Teaching with Technology

Arranging the timetable for parents evening can be a real hassle in terms of the communication that is involved.   Parents keep asking for times that are taken and cancelling others, often leading to a mass of notes flying backwards and forwards between teacher and parent.  

This year I decided that it would be different…

As normal I sent out the letters asking the parents to state the time that they wanted for the parents evening.  (I suppose that next year I could do this via a GDocs form, but hey ho hindsight is a wonderful thing!)   When the responses came back I set up a GDoc with a simple table in it showing the times that had been booked in the first wave.

I then sent out an email to all the children which included the document so that they could show their parents which times they had been allocated.   One point to note.   I made sure that the parents could only read the document and not contribute to it directly as I could foresee a scenario of people changing appointments etc.  

I asked them to email me if there were any problems with the times and I was quite suprised at how well this system worked as you can see below.

It turned out to be a really efficient method of communication with the parents that saved an awful lot of stress.   The parents really seemed to appreciate the simplicity too.

 AIM: To write a collaborative play script using Google Docs

WHY: Writing using Google Docs should allow the teachers and children to work on the script in their own time without having to be together.

Using the Forms should allow all the children to contribute their ideas to the script.

The children should have a greater ownership of the script if they have contributed to it in a meaningful way.

Teaching the final year of primary / elementary school is a stressful job at the best of times.   There’s the pressure of SAT’s, the emotional strain of the children leaving and then there’s the dreaded ‘Leaver’s Production.’   As time has gone on in my own school this has become a grander and grander affair that consumes the final three weeks of the year.   The results on stage are always outstanding, however the toll on my body / sanity usually less favourable.   This year I decided that I would do something different and try to engage the children a little more in the whole writing aspect.   That’s where Google Docs came in.

The first thing that I decided to do was to get the children’s ideas together and distill the best elements into a script.   I did this by setting up a form that was sent out to all the children to fill in.   I asked them the types of songs they would like to sing, the teachers they would like to embarrass, the theme we should use etc.    

The principle of this was great, the ideas all flooded back into my spreadsheet .   Unfortunately the ideas themselves were to be frank pretty useless.   This, I hasten to add, was due to my own lack of discussion prior to sending the form and not due to the form itself.   In fact I think that this could be a great way of gathering ideas in the future as long as the children get the right input beforehand.   So I was forced to carry on with only my year group partner to help.

What has subsequently occured has been a bit of a revalation.   After our initial meeting to sort out the overall structure of the script we went our seperate ways and worked on individual aspects of the script.

This worked brilliantly, we were able to work on the script in our own time and see the changes that we had each produced.   As a result the script was written more quickly and efficiently than we could have imagined.  

It was extremely helpful to decide beforehand the areas that we would each work on.   This gave us a much clearer focus and stopped any unnecessary ‘creative differences’.   We also used the document as a shared ‘To Do’ list which helped us keep a track of where we were up to organising props etc.   The fact that we didn’t have to be in the same room at the same time was fantastic and made the whole writing of the script a lots less stressful.

One unexpected yet welcome development happened when we published the page to show the children where we were up to.   Once the children have the web address they read the script at home and we were daily inundated with e-mails suggesting plot changes, huge action set pieces etc.   The script became the talk of the playground and generated a huge amount of constructive conversation between the children.   It was with great regret that we had to sideline many of the larger more extravagant ideas, however in terms of the children’s contribution to the script and gaining ownership of the production, it was a fantastic to see. 

  From a starting position of no ideas the children now were debating the relative merits of different ideas.

Further advantages to using Google docs for this script were that the children didn’t all have to have a full copy of the script.   We were able to print them the relevant part, saving a great deal of money on photocopying for the school.   This doesen’t sound like a lot, but in my school every penny counts.  If children wanted to see the whole script they just went online.  Once more using Google Docs ment that if they lost their script they could simply go online and print it off.   No more hassling me a lunchtime for extra scripts!   This fact alone massively reduced my stress levels as the cry of ‘I’ve lost my script’ is one that every teacher dreads.

The curtain has yet to open on the production, but already expectations and excitement levels are high.   One thing is absolutely clear in my mind, allowing children to be part of the organic development of the script has already made it a far better prioduction than it would have been.   The ownership the children have over the script has brought us all closer together as a class.   Now they just have to remember their lines!

LESSONS LEARNT

• Writing the script using Google Docs did make the whole task more managable.
• The use of Forms to gather ideas would have been sucessful if I had put more time into explaining to the children exactly what I had wanted from them.
• Publishing the document even in it’s initial stages allowed the children to watch the script develop and gave them the opportunity to suggest additional ideas. (I don’t think in this case giving editing rights to the children would have maintained the unified ‘feel’ of the script – I could be wrong though.)
• Publishing also allowed the sharing of the script in a simple way that saved resources and money.

This is one that I’ll be doing again.

After the excitement of yesterday and the progress that I made (further enhanced with some collaboration with Tom Barrett)  I decided to have a go at an idea that was buzzing around my head.

AIM: To see if the forms in Google docs can be used to bring pupil’s work together in one place raise standards, speed up pupil’s work and how practical is this for the teacher.

WHY:

• One of the biggest wastes of my time is getting the book, turning to the page, marking (usually writing similar things) would this make the process quicker?
• Pupils often have no way of comparing their own work and work rate to their peers, would seeing others in real time encourage them?
• To find out if allowing the children to collaborate meant a rise in the standard of answers, or simple copying.

This idea was based on the work that Tom has been doing on video with his class and I would encourage you to check out his excellent blog.   First of all I set up a spreadsheet in Google docs and organised a form with questions that related to a video we were watching.   I then showed the children the video and told them that they could make notes as they went along if they wished.   When the video was over I gave the 20min to answer the questions on the form.   Then they submitted it.

Most of the children had got nowhere near finishing the form, so I invited them to share the doc.   This had the advantage then that they could see what they had written compared to their peers and they could also use the ‘discuss’ and IM options.   This I encouraged.   I asked them to then all complete their answers on the shared sheet.

What was really interesting was the ammount of discussion that went on via IM.   I was really suprised, once the children realised that they could shared information the quality of the discussion was raised considerably with children really discussing the finer points.   I was greatly encoulraged by this as it was the first time that we had used this sort of thing.   The most interesting thing was that the children only really asked me questions when there was a point of debate that needed to be settled!

During the hour and a half that we we doing the activity you could have heard a pin drop in the room.   That was not due to lack of conversation via IM though!   Children also started to offer suggestions to each other as to how they could improve their answers.   I also found it interesting to show the children the differences between the informal language of IM and the formal language of the answers that they were being asked to give.

 When the session was over I was left with a spread sheet of all the children’s answers which I could then leave comments on at the end.  This was easy too and really forced me to think about what I was writing.

(Click this to read in detail.)

LESSONS LEARNT:

• I think that this type of exercise is excellent to get children really thinking about the quality of thir answers inrelation to their peers.
• I don’t think that this is something you would do all the time, but is something that really should be used as a different way of engaging children in discussion.
• It did’nt lead to copying, it led to quality debate and disucssion as children had so much informatio to copy from they had to evaluate the best to use in their own way!
• It was good forsome of the ‘lazier’ members of the class to really see just how little they were doing in comparison to thers.
• It made me as a teacher engage with more pupils directly through the discussion and my points were being spread to the whole class not just one or two individuals.
• When marking I had to think really carefully about the work and my comments.

Although it didn’t save me time as such I really feel that the quality that was produced (remember this was the first time we have done it) was impressive.   I also really feel that it provided a different access to comprehension and I’ll definately be doing more of this in the future. 

Whilst messing around today I suddenly thought to myself

“What if you could use the forms in Google docs to set up a spelling test that would mark itself?”

WHY?

• To make life much easier for the teacher and save time marking repeated spelling logs.
• To show any patterns in spelling mistakes.
• To give the teacher more time to teach.
• To allow children at home / absent to take the tests.
• To possibly engage with parents to supervise tests at home and let the child take the test when they are ready and not use school time?

There seemed to be plenty of reasons why I should spend a little time trying it out and to be honest it wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be.   The setting up of the formulae was a little tricky and involved a bit of trial and error, but I got there in the end.

HOW:

1. Open a new spreadsheet and save it.
2. Open three sheets at the bottom.
3. Click on the Share tab and choose fill out a form
4. Write ‘Name’ as the first question then Question 1 etc.   This will put the children’s answers into the first page of the spreadsheet with their names.
5. Rename this this ‘Answers Given’ at the bottom.
6. Create two more sheets.
7. Rename the sheets ‘Results’ and ‘Test Answers’ 
8. NOW THE TRICKY BIT! REMEMBER YOU MIGHT HAVE TO CHANGE THE CELL REFERNCES
9. On the ‘test answers’ sheet write the spelling answers one per cell HORIZONTALLY across.   Then select and drag to fill down the sheet for 30 children or more if needed.
10. On the ‘Results’ sheet in the first column use a fourmula like =’Answers Given’!C1 to copy the NAMES column from your ‘Answers Given’ sheet.  If the name shows up drag the cell down to copy the formula.
11. In the next column put in a formula like this =IF(’Answers Given’!D2=’Test Answers’!A1, “1″, “0″)   This just means if the answer in ‘Answer given’ matches the answer in ‘test answers’ then score it 1 if not 0!
12. Copy across for all the answers.
13. Finally in the last column of the ‘Results’ sheet put Total and put in a formula like =COUNTIF(B2:K2,”1″) This just says add up the previous row if there is a 1 scored
14. SELF MARKING SPELLINGS DONE!

I know that this looks horrific to do, but trust me I’m not very good at these things so if I can do it everybody can.   I’ve trialled it with my class and it really does work!

LESSONS LEARNT

• Google docs can be used in creative ways to help reduce workload.
• Doing this for spellings will allow the teacher to spend much more time on teaching not marking.
• You could also use the embe
• The possibilities of sending out linked exercises etc with the email to support the learning is an exciting possibility.

I’m also looking into other areas where this sort of collated marking could be useful and will post as soom as I have thought it further through.   If you want to see it in action then leave your email and I’ll invite you to have a look.

We had a really successful few lessons recently using shared documents.   The children collaborated on a shared document to find out information about the life of John Lennon.  There was some fantastic stuff going on in the classroom and everyone was totally engaged.   There were of course still frustrating issues with bandwidth / speed but they can be overcome eventually (I hope.)

The biggest drawback – if you can call it that – was that children naturally wanted to get up and see what their partners were doing.   This was great in terms of the speaking and listening that they were engaged in, but not so good in terms of using the application’s features.

Nevertheless this aspect of the project has gone really well overall and the children will only get quicker and more efficient.

Lessons learnt

• Get the children to take responsibility for different sections of the document – this makes things much easier as changes aren’t instant.
• Get the children to choose a colour to write in as this makes it easier for you to see exactly what they have contributed.
• Might work best if children from different classes / schools contributed at different times – this would mean that they had to really use the emails properly and also they would have to read what had been written previously.
• Links between schools studying the same curriculum could be the way forward.

The next part of the project was to try and transfer this information onto a shared time-line.   I got the link to www.dipity.com from Susan T on Twitter.   It’s a fantastic time-line tool that allows you to collaboratively draw a time line.   The thing that I really liked about it was the fact that you could add pictures, map links, video etc to the points on the time-line.

In practical terms for this project when a child found out that ‘Imagine’ was released in 1971 they could then embed the video to show it.   Another example is showing the exact palce on a map where Lennon was born.

Brilliant fun!

Lessons Learnt

• Dipity is a fantastic resource that is really easy to use.
• Really thorough investigation skills are used to find more than just a date.
• Deep Learning experience
• Again better to collaborate with a person who is not online at the same time, or in a different physical space.

Hello the Future!

Inspired by Tom Barrett and his comprehensive blog on using Google docs I decided to have a go at my own project with my year 6 children.

Aim

To use Google docs to create a shared word document relating to our History topic which was post war history through the eyes of John Lennon.

What Happened

First of all I tried to get the children to set up their own Google mail account.   This proved slightly problematic as the children were using 35 wireless laptops routed through the same server.  

After about 13 or so setups the Google server decided that we were some sort of spammers and refused to create anymore accounts until the next day.   This was slightly annoying, but not insurmountable.   Tom got around this problem by buying a domain from Google, but I’m just a cheapskate!

Once the accounts were set up I got all the children to email my account.   By replying to these emails their details were automatically set into my Google contacts.   I then set up a shared spreadsheet with columns for our email addresses and names and invited all the children using the ‘invite contact’ option.   Now the children entered their own emails and names into the shared resource.

I appointed some group leaders who were then asked to set up a document that they would them invite their friends to.

The documents themselves had individual headings in them such as ‘Early life’ ‘The Beatles’ so that the children could work on the same document but in different areas.

I then let them loose! 

Lessons Learned so Far

• Buying or owning a domain would make life a lot easier setting up emails
• Sharing documents wirelessly slows things up hardwire preferable
• In a shared ‘word’ doc you can’t use a chat window, but if you agree one font colour for chat it seems to work well.
• You can leave marking / suggestions in the same way. (I use pink at the top of the doc)
• Takes time to set up, very exciting once it’s going!

I’ll give further updates as I go along!