I absolutely love the collaborative abilities of all the Google apps in the classroom. If I had my choice, my students would work on Google Slides, Docs, and Forms more frequently in my classroom. However, my school doesn't provide students in 5th grade with Google accounts, so I had to come up with a work around. Project: I wanted my students to work on a Slide presentation outlining Chapter 5 in their social studies book. Rather that have one student work on a PowerPoint (ugh) and all the others sit around a "research," I wanted each student to be actively engaged in the project and working on "their part" simultaneously. Problem: As I mentioned earlier, my students don't have school provided Google accounts, so I had to think of a way around this. Possible Solution: At first, I thought I could create usernames for each group and share the password with that group only. The problem is that that group would have access to GMail and I would have to send permission slips home. That seemed to cumbersome for this project. What I discovered...It was at this time that I made a great discovery, or hack if you will. I've been smashing iOS apps for a couple years now to get the results I wanted, so why not try it in on the web? I was going to smash Google Slides and Schoology to create a collaborative, safe environment for the students to work it. First, I created the template (or master) that the students would be customizing. I wanted to make it detailed and give them the instructions in the notes section. That way when they delete the questions, they could still view them in the notes section. After I completed my template, I had to make a copy for each group. This way, each group was getting their own unique link. To do this, I just went into file and make a copy. I changed the name to have their team name in parenthesis. Their team name was made from the ClassCraft groups that I use, but you can have them create team names before you start so that you can name it that way (for your own grading purposes).
This is where Schoology came in to play. I've been using it for about 1 month now after I switched from Edmodo. Students love it, and so do I! I decided I was going to message them their link through the messaging system. It took me roughly 15 minutes to send it out to 60 students, but come tomorrow, they will be able to log into their Schoology account, check their messages, and go to their presentation. Best part: Only their group and students attached in that e-mail can view the link. Also, we can use that e-mail thread as a discussion thread throughout the process to document questions and findings. What Google Hacks have you used in your classroom to do what you want?
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AuthorHere I will keep a journal of different things I have done in my class with some degree of success or failure. It is just important to document why something didn't work as opposed to why something did work. Archives
March 2016
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