Google Sites in the Classroom

Some districts are opening up the use of Google’s web site creation tool, Google Sites. Although they’re Google districts in that they use Google tools such as Classroom and Docs, Sites sometimes can take time for districts to warm up to, citing student privacy concerns and hard to manage what exactly gets posted to the site. Anyway, with some districts using Google Sites now, I thought I’d put together a few ways the digital tool can be used in the classroom.

1. Post student work. Students tend to give a bit more effort if they know their work is going to be published for all to see. You can create a site that’s strictly for sharing student work. You can upload a variety of things from an image, to a video, to a Google Doc. Then, share the site with parents and staff.

2. Keep parents in the loop. Create a site that’s strictly for letting parents and guardians know what’s going on in your classroom. From topics being covered to what the students are working on.

3. Insert a contact form. Use a site that enables parents or guardians to get in touch with you. Insert a Google Form that includes their name, contact information, and why their contacting you.

4. Embed a calendar of classroom and school events. Use a site as a calendar. Insert a calendar that includes school and class upcoming events.

5. Supplement your lessons. Use a site to supplement your lessons. Perhaps you want the students to research or put together a project using only the supplied information. Direct them to your site. Everything’s in one place for them to conduct their research.

6. Keep a classroom blog. The obvious, keep a classroom blog. It can be a personal diary of sorts. It can you reflect on your day and teaching practice.

7. Create a page that explains lessons and provides directions with examples. Use the site to post examples of student work or detailed directions on an assignment. If students have a question about an assignment or want to see a examples, simply direct them to the site.

Google Certified Educator Level 2!

I'm thrilled to announce that I'm a newly-minted Level 2 Google Certified Educator!

Create Staff Community & Collaboration With One Blog, Many Teachers

Student blogging in the classroom is great for many reasons. But, the blog can be great for teachers as well. I'm not talking about a single teacher and a single blog. What I'm talking about is one blog for many teachers! One teacher sets up the blog, then invites the staff to be contributors. And there you have it, a staff blog!

There are two ways to put together a staff blog. One is to have teachers post whenever the mood suits them. You could have a few blog posts a day or if no one wants to get the ball rolling, no blog posts for a week or even longer. It's because of this I prefer the second way, to create a schedule where each teacher posts during a given week. That way, you're guaranteed a post a week.  So, for example, Teacher A posts something in week one, Teacher B posts in week 2 and so on.

The first question you may get when asking teachers to blog is "what should I write about?" The post should be about education, not what their weekend plans are. They can write a post about what they're doing in class and share exemplary student work. Teachers can blog about current events in Edtech or education in general. They can share lesson ideas and best practices.

There are a couple of reasons why blogging in school can be an effective tool. First, it can build a sense of community. Teachers can feel like they're in this together as a staff. They are all part of a blog that represents the staff. Commenting and responding to comments can also build community.

Second, a staff blog can serve as a collaborative professional development activity. Teachers can get lesson ideas and best practice ideas from each other's posts.

So, as you can see, there are many benefits to staff blogging.  So why wait? Get blogging!

10 Ways to Googlefy Your Open House and Back to School Night

The link to an article I wrote that appears on the Whooo's Reading blog.

10 Ways to Googlefy Your Open House and Back to School Night

Plan Lessons and Kahoots to Play in Class With Project Tools

An article I wrote that appears on the Kahoot blog. Click the link to check it out!

Plan lessons and kahoots to play in class with project tools

How To Have A Paperless Classroom

There are many apps for education. The key is to find the select few that fit your needs.  You don’t want to inundate your students with dozens of apps, confusing them as to which app is for what. In the long run, it will be easier for both you and your students if you concentrate on only a few.  Experiment with different apps until you find those that fit your needs. 

As I mentioned in a previous post, there are many reasons to go paperless in your classroom.  There are three categories that apps fit in that will allow you to go paperless.  Choose an app from each of the three categories and your well on your way to having a paperless classroom.

Classroom Management/Distribute Work

First, you need a place where students can retrieve and turn in class work.

Start with a learning management system. An LMS can serve the purpose of collecting and distributing work.  LMS’s such as Google Classroom, Edmodo, Schoology, and Showbie are popular LMS’s that can help with the everyday tasks or running the classroom.  Each learning management system is able to collect and distribute work. Find the one that fits your needs and you’ll find you’re on your way to going all digital!

Student Work

Just because there’s no paper or pencil doesn’t mean there isn’t work to do.  Students still need to get their work done in a digital environment. The following are a few suggestions for apps students can use to get their work done:

Seesaw: A very good all in one student portfolio/online class blog/LMS/student journal.  Seesaw is great for collecting student work and sharing it online via its online class blog functionality.  

Kami: If you use Chromebooks in your class, Kami is a must!  Kami allows for the annotation of PDF documents.  So, you don’t have to thing twice about assigning a PDF document to students because of the inability to type on it.  Students can upload their work to Kami and type away.  Upon completion, they  download their finished work and uploading it to the LMS.

Google Tools: Again, if you’re using Chromebooks, Google tools such as Docs, Sheets, and Slides is a no brainer.  Assigning and turning in Google Docs is easy, especially if you use Google Classroom. 

Nearpod: Nearpod is a fantastic interactive presentation app that allows you to lead your class through an interactive lesson without touching a piece of paper!  Your students can interact with your lesson in a variety of ways, from short answer, to collaborative exercises, to drawing activities.  

Explain Everything: Explain Everything is a digital whiteboard app that allows for the recording of lessons by not only the teacher, but students can also record their work as well.  Want students to explain a concept? Have them use Explain Everything and a stylus (or their finger) to record their answer, then upload it to the class LMS.

Assessment

Out of the multitude of apps that are available to serve as assessment tools, I’ve chosen three that can serve your assessment needs:

Nearpod: Nearpod was mentioned before as a good way for students to show their work.  It’s also is a good assessment tool.  Built into Nearpod is a formative assessment tool where you can craft multiple-choice questions to assess what they’ve learned.  Or, you can use Nearpod as one big formative assessment tool, posing questions using the various interactive question types.

Socrative: Socrative allows teachers to post multiple-choice, true/false, or short answer tests.  The teacher gets real time feedback as far as student scores and test progression.  And, students appreciate how they get immediate feedback either during the test or after.  

Formative: Formative is unique in that there are 1000’s of pre-made “Formatives” to choose from.  Find one that fits your subject and edit it to fit your specific class needs.  Another cool thing about Formative is that it allows you to upload your own document.  Let’s say you’ve got that time tested test you’ve used for years.  No need to come up with something new, upload your document  into Formative and insert places where students can provide the answers to the questions.

Why You Should Go Paperless in your Classroom

Save a tree!

Back in the day, you might find a classroom full of paper. Stacks of extra worksheets on a table. The teachers' desk is stacked high with student work, waiting to be reviewed and graded. There’s another stack waiting to be passed back to students.

The point is, the classroom was drowning in paper. And, unfortunately, this isn’t only a thing of the past. Some classrooms today still resemble the one I described. What makes it worse is that many students are equipped with tech, whether it’s iPads or Chromebooks!

There are a number of reasons to go paperless in your classroom:

1. Remove class clutter. No more stacks of paper in your class, whether it’s on tables or on a Teachers desk.

2. All that waste! Let’s face it, some of that paper, whether it’s student work or extra copies, ends up in the trash. Teachers make a couple extra copies of stuff just in case. Well, if those copies aren’t used, they end up in the great receptacle in the sky.

3. Student returned work is a whole other matter. As teachers, how many times have you passed back student work only to see it in the trash at the end of class?

4. Save time. How much time have you wasted standing in line waiting to use the copy machine? Or, how much time do you use waiting for your copies? If you add it up, probably a lot!

5. Plus, going digital eliminates you wondering if the copy machine even works! We’ve all been there. You go to make copies only to find that the machine is being serviced, out of toner, or just plain broke and is awaiting repair. Going paperless eliminates all of these copy machine nightmares!

6. Going paperless means never having to worry whether or not you’ve made the right amount of copies.

7. Rationing paper is a thing of the past. Some schools provide a case or two of paper for a semester or a year. Some teachers find that with a few weeks to go, they are down to their last ream of paper! Digitizing class work or other handouts will remove this anxiety.

8. Lastly, going paperless means preparing students for the future. Much of what they’ll be doing in their adulthood will be digital. One reason why Chromebooks are so popular is because of all the things that can be done through a browser.