fellow teacher reminded me about what I used to do for grouping--use card suits (you will end up with four students in each group--one for each suit--and you can pull as many cards as you have groups)
• for fan-n-pick, have a set of generic cards labeled 1-10 (or whatever) so you don't have to make the cards every time--then project the questions on the board, numbered 
• when doing inside outside circle, give more specific instructions:  first evens make a circle, then odds stand behind an even
• have students high five someone as they go past in inside-outside circle
• say "thank you for the 80% that responded, now we need 100%"  (I liked this because a lot of times whatever I say to the class makes some kids feel like I didn't recognize that they participated)
• "if you want to make a gain, it's going to be painful" (we were talking about this a lot in terms of kids who have trouble talking in front of other people)
• we did the final word protocol (first saw this in collaborative problem solving) but in this version, the first person only says a quote from an article we read and does not comment on it until everyone else has and then they get the final word (doesn't influence others' thinking as much)
• we used the following indicators when reading:  !=new thinking, ?=something you question or want to ask about, *=agree, x=disagree
• have each student use a different colored pen or highlighter to see their contribution to the work
• we read an article about levels of engagement and this schematic below was the most useful--notice the pie charts at the bottom (in particular, the highly engaged classroom does not have 100% engagement because it is really unrealistic)  our facilitators mentioned showing this to the evaluating administrators which is definitely a good idea

• two new silly games!  
• baby blob--one person is the baby blob, when they tag someone, they link arms...blob grows as they continue to tag people and add (warning, we knocked a ton of drinks over playing this game!)
• rock paper scissors cheer--rock paper scissors in groups of two, winning person finds another person to play against while losers become cheering squad (will end up with final two people and everyone else cheering!)
• silly games are supported  by the Mindsets in the Classroom (by Mary Ricci)--gets blood/oxygen to the brain and promotes mental strength and alertness
• facilitators had us write a goal for the year that they will email to us at the start of the semester (I have seen this in another workshop before and think it is great idea--note to self if I ever facilitate a workshop)

A few ideas that popped into my head during the workshop...

• family feud affirmation--"good answer, good answer"
• have students fill out a "what was my contribution?" questionnaire with a group project and grade just that part for them (for individual accountability)
• create a generic card that has a place to write a role for each group member (for example, when using fan-n-pick).  Have students write in the roles so you don't have to print a separate mat every time you want to do an activity where students have rotating roles.  We talked about using dry erase or post-its to re-use it.
• my teammates and I came up with the acronym RINGS to represent engagement:
• R=Respect/Risk/Relevance
• I=Involvement/Interdependence
• N=No hiding
• G=Group interaction

Accommodations and Modifications

I teach a lot of co-caught classes, which means that I work very closely with a teacher from special education in my classroom in classes that have a high percentage of students with IEPs (Individualized Educational Plans).  Last year was my first year of experience with co-taught classes.  Of course, we are all aware that our students with IEPs have lots of accommodations listed for us.  But I was thrown for a loop the first time I had a student who was on modified curriculum for my class.  It was just one or two before I started co-teaching, but now I can have 4-5 within one class!  It is really overwhelming to figure out what modification means and how it applies to each student.

First of all, what is the difference between accommodations and modifications in the classroom?  Accommodations are supports that we give students to help them access the standard, guaranteed curriculum.  Modifications actually change that curriculum to make it more accessible to the student.  Another teacher came up with a great simple way to remember the difference; accommodations change the means, but modifications change the end.  If you are thinking about this in terms of UbD (Understanding by Design), you can imagine it in terms of stages, accommodations would not really affect stage 1 (knowledge and skills) and 2 (assessment) much, but a lot of stage 1 (teaching practices).  The test may look different, the content covered is the same.  Modifications would really be affecting stage 1 and 2.

Usually in my building, when I have a student on modified credit, I get handed a contract that often essentially says 'modifications at the teacher's discretion.'  It is really hard to tell what that should look like.  Historically, working with special education teachers and aides, that has meant changing tests to remove a couple of answer choices and weighting homework and test grades differently, and really just a lot of fiddling with grades.  All of this turns out to truly be more accommodating than modifying.

We were given resources for ideas for accommodations.  Accommodations can be for assignments, grading, text, test/exams, lectures, reinforcement, pacing, or environment.  But, let's be honest, accommodating isn't something that is super difficult for us as teachers.  It is the modification piece that is much more mystifying.  It was suggested that you start either with your standards or your assessment, whatever is easier.  And you want to go through and see where changes can be made.  You want to focus on what the students will need the most for their future goals, either academic or in life.  You also want to think about what they would be capable of when choosing material to make sure to cover with them.  There are some tools provided for planning on the SSD website under "cool tools."

When I went to a standards based grading workshop last summer, my thinking about teaching changed a bit.  While I am not totally ready to move all the way into a standards based grading model, the ideas behind it stuck with me.  Basically, my thinking is that a lot of standards can be lumped into a tiered model.  Learning targets should be tiered, with learning goals beginning at the entry level and going up from there.  If you have four tiers within a standard, you would probably teach through the top tier, but you would expect that students successfully accomplish maybe through the third tier, with the fourth as an extension.  If students need remediation, you would remediate to the tier you expect all students to master, and not waste precious time re-teaching at the top tier. When I started thinking that way and creating tiers within learning targets, it actually made the idea of modifying curriculum and tests much easier for me this past year.  The goals that you would expect a student on modified credit to get to would be maybe the second tier with the third tier being extension for them.

When thinking through the tiers, it is pretty easy with a skill.  In fact, the only standards that I fleshed out in this model last year were math skills that we cover in science.  To determine the tiers, I think through the process I teach the material.  I think, if I was helping a struggling student, where would I start?  That would be the first tier.  The next step would be the second tier and so on.  This made such a difference in how I felt about modification in my room and it made so much more sense than just grade adjustment.  I would structure an assessment so that the problems were chunked based on tier, which made it much easier to create a modified assessment.  All I would have to do is remove the tiers that I was not assessing a certain student on (or a learning target altogether, if necessary).

Something that was especially useful in this workshop actually was not related to modification really at all.  We were looking at some math assessments from Algebra, in terms of how they could be modified.  Algebra is the math class my freshman are taking while they are learning basic chemistry and physics from me.  Looking at this assessment and talking to a teacher that teaches the class was very enlightening.  She also showed me how to find the other assessments.  Just seeing the language that they use and the way that they assess some of the concepts that we also cover in physics was so helpful and will change the way I teach some of this material.  (Note to self:  I drive--teachers--math--alg 1--assess for 2015-2016--linear graphs)

Another reason this workshop was so awesome is that we saw the new modified curriculum contract (now called an learning plan, I think) that will be used.  Going to workshops really helps me stay up to date on what is going on around the district or in the world of education.  The new document includes areas to specify what the students post-secondary goals are, which accommodations have been tried but didn't necessarily work, and more details about the way the curriculum is to be modified.

There are a few reading/vocabulary protocols that were presented that I want to record here as well:

• Three A's:  on one card/post-it write one thing with which you agree, on another one thing with which you argue, and one thing to which you aspire--then they had us share and one person summarize the consensus of the group for the first one, then repeat for the second (different person summarize), and the third.  Then, each person writes an Aha; something that they realized or learned from someone else.
• Headbanz game variation:  have students line up and one student will be at the front of the room.  The student at the front faces the rest of the students and either you can project a word behind them or hold a word over their head.  The rest of the students give them a clue one word at a time (each student can only say one word).  At least three clues should be given before the guessing student makes a guess.  Once a student gets a word, the next student comes up and the process starts again.
• Check, !, ?:  When reading, put a check next to something you know or understand.  Put an exclamation point next to something that you feel is really important info.  Put a question next to something you need clarification or elaboration for. 

Google Docs and Slides (and other fun stuff!)

One of these days I will be writing a primer for all of you who are new to Google.  But for right now, I am going to go through the new stuff I learned at this workshop...  Brain dump list!

• google certification for teachers--there is a lot of training available and you can even become Google certified (our facilitator said you have to take 5 tests that are $15 each to get certified and then can become a Google trainer, I think by submitting a video of you using it in your classroom)
• with Todays Meet students can post questions or comments in the "background" while you or someone else is presenting
• Plickers--this is so cool!  it is so hard to explain, but it is a great lo/hi tech way to formatively assess students (teacher needs a device with a camera, students do not)--see the video below to get an overview, it is much easier to understand if you can see it in action

• change margins under File-->Page Setup and you can set the margin size as default!
• share a doc with another class in your building (or somewhere else in the world!) to collaborate on the document at the same time--why did I never think of this!?
• if you are a Google school, you can set sharing permissions so that the product can only be viewed when logged in from an account in your organization--super helpful when looking at the revision history because you will know exactly who contributed what
• by the way, you can sign into another Google account without signing out of an original one if you use an Incognito window in Chrome--great if you have two students sharing a computer, they can make sure they are on their own account when working to make sure they get credit for their work
• we discovered a newly added feature--Suggest edits!  this is listed below the comment option when you right click--you can actually make edits in the document and they can be accepted or rejected
• when students are chatting, it is not recorded anywhere--when the window is closed, it is gone! so beware! I like to mess with my kids by adding my own comments here and there when they are chatting because they don't realize I can see what they are saying
• if you are having students work on the same document, create a table so that they each have their own cell to work in
• if you have a Microsoft product in your drive and click on it to open the preview, if you click "open with" and choose a Google product, it will be converted to a Google product
• there is an add-on called Font Extender that you can use to add fonts
• there is apparently a voice over add on that is not great, but good to know it exists
• when you choose to import images, you can do a Google image search right then and there
• you can also search Youtube within Google products to embed videos
• when working in Presentations, if you click to "import themes" you will see all of the presentations in your drive (your own or shared with you) and copy a theme from any of them
• once you have a theme, you can click Slide-->Edit Master to change any of the details of the slides
• have students practice public speaking skills in your class and actually grade them on those things in addition to the content (our district apparently has a speech and presentation rubric that they all share)
• a science teacher in our district created a science fair template for his students to fill in to make sure they have all of the necessary components

Here are some more specific tips and tricks...

Research tools
-Click Tools--> Research to open research tools
-if you are searching images, choose "free to share" to know that you don't have to deal with copyright issues
-research tools will automatically cite sources and make footnotes (it is not complete, but useful for students to remember the websites they used while researching)
-this is a great tool for students to organize their research (as an alternative to note cards)
-you can also create a citation by clicking "cite" for the link
-to get a more complete citation, use the Easy Bib add on or try Noodle Tools

Hangouts
I am really new to Google hangouts, but am hoping to learn more about them!  I want to use them for review sessions before tests or for nights when students have particularly difficult homework.  I mentioned it to a colleague and she said it was like having office hours.  So yeah, I want to have virtual office hours!

I have a Google Academy workshop next week with breakout sessions on all things Google and we got an advanced peek at the list of sessions because our facilitator got the list to look over during our workshop and she shared it with us :)  Workshops help me keep my finger on the pulse of what is going on in our district and the world of education!  Anyway, there is a session on Hangouts and of course that is where I will be! (I already added this post, find more info on Hangouts here!)

In the meantime, my colleague and I played around with Hangouts to see what we could figure out...

• you can create a link for your hangout that attendees can click by making an event on  your calendar
• you can create a circle for each of your classes on Google + so you can quickly add your students to your hangout
• make a community for your class on Google + and students should be able to see your Hangouts (we think!)
• when you are in a Hangout, the camera focuses on you when you make any kind of a noise, so mute yourself and then when  you want to say something, unmute yourself to talk

And last, but not least, just for fun... there is an extension in the Chrome store called Momentum.  It lets you make really cool landing page for a new tab that you can customize with your name and stuff.

Update--more posts coming soon!

Now that the school year has started up again, I have not had an opportunity to get many posts up!  I have plenty of posts from my summer development just waiting for me to edit them, and as soon as I do, I will be posting them.  So, there is plenty more to come!  As I sit at parent teacher conferences tonight, waiting for parents to stop by, I am working through editing, so you can expect to see some new posts up in the next few weeks!!

Google Hangouts

This was a session I went to during our Google Academy!  I have been wanting to learn about Google Hangouts, so I was so excited to attend this one.  My colleague and I have been talking about having review/question sessions for students using Hangouts.  Essentially, you can have virtual office hours using Hangouts.  A Hangout would also be really useful for students that are out of your classroom due to illness or suspension.  I will structure this as a FAQ on Hangouts (of the questions I was frequently asking in my head...)

What is Google Hangouts?
It is kind of like Skype or any other video chat, but it is a FREE group video chat/conference.  You can have up to 15 people in a Google Hangout (though you can't see that many faces at one time).   You can also chat, screenshare, and record the Hangout.  You can invite people and schedule them for specific times.

How do I get to Google Hangouts?
There are many ways...
-Google "Google Hangouts" (and click "Google Talk")
-go to the website https://plus.google.com/hangouts
-in Gmail, click on the Hangouts icon (quotation marks in a speech bubble)
-on your Google+ page, click on the Hangouts icon
-get the Google Hangouts extension, then click on your extension icon
-One click Google Hangouts extension immediately opens a Hangout
-create an event in your Community
-create an event on your calendar

What do I need to access Google Hangouts?
-internet access
-a Google account (so does anyone you want to invite)
-be logged into your Google account

What else would be useful (but not necessary)?
-a camera (if you want to be visible)
-a microphone (if you want to be heard)
-a Google+ account (if you want to access that way)
-a Google community (if you want to reach people to invite quickly)

What are the types of Google Hangouts?
-Basic Hangout--quick and easy, click on your friend and click the video camera icon
-Hangout Event--schedule it at a certain time, create in your calendar, from your Community page
-Google On Air--a hangout that is recorded so that you can post to youtube (may or may not have other people)

What is Google+ and how is it related to Hangouts?
Google+ is a social network, kind of like Facebook.  You can create circles with contacts and invite those circles to a Hangout.  I am thinking it would be quickest to invite my students to a Hangout by creating a circle for each class (you can search for a circle to invite and everyone in the circle will be invited).  Note:  everyone you invite to a Hangout will get an email notification.

What is a Google community and how is it related to Hangouts?
Google Communities are like Facebook groups.  People can join and see things that you post.  For instance, my colleague made a Community for her class.  You can create a Hangout event in your community that members of the community will be able to see as a link on your Community page.  You can also have an option to invite your entire community when creating a hangout event (and everyone will get a link to the Hangout).

How do I create a Hangout Event?
There are a few different ways to do this...
-create an event from your Community page--add a Hangout by clicking "event options" then "advanced"
-create an event from your Google Calendar and click "Add video call"
-create a Hangout and send everyone the link for the Hangout

What can you do in a Google Hangout?
-chat
-screenshare
-capture (take a pic--it will tell you if someone in the Hangout is taking a picture)
-fun effects (add silly stuff to the hangout view screen)
-youtube (share a video)
-draw (draw in the hangout view screen)

Tips and tricks
-you can mute the video--if you have a photo associated with your account, it will show instead of the video stream
-you can mute the sound--your image will be focused on when you make sound (make sure to un-mute if you want to talk!)
-you will get feedback if you are near the people in your hangout, use microphone muting to help with this

More resources
www.google.com/+/learnmore/hangouts

UbD for Real People (Understanding by Design refresher)

This workshop was focused on reviewing the Understanding by Design framework and presented some strategies for application.  Our district has been using UbD for at least the last 5 years.  UbD is the brain child of Grant Wiggins and he has worked with Jay McTighe.  If you need a primer on UbD, try this link "UbD in a Nutshell."  We actually used this in the workshop (try to overlook all of the typos--I'm wondering who did the proofreading!).

Recently, we implemented PLCs, the next step once UbD has been adopted.  This makes perfect sense to me now, but I will admit that I did not see the direct connection until this workshop.  They are so closely aligned that the goals of PLCs actually are structured to follow the stages of UbD:

1.  What do we want students to understand?  (UbD Stage 1)
2.  How will we know they understand it?  (UbD Stage 2)
3.  What will we do when they don't understand? (UbD Stage 3)
4.  What will we do when they already understand? (UbD Stage 3)
5.  What are the best practices for teaching? (UbD Stage 3)

Again, this is so clear and obvious to me now, but I really did not see it before!  Everyone in the district still uses the language of UbD, and of course our lesson planning is rooted in the framework as individual teachers.  And I know inherently that is how we work in our PLCs (start with the end in mind and develop common assessments).  But I never saw the clear connection until now.  It was also a good clarification of what we have been coming to terms with as a PLC.  In Stage 1 of UbD, knowledge and skills are identified and we had a handout that specifically said "resist listing all the possible knowledge and skill goals that are in any way related to the unit topic.  Identify only those goals that you plan to directly assess in Stage 2 and explicitly address in Stage 3."  It was nice to have that idea supported in this context.

Throughout this workshop we got some tips for how to integrate the components of UbD (transfer goals, essential questions, enduring understandings, etc) into our lessons.  This is information I have received a lot over the years, but it always helps to have a refresher.  I am also glad to be getting it all down to go over again in the future, now that I am blogging about my learning experiences!

I have taken many workshops with our facilitator Liz and she always does a good job of modeling techniques to use.  Some of what she did was Cooperative Learning type structures and then others were classroom and time management structures.

General learning and class/time management strategies:

• Process as Given/Process as Understood--After you give instructions, have a student repeat them for the class and the teacher gives clarification as needed.
• Your Time/Our Time/My Time--"Your Time" is the amount of time given to the students initially for the task.  "My Time" is how much time the teacher knows we can spend on the task and decides the most amount of extra time that can be given, say 3 minutes.  "Our Time" comes in when the given time is up, the teacher asks how much time is needed as a show of fingers (ie 0 to 3 minutes) and then the teacher averages the needs of the class to come up with Our Time which will be the extra time given to complete the task.
• Elevator pitch--Create a 1-2 minute summary of a particular topic to share (a CL structure would be good to use for the sharing)
• Inner/outer circle--I think this is technically a CL structure (Liz also had us do round robin, timed pair shares, stand up-hand up-pair up, and quiz-quiz-trade.  See my Cooperative Learning methods post for details on these).  For inner/outer circle, half of the class creates the outer circle and then the other half creates the inner circle, paired with one from the outer circle.  Sharing happens and then the teacher instructs either circle to move so many places to the right or left to find a new partner.
• Card sorting using Fan and Pick--another CL structure.  We had a set of cards to sort into three categories.  There are two obvious roles; fanner and picker/reader, that would rotate.  The group would discuss which category the card belongs to, ideally coming to a consensus and sort them accordingly.  Any cards that couldn't be placed easily and required more processing could be saved to til the end.
• Reading with purpose--three examples were demonstrated with Cooperative Learning structures as well.  1.  Highlight three important ideas and write why they are important. (CL was a timed-pair-share) 2.  + if you already know it, - if you don't (I like to use a 0), and ? if you have a question.  (CL was a mix-pair-share) 3.  Identify most important point (CL was a single round robin)
• Fingers/Thumb ratings--for quick formative assessment AND student self assessment.  For fingers, students rate from fist to five how comfortable they are with the material.  For thumbs, thumbs are up, down, or sideways.  I personally have trouble with only three choices of the thumb so I usually wobble... but it is good to mix it up with students.

Now about the components of UbD--writing EU's, EQ's, and transfer goals can be daunting (knowledge and skills aren't so bad).  Here are some tips that were helpful to think about from the workshop:

• Transfer goals can be short term or long term.  We tend to think about transfer goals as being huge and overarching.  You will have a few overarching transfer goals for the semester or year.  But, to accomplish those transfer goals, you need to have smaller transfer goals along the way.  Skills from your Knowledge and Skills will feed into transfer goals.  
• Enduring Understandings are the "forever and always."  What do you expect the students to take when they leave your class?  These are written in teacher language.  Limit them to maybe 5 per semester.  There are the 6 Facets of Understanding that can guide what demonstrates "understanding."
• Essential Questions vs. Topical Questions--I had never heard about a distinction between essential and topical questions, so this was supremely useful.  You may have only 5 essential questions for the whole semester (say one or two per unit) but you could have topical questions every day.  All questions should be written in kid-friendly language, as they are meant to be shared with students.  Good essential questions we know don't have just one right answer.  But think of it in these terms; is it debatable?  Could people interpret the question differently and come to different conclusions?  And I'd like to add here; can the question be answered with a claim that is supported by evidence? 

Now that we have a better feel for the terminology, and have written TGs, EUs and EQs, and identified K&S, what do we do with them in the classroom?  We generally know that we should post the EQs and Liz suggests even posting your knowledge and skills for the unit.  Also, it is not enough just to post them.  Here are some ways that were suggested for students to interact with the framework of your lesson plan:

Have students talk about/answer the EQs at the beginning and end of the unit--question early and often.  These are perfect questions to use for a brainstorm rally robin to get students thinking.  I will admit I need to be better about using EQs.  Now that I am becoming more comfortable with Cooperative Learning, I think I will be more comfortable asking students such tough questions.  Liz had us write our thinking in response to one of her essential questions on a post-it and put it next to the question she had listed on chart paper at the beginning of the workshop, then again at the end of the knowledge acquisition component.  I think I would have them do a write-pair-share or something with the questions at the beginning of the unit and again at the end (on the same paper) so they could see their learning.

A follow up to the idea of working with your essential questions with the students is having them generate questions about the essential questions.  Like, what do you need to know in order to answer that question?  I imagine creating a document with the EQ in one column, and the next column would be for them to write whatever they are thinking and one more column for what questions they have about the EQ.  At the end of the unit I would have them reflect on whether their questions were answered (and what questions they may still have) and how they would answer the EQ at that time.  Of course I would incorporate CL structures along the way for this process to encourage engagement and thinking.

Have the students self assess their understanding of the knowledge and skills for a unit.  This required showing them the knowledge and skills you intend for them to acquire during the unit.  I have gotten slightly better at this.  My co-teacher and I developed a self assessment tool that worked really well this past year where we listed the learning targets, and for each target students had a bar with a continuum from "I have no clue" to "I can teach it."  At the beginning of a unit, we would have them shade where they were and date it.  Then, after a formative assessment we would have them re-evaluate the specific targets that were assessed.  Before the test we would have them do one more self assessment and set goals for preparing for the "summative" assessment (I put this in quotes because our unit test was really one more formative before the final which was the true summative).

After Liz taught us about some of the knowledge and skills she wanted us to acquire she said "now this is what I think I've taught you."  I love that quote and am totally going to steal it.  She had us write something about our learning of each.  I would use this idea when we revisit our targets and have them discuss in a CL structure what they have learned so far about a particular target.

After Liz's presentation we had break out groups that we could choose from.  She worked with newer teachers on unpacking standards.  There were three others to choose from; GRASPS, WHERETO, and High Level Questioning.  GRASPS is a way to write performance events and a colleague of mine went to that one and shared her info with me.  Here is the gist:

Goal:  Your task is... The goal is... The problem or challenge is... The obstacles to overcome are...
Role:  You have been asked to... You are... Your job is...
Audience:  Your clients are... The target audience is... You need to convince...
Situation:  The context you find yourself in... The challenge involves dealing with...
Product, performance and purpose:  You will create a... in order to..., You need to develop... so that...
Standards and criteria for success:  Your performance needs to... Your work will be judged by... Your product must meet all of the following standards... A successful result will...

I went to the breakout session on questioning.   As I mentioned before, I think higher level questioning will become easier through cooperative learning structures.  The biggest idea I took away from the questioning section was that low level (basement) questions reiterate the text or content, middle level (ground floor) questions require the text or content to create an answer, and high level (high rise or penthouse) questions are an extrapolation from the text.  You may use evidence from the text to support an answer but it requires a lot of your own thinking and ideas.

Finally, I also went to a breakout session about WHERETO.  WHERETO is an acronym like GRASPS but this is for unit design as opposed to assessment design.  This is what it stands for:

Where/Why:  these are your goals for learning which should be presented to students.  You should demystify the big ideas, EQs, evaluation criteria and discuss why we are learning it.
Hook:  the attention grabber.  Leads into lesson (ie an engaging story, analogy, connection to life, some fun media, etc)
Equip/Explore:  what the students need to learn--how you will teach it, being aware of lack of experience and making sure to include all necessary tools for learning.
Rethink/Revise:  students should make improvements based on self-assessment and feedback, sometimes posing a second essential question helps.
Evaluate:  student self-evaluation and reflection, allow students to process learning (I personally think this seems a bit out of order and should come before rethink and revise but ideally you would have them evaluate again after that process too)
Tailoring:  differentiation in content, process, and product.  Criteria for evaluation should be the same even if the process or product are different.
Organization:  sequence of learning to develop and deepen understanding.  Allow students to explore questions early and often.

I think this is supposed to be sequential but of course tailoring and organization would be part of your planning process, so I'm not sure... The main thing I took from this session (and kind of in conjunction with the rest of the workshop) is that I need to be more up front with our learning goals.  I need to give students a road map!

Collaborative Problem Solving 101

I mentioned in an earlier post that there are issues with PLC's.  The main issues that we have all boil down to human nature.  Teachers share a lot of common characteristics; we are very passionate people, we like to be the boss, and we tend to think we know what's best a lot of the time.  Put a bunch of these people in a room and ask them to work together and it is a recipe for conflict.  Working in groups as educators can be very frustrating, clashes inevitably arise, which derails us and wastes a lot of time.  This workshop was about how to try to overcome emotion and work collaboratively as a team.  It is a set of tools to use when we are acting too much from our hearts and need to act more from our heads.

The facilitators related problem solving in the Pareto Principle; 80% of our troubles come from 20% of our problems.  We can solve a lot of our problems fairly easily but there are those few that cause us so much trouble, and those are the ones that we work on in our PLCs!  We used the book "Got Data? Now What?" by Laura Lipton and Bruce Wellman, focusing on Chapter 3 'Avoiding Reality Wars.'  There was a quote near the beginning of this chapter that I feel does a good job of summarizing what the problem solving process is getting at.  This quote is from Daniel Moynihan (former US Senator), "You're entitled to your own opinion, but you're not entitled to your own facts."  The problem solving model presented helps us focus on the facts and less on our feelings and opinions.

The model we were following is a cyclical model.  It is essentially what we all do naturally anyway, or at least what we think we do naturally.  I found the graphic below to illustrate the model.



As educators, we are also very solution-oriented.  A lot of the time, we tend to jump to solutions before really defining the problem and the cause.  We often jump from Step 1 right to Step 3.  In the framework presented, Step 1 is Problem identification, Step 2 is Root Cause Analysis, Step 3 is Action Plan, and Step 4 is Monitor Progress.

Problem Identification
This is a little harder than it seems.  The facilitators showed a great clip from Moneyball, where Brad Pitt is trying to get the scouts to get to the real problem.  A lot of times, we make generalizations without defining problems specifically and more often than not, we are focusing on symptoms instead of the true problem.  When teachers come together there is a lot of venting of frustrations.  Let's be honest, a lot of meetings diverge into complaining sessions (PG term for b*$!@ fests).  The "Got Data?" book says to "change complaints into problem statements."  There are examples of refining problems into better problem statements.  For example, instead of saying that the problem is 'kids don't turn in homework,' which is really more of a complaint, reframe it to "The problem is that some of our students do not see a connection between the homework we assign and successful learning."  The second statement is one you can really do something with, in particular start looking for a root cause.

Before moving on to the next step, though a problem statement needs to be written so that it includes the following components:  it is measurable, there is a current state and a desired state, and it is focused on student outcomes.  Also, there should be no "because."  Plus, it should be rooted in data--there should be evidence (not a huge surprise--we are all pretty used to this by now, I'm sure).  At this point it is really hard to not write a goal, or a reason, or what we're going to do about it.  I know this from personal experience because we actually went through this process with a set of data.  This is where the framework becomes important.  Our inclination is to just get to the solution, but we need to really figure out the problem before we move further.  Though I will say that since we were thinking about all of those other things at this point, it did make the subsequent steps a little bit easier!

Root Cause Analysis
Often, we jump to trying to figure out what to do about the problem instead of really trying to get at what is causing the problem.  In the "Got Data?" book, there was a section on crafting an inquiry.  The idea is to construct the concern as a question.  Essentially, you could state your problem as a question to start searching for causes.  Some suggested inquiries for the lack of homework completion are:  "What are some differences between students who complete homework and those who don't?"  and "How can we determine students' readiness for independent practice?"  One of the strategies for root cause analysis that our facilitators mentioned was an Assumptions wall.  Basically, list out all of the assumptions we have about the problem to get them out right off the bat.  Maybe we feel like material isn't being covered the way we want it to in a previous class or we think the textbook that we have is a piece of junk.  This is a way to avoid the elephant in the room, in particular if you are looking at problem solving for a specific student.  Maybe we know the student was arrested over the weekend or we suspect drug usage.  These are things that may not come up when we are trying to problem solve, but are the source of pent up frustration and getting them out up front could help productivity.  This kind of venting process might also help you to think outside the politically correct box and find a root cause that wouldn't have been easy to find without digging deeper.  Once you have a list of assumptions, sorting them into groups based on things we can't control, and things we can have an impact on will be a good place to start in identifying root cause and eventually developing an action plan.

Now it is time to write a goal!  Remember when I said how hard it was not to write the problem as a goal?  Due to the components required, writing the problem really It really lends itself to writing a SMART goal.  If your district is like mine, you are well versed in the identifiers of a SMART goal (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-Bound), since the PLC work is supposed to start with writing a SMART goal.  Now I understand that we want to start by identifying the problem and finding a root cause before we even think about writing a SMART goal.  It makes sense, doesn't it?  Really, if your problem is written well, it should just take a bit of tweaking to make it into a SMART goal, at least that was what we found!  And make sure to frame your goals in the positive (mention how much success in an area will improve instead of how much you will reduce negative issues).

Action Plan Development/Implementation
The next section in the "Got Data?" book is about generating a hypothesis.  Of course, as a science teacher this speaks to me!  But it does make a lot of sense.  The authors mention "those with the greatest passion or energy about an issue often impose solutions that not all group members may understand or own."  This is way to common, I experience this all the time and  oftentimes I am the passionate guilty party myself!  They suggest that "reframing solutions as hypotheses creates a path for shared exploration and converts a reality war into a data-team study."  The idea is to again remove emotion as much as possible from an emotionally charged situation, and frame passionate suggestions in a more productive way.  Some hypotheses related to the homework issue; "If we provided more guided practice and used formative assessment to determine readiness, then students would have the confidence to complete their homework assignments successfully" or "If we provided choice in assignments, such as how many or which examples to complete, then students would be more likely to complete their homework."

Once you have some ideas for possible solutions, you want to think about where you will get the most bang for your buck.  Some solutions could have a huge impact but require a lot of time and resources.  Other solutions may be quick and easy but without a lot of impact.  You can create an impact/effect matrix to evaluate how much effort is required compared to how much impact is attained.  Make sure you give yourself enough time to see progress, but keep it short.  You don't want to make a plan in August for which you aren't checking for progress until February.  It happens all the time that we get to the end of the year and we have run out of time, so try to make a time frame that reasonable.

Monitor Progress
Of course, to know if your plan is solving the problem, you need to continuously monitor progress via the measurement you chose to measure progress.  It helps to display the progress in visual ways, both for members of the problem solving group and for the students involved when appropriate.  Then, celebrate successes!  And when something isn't working, go back through the steps and see what needs to be changed--maybe you weren't focusing on the right problem, maybe the root cause was incorrect.  There are many times that what we try doesn't work, I mean that's the nature of teaching, isn't it?  And that is totally fine as long as you are willing to try something else.  This is instinctual for a lot of us, I think, but it is really easy to get discouraged and determine that a problem is not solvable.  You may have bitten off more than you can chew, so if you go back through the cycle you may find some aspect of it that you can address to mitigate the effects of the large problem.

We were given protocols to help with each of these steps.  The majority of them look like they come from the book "The Data Coach's Guide to Improving Learning for All Students" by a whole bunch of ladies (N. Love, K. Stiles, S. Mundry, and K. DiRanna) and The Handbook for SMART School Teams by A. Conzemius and J. O'Nei  Here is the list:
Problem ID protocols:  Stoplight Highlight; Data-Driven Dialogue; Here's What, So What, Now What?
Root Cause protocols:  RIOT and ICEL matrix, Why? Why? Why?, Fishbone Cause-and-Effect Analysis, Verify Causes Tree, Cause Cards, Assumptions Wall
Action Plan protocols:  Impact/Effort Matrix, Logic Model, Stages of Concern, Level of Intervention Guidelines, (www.interventioncentral.org), What works clearinghouse, Chart Dog
Progress Monitoring protocols:  Moving Picture tools, Run Chart, Control Chart

There were also a couple of teaching techniques that our facilitators used that I liked as well.  One was called red card/green card and the other was called "final word" and was for table sharing, kind of in a round robin format.  The colored cards were used for evaluating problem statements as good or not so good.  If it looked like a good one, we held up green and for not so good, we held up red.  The table sharing involved the "presenter" having 2 minutes to share (the quote we found most significant from a reading) and then each group member had some time to respond, and then the presenter got the final word.

Side note:  some awesome clips they showed us from Moneyball and Apollo 13 came from the website www.movieclips.com which looks like a super useful website, so I thought I'd share!

This workshop was really useful, but it really needs to be something that an entire group goes through together.  I worry that it will be difficult to pull off this system in a group that is used to the status quo unless they have had this training on problem solving as well.  I hope that it will help me as a contributor to problem solving, though!

The Mastery Classroom

This workshop was definitely interesting.  I felt super fortunate to be at this workshop because the facilitators were 8th grade science teachers at the middle school that feeds into my high school, and it really helps to get an idea of what they get before they come to me!  The idea of the Mastery classroom was presented, which is being used in the 8th grade science classes.  It was so interesting hearing about how the science classes in the 8th grade are run since I teach so many freshman and they are coming to me next!

The Mastery classroom is one in which each student works at their own pace.  There is very little common instruction.  Basically, the entire year is laid out in a series of learning experiences and formative and summative assessments.  The students work through learning targets, completing checklists of learning opportunites (in the science classroom it can be reading, practice, labs, etc) and then they take formative assessments along the way, which they can retake until they achieve mastery and do not move on until they have.  Then, once they have achieved mastery on all of the learning targets they take a summative asssessment.  Here are some resources that they gave us for info:

• Benjamin Bloom (kind of the father of the idea of Mastery)
• Jonathan Bergman and Aaron Sams--wrote a book "Flipping the Classroom" in which they talked about Mastery
• Kelly Morgan--wrote a book called "Mastery Learning in the Science Classroom"

Teaching in this model requires a TON of prep work.  I imagine it would be extremely difficult for a new teacher to do without a lot of support.  Here are some tips they gave for what has made their lives easier as they have been working through the process:

• Have checklists that match the colors of the assessments (or use a shape/design in the upper right corner)
• Keep bins with the learning opportunities organized
• Use naming that is consistent between the checklist and the learning opportunities
• Make videos of lessons (in a kind of a flipped model) to provide as learning opportunities
• Kids need to have headphones
• For students that fly through the material or if they can show on a pre-assessment that they already know it, have them work on an independent project that they present to the class
• Have a designated testing area in the room
• Provide answer keys for learning opportunities but keep them all in once place that students have to come to to use them and leave the keys there, this is also a no phone zone!
• Have students use peer checks of their notebooks to make sure they have completed the learning opportunities
• Provide "re-learning opportunities" sheets--checklists that list learning opportunities to revisit or other types of remedial learning opportunities for students to go through before they re-test
• Create a test corrections and reflection for students to complete before they re-test in which they list the question they missed, the correct answer, where they found the correct answer, and why they missed it.   Here is a list of the reflection choices they gave the students:  

1. I read the question incorrectly.
2. I misread the answer I selected.
3. I did not read all of the available choices.
4. I did not study this particular topic enough.
5. I need to put more detail into my answer.

6. I did not understand what the question was asking.
7. Other…(If you choose this selection, you must include a detailed written response explaining why you answered the question incorrectly.)

For videos, they mentioned that students prefer if it is your voice on the video and they also like to see your face.  The software they used is called Camtasia, but it apparently costs money!  There is free version called Camstudio.  Here are some other possibililtes:  Tiny Take, SnagIt, Jing, Screencast-o-matic.  They suggested recording a vocal track with each of your powerpoint slides and then making it into a video in Movie Maker, which I thought was pretty brilliant!

Digital Citizenship Resources

Today's workshop was resource share for teaching digital citizenship.   The website we were looking at for resources is Common Sense Media.

This Cyberwyze guide to digital citizenship video (below) gives a good overview of the resources that Common Sense Media has available.

This video is a good intro, but it does not give this site justice!  There is so so much there!  I cannot even begin to explain how thoughtful and robust and visually appealing the resources are.  You have to see it to believe it--so I recommend taking a look around.  Under "Digital Citizenship" you get a drop-down menu where all of the resources are housed.  I especially liked the posters available.  There are a couple of pretty good ones about oversharing and posting appropriate pictures.  When I clicked on this one about oversharing, I noticed it was produced in collaboration with Flocabulary, a site I had never heard of before.  Apparently, Flocabulary is a collection of educational raps (unfortunately it is not free).  The poster looked like it could be the lyrics of a rap, so I did a quick Google search and found the video below that goes along with the poster.

Along these same lines, the facilitator shared with us a simple checklist for students to go through to (hopefully) prevent sharing something they shouldn't:
1.  Would your mother approve?
2.  Could it embarass your grandmother?
3.  Could it hurt you from getting a job?

Just a couple of other tidbits, there is a book "Digital Citizenship in Schools" by Mike Ribble and Gerald Bailey that looks like a good resource.  Also, there is a set of standards called the ISTE standards that have some references to digital citizenship.  I didn't even know there was a set of standards for technology!  Also, Google has a digital citizenship curriculum and a set of curriculum specific to YouTube.  A colleague also brought up an activity through the FBI on digital citizenship.  And finally, I stumbled across this website that has a list of resources.  The Common Sense Media website also has a lot of training on digital citizenship, and you can even become a Certified Educator.

Advanced Google Spreadsheets--Plus integration of Doctopus with Google Classroom

This workshop was highly technical, so I will do the best I can to share resources and techniques I learned!  Bear with me here, this is one that could be very confusing if you haven't spent much time working with Google Sheets, Classroom, and add ons like Doctopus.

Our awesome Google certified instructor Bill showed us an integration of Doctopus and Google spreadsheets.  Doctopus takes some getting used to and I mentioned it in my post on Google Classroom.  There is a video on that post that I think does an excellent job of walking you through how to get started with Doctopus (add on for Google sheets).

One really nice thing about Doctopus that sets it apart from Google Classroom is that Doctopus produces a spreadsheet for each assignment where you have a list of the students, the Google key for their assignment, and a clickable link to that assignment.  But I learned something awesome at this workshop!  You can do this with a Google Classroom assignment as well!  Once you have assigned on Google Classroom, you can go into Doctopus and choose the option "Ingest Google CR assignment."  Then you will be able to choose from a list of all of the assignments you have created in that class to create a spreadsheet for.  You essentially get a slicked up version of this spreadsheet through the interface on Google Classroom when you click on the assignment, but it actually takes two clicks for each assignment instead of the one when you are looking at it from the spreadsheet.  Also, you can use this spreadsheet for what the workshop was really all about--compiling data from student assignments (example used in this class was a rubric) into one neat easy-to-read spreadsheet.

Tip on this:  I was not getting the "Ingest Google CR assignment" option on Doctopus so I did a quick Google search and found this awesome Google+ community for Doctopus.  I was super excited when I saw the blurb from the page below--this just further confirms my theory that if I am having a problem with something, there is probably someone else who has had the same problem and blogged about it.  Now I can be contributing to this wealth of knowledge!  You just have to know how to search (which students need sooo much help with, let me just say).  Just a side note here, look how awesome Google is at recognizing synonyms to search terms.

So anyway, the solution was that your Google Classroom folder has to be named as the default, which is "Classroom."  I had changed the name of the folder to make it faster to find.  But, it looks like Doctopus can still find it if you have the "Classroom" folder nested in another folder.  This is how I got around the naming issue.  I have a folder that I named with asterisks at the beginning so it would be at the top of my list of folders in Drive and put the officially named "Classroom" folder inside that folder.

Now, what Bill was showing us is a project he worked on with the elementary level teachers to create a rubric that the teacher could fill out for each student to grade assignments throughout the semester.  This rubric was shared with the students, distributed through Doctopus, though you could do this with Google Classroom as well (but you CANNOT set permissions for view only--Google classroom will make a copy for each student that they have editing rights to and you would have to manually change the editing rights for each rubric, so Doctopus is a slightly better option at this point for this type of situation).  Each student has their own rubric that they can see and so as you add grades to it, the student is able to see those grades.  Now the really awesome thing is that you can import that data onto a dashboard spreadsheet and see all of the grades at once in one place!  That is the really tricky part.  It involves spreadsheet equations that can seem a little daunting.  Here is the link that Bill created as a quick reference guide, and here is a video tutorial he made for how he set it up in case you want to see the details.  I am going to give you a few notes on the equations that I learned that are good overall notes for using spreadsheet equations when importing data from other spreadsheets.  Here is a sample web address for a Google sheet for reference:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1cLlGCD0HTnuDNgvoUAwPqQKr2nhaudXh7_qRDtkG0Ao/edit

The part highlighted in red is the unique key that is tied to this particular sheet (there is a key for any Google product you have in your drive).  When I list "key" from now on, this is what I am talking about.  You can just copy the key from your address bar when you are in the sheet and paste it into the equation, replacing the word "key" that you see in the equation below.  The key is the way to reference the spreadsheet you want to pull data from into your new dashboard spreadsheet.  Here is the equation for importing.  (For the parts underlined, you enter your own info):

=IMPORTRANGE("key","tab name!firstcell:lastcell")

So if I wanted to import data from the sheet link above, and the information was on the tab labeled "New Roster" and the information started in cell A2 and ended in cell B19, the equation would look like this:

=IMPORTRANGE("1cLlGCD0HTnuDNgvoUAwPqQKr2nhaudXh7_qRDtkG0Ao","New Roster!A2:B19")

Note that for these equations, you will get a REF error and you will need to click the cell and click "Allow Access" before the data will be imported.  To establish your dashboard spreadsheet in the first place, this info would be taken from the assignment spreadsheet that Doctopus produced or that you ingested from Google Classroom.  You would want to start with importing the students' first and last names and they key for each of their assignments.  Once you have this imported, you can use the assignment key as a reference for each student, so just use the cell that holds the key in your formula.  If I wanted to pull data for student Susie Q.'s rubric (let's say her rubric key is listed in cell C2) from the tab we called "Writing" for the average grades (listed in the 7th row on the sheet) for all assignments listed across many columns (ie D-P), my formula would look like this:

=IMPORTRANGE("C2","Writing!D7:P7")

If you are going to do this type of import, it is important that the criteria for the rubric is listed vertically while the part that is filled out is listed horizantally.

Once you have your dashboard set up, you can do conditional formatting to see certain grades as a certain color which is helpful for getting info at a glance.  Bill also showed us how to use Data Validation to get a drop down menu of options for a cell so that filling out the rubric is fast and easy.  (Right click on a cell to get the Data Validation option).  You could have options be 1, 2, 3 and write a note about what the numbers mean (see below).  Or you could have words, but you would need to use some fancy "if, then" equations to do the conversions to numbers if you wanted to get averages.

Now when I hover over the cell, I get the descriptions of the options (top pic below) and when I click on the cell, I get that list of choices (bottom pic below).

That's about it!  I will definitely need some practice with all of this, but there were little tidbits here and there that I can start using right away to make grading more efficient!  My biggest concern is that using both Doctopus and Google classroom will result in the students having multiple folders to try to figure out how to deal with.  As long as you are really clear about where you want students to find what you are pushing out to them, this shouldn't be a problem, and as they get used to the process it will become easier.  I like having the option on Doctopus to choose more permissions for the assignments AND by the way, Doctopus has a differentiation option which allows you to send different assignments to different students, Classroom does not have that option (yet).  

Also don't forget about Goobric.  The Goobric rubrics are not speadsheets and could not be used for integration this way (I don't think... I will have to play around with it) but Goobric is a really awesome way to attach rubrics to student work.  It is an extension for Chrome and is available in the Chrome store.  As I was going back over my notes and working though this post, I came across this video, Google Classroom, Doctopus, Goobric, and Docappender for Self, Peer, and Teacher Assessment.  I haven't watched it yet, but I am going to leave it here to take a look at later!

Google Earth

This workshop was actually specifically about Google Tour Builder, which uses Google Earth.  But, I learned so much about Google Earth in general, this post will be cover ways to use Google Earth in your classroom (including Tour Builder).

If you want to know about all things Googly (as our certified Google instructor Bill puts it) you can follow the Google Educator group in Missouri on Google+.  Bill let us in on this awesome way to keep your finger on the Google pulse.  Bill got to visit Google HQ last summer, and he always knows the latest and greatest things that are happening in the world of Google.  I love his workshops because I always learn about something super new and cool.  In this workshop, it was Google Cardboard.  This is a new virtual reality interface that uses cardboard goggles.  You place a phone in the goggles and through integration with Google Earth, you can go on expeditions.  This is the next up-and-coming thing in Google for Education.  But before we all have access to the goggles... Here is how Google Earth is awesome and can potentially be used in your classroom:

First things first:  probably the most important thing I learned in this workshop is that Google Earth (and therefore Google Tour Builder) works best in Mozilla Firefox.  Umm wut?  I know, it's super weird.  It has to do with the fact that Google updates Chrome so frequently that it can't keep up with itself...  or Earth can't keep up with Chrome... or something like that.  Anyway, just know that even though virtually every other Google process (drive, in particular) works much better in Chrome, Google Earth does not.  So go on and open your dusty old Firefox browser.  And then make sure you have the Google Earth plugin.  And then you will be golden.
~Side note here; I was attempting to download Google Earth to my computer (in order to open KMZ files, I'll get to that in a minute) and had an error with the installation.  After a Google search of the error code, I found that windows has an install/uninstall fixer and it totally works, so try it.~
~Another side note; Because Chrome does not play nicely with Google Earth, Chromebooks are not the best choice.  This would be a good time to use desktops or laptops if you have access to them.  However, Google Earth and Tour Builder WILL work in Chrome.  The visual experience is just much much better in Firefox with the Google Earth plugin.~

Now, a little about Google Earth.  I had no idea all the cool stuff you could find on Google Earth.  We all know about the little cars with the cameras that go around documenting our world for street view.  But there are people with Google camera backpacks hiking, diving into oceans, and walking through museums (just to name a few) getting awesome images for us and they are all just sitting there waiting for us to find them!  Did you know that Google Earth also has maps of the moon and Mars?  One of the first things we did was go to the Google Tour Builder website, and take a look at some samples in the gallery.  This is the one that really amazed me (remember you want to view in Firefox with the Google Earth plugin to get the best experience).  There are pictures in this tour that capture underwater life off the coast of an island.  We are so used to the idea of Google Earth having street view pictures of roads and buildings, but I had no idea that these images were here for us to see.  So I thought--what if I went and looked at the Galapagos Islands?  Would I see wildlife?  No such luck, it hasn't been photographed yet.  But Bill told us you can apply to be a photographer for Google Earth.  If you are going on a trip, you can take a Google camera and document these amazing landscapes and seascapes for them.  This set me on a hunt for other cool things to see.  Really the only good example I found beyond the under water images from the tour I linked to above was one of a herd of elephants that was captured in Chad (coordinates 10.903497 N,19.93229 E).  You can see it at VirtualGlobetrotting, among other things like the inside of the Lourve Museum (well, hey there Mona Lisa)!



Some tips for working with Google Earth; if you are dragging the little man to get street view, go for something highlighted in blue.  These areas are documented so you can actually get a good picture at that level.  Everything else will be zoomed in satellite images.  Use the advanced search settings to look for KML and KMZ files.  You can open these in Google Earth and find some pretty cool stuff that people have created.  There is a way to link them into the Tour Builder, but I was having a bit of trouble with that!  Bill recommended saving the file to your drive and then using the drive link in Tour Builder, but I haven't tried it yet.

In Google Tour Builder, there is a nice feature that you can look at historical images of a location.  Some areas have more historical images than others.  I zeroed in on Greenland, hoping to see an evolution of ice there.  The images went back to the 1930s but I didn't have a lot of luck seeing a drastic difference at the level I was looking.  As I zoomed in, the images available did not go back as far.  When students turn in a Google Tour, they will be essentially sharing it with you through a link.  Bill gave a great tip for students turning in a link--create a form with their name and a box to paste their link.  Then, you will have all of the links together in a spreadsheet.  So smart!  I can definitely use this for other turn-ins when Google Classroom isn't really the best mode.

Here are a few ideas of ways to use Google Tour Builder that my colleague and I came up with:

• Timeline of atomic history
• Timeline of astronomers
• Map locations of nuclear power plants or other types of power plants
• Plot the path of migration of finches from the mainland through the Galapagos Islands
• Map the path of a historically significant group or event (for example, Freedom Riders)
• Show the locations of scenes in a book (for example, all of the stops in Around the World in 80 Days)--there is actually a whole website devoted to this kind of thing, see Google Lit Trips
• Have students map the path they take to get to school and have determine things like distance/displacement, speed/velocity, gas consumption, etc.  Then map everyone in Tour with school as a Hub.  (This one we came up with during a culturally responsive teaching workshop later in the week)

Here are some other links to check out for Google Earth/maps stuff:
Bill's link for our workshop
Google treks
Smarty pins
Geoguesser
Geosettr (create your own Geoguesser game)
Google maps education
Map lessons at Real World Math

Have fun getting Googly!

Google Classroom

I have been using Google Classroom a bit but I haven't used it a ton.  I plan to make a tutorial for getting started with Google Classroom one of these days for any newbies out there, but I will tell you that your school needs to have a Google school account and you need to request access from your administrator for your teacher account before you can even get started.  This post will be more useful for you if you are already using Google Classroom, as I will cover some tips and tricks that I learned for using it.  These are things I learned in the workshop that I did not stumble across on my own while working what little I have with Google Classroom.

First of all, you can look at students' work while they are in progress before they turn it in.  Once the student has created a doc, pres, etc within the assignment you created, a folder will be created in your class folder for that assignment.  All of the files that students have created will be in that folder while they are working and you will have access to them from that folder before they even turn them in.  This is a handy tool to give feedback while students are working.

A follow up to stalking students while they are working... If you have used Doctopus with Goobric before, now they are fully integrated with classroom!  I never used them before because it seemed so complicated to create rosters and assignments.  Classroom makes the process much more streamlined.  This video does a great job of explaining the process:

The video above is extremely helpful in breaking down the process of integrating Goobric (and therefore also Doctopus) with Google Classroom.  Lots of good info and tips in there, so I will not reiterate them here.  Here is one more video with some tips for Google Classroom that are helpful for beginners and one more here that is superr long but probably very informational!

For those of you that are familiar with Flubaroo, it is supposed to work pretty seamlessly with Google Classroom as well.  It is one of those things that I am hoping to start using in the future, but don't know too much about yet.  Basically, it is a way to automate grading for multiple choice questions you create in a Google Form format.

Now, speaking of Google Forms, one of my colleagues had been running into trouble with assigning a Google Form to his students and not getting them to appear as "Done" in Classroom once they have submitted the form.  Forms doesn't really play well with Classroom yet, although they are updating all the time so hopefully this will be fixed in a future update.  One really useful thing that we did at this workshop was join each other's classes as a student so that we could see the student view as well.  This was extremely beneficial and I highly recommend it if you have a colleague that wouldn't mind being a guinea pig for you.  So we played around with forms and it turns out, in order for you as the teacher to see that a student has completed the form through Classroom, the student would have to click the "Mark as done" button.  It sounds simple enough, but to rely on a student remembering to click it once they have completed a form and clicked submit on the form is a losing prospect, if you ask me.  So for now, we will just have to track completion on the report that you get from form submissions, as you have outside of Classroom.

Another application within chrome/drive that is supposed to play nicely with Classroom is called Autocrat, which is an add on for Google Sheets.  This was just mentioned as something to look at, which I haven't really done yet.

One kind of sidestep--have you noticed that Classroom now allows you to save drafts of announcements and assignments?  I love this because it allows me to create something but not "post" it until I am ready.  I didn't really like that I couldn't plan in advance without Classroom pushing out whatever I was working on to students before I was ready.  This is especially annoying when Classroom emails students notifications about anything you post.  It is an awesome feature normally, but becomes frustrating when you get questions from students like "were we supposed to do that assignment for today?" when really you didn't even want them to see it until a certain point during class.  So this issue is no longer an issue!

Here are a couple of features that were mentioned, I stumbled across, etc that were not specifically related to Google Classroom:  First, the facilitator mentioned Read&Write, which is an extension for Google Chrome.  R&W will read text in Google docs and other supported pages aloud.  And it is pretty cool.  Only problem is she told us after we installed it that we only get a 30 day trial.  The cost for an individual license is $100 a year.  BUT guess what!  If you read the info when you install the extension, it mentions that teachers get a free premium account.  Here is the website to register.  We will have to get creative if we want to use it for students who have tests read, etc in their IEPs, if we only have it available on our computers, but it is pretty awesome that they let us have a free account.

Next, I have a colleague who has been using a flipped classroom model for the last school year and has yet to find a system that will allow her to verify that students have watched a video.  We went to a standards based grading workshop last summer where we learned about Blendspace as a way to incorporate interventions within your own classroom (because we got to do what we got to do until there is a systemic change in our building!  See my post on PLC's where I mentioned the way interventions are "supposed" to happen).  With Blendspace, you can create lessons for a group of students to work through independently  while you are working on remediation with others.  On Blendspace, you are supposed to be able to confirm whether students have watched a video.  But, wouldn't it be nice if you could link to a video on Classroom and it were able to track if they actually watched it?  Sure, they can click "Mark as done" but that wouldn't really tell you what you wanted to know.  Let's hassle Google about this feature!  But in the meantime, it got me thinking about a post I had read about a website called Edpuzzle.  It looks like it is an app you can add to Chrome too.  With Edpuzzle, you can use any Youtube video (either your own or someone else's)--you can crop videos, add voice messages at various points, embed questions, and best of all, see which students have watched the videos and even which sections they may have had to re-watch.  It looks pretty awesome, I'm excited to try it!  Here is an overview of its capabilities:

I also got some other ideas for my transition from Moodle to using more of Google Classroom and Sites.  I got to meet a while back with one of our technology specialists for a one on one development about Moodle backup that was really useful  Keep a look out for a post about it in the future and I will include some of my other ideas there.