Google Sheets basics

If you are new to spreadsheets but want to use them for formative assessment data analysis, a Google Sheet might be a good option, and a few basic features in Google Sheets can get you a long way to your goal. Google Sheets let you share data with your course-alike team, since you can work on it simultaneously, or add data from multiple sections to one spreadsheet. Here's a basic cheat sheet for setting up and sharing a Sheet, and a short video covering roughly the same content.

Spreadsheets let you manipulate data through formulas. If you are often looking at the same criteria for different data points, you can set up formulas that recalculate whenever you change or update data (like with a new assessment).  Here's a short tutorial on simple formulas (like "sum" and "average").
At the end of the above cheat sheet is  a list of frequently used formulas, and a short video on how to use them below:

To visualize data, you may want to use conditional formatting, which a tool that allows the formatting of a cell change depending on the value of the cell or the value of a formula. For example, you can have a cell appear in RED only when the value of the cell is less than 80%. This video explains that process in Sheets:

Another way to visualize data is to create a chart or graph (pie, bar or otherwise). This can help you identify trends in student performance or correlations between interventions and achievements. The first part of this video demonstrates how to create a graph: 

Although Google Sheets has additional functionality (and Microsoft Excel has much more), knowing how to share, use formulas, apply conditional formatting and insert charts should cover a lot of basic data analysis for PLCs to plan effective interventions. 

Return of citation tool in Google Docs

In September, Google changed its Research Tool to "Explore", which gave some additional functionality but removed others, most notably the ability to insert a footnote and citation directly into a document for websites and images. (Read more about this here.) Some of that functionality has returned to Explore now. By clicking the quotation mark icon, you will be able to cite the chosen source as a footnote in your chosen style, MLA or APA. Unfortunately it hasn't yet returned for images, but we can continue to hope.

Assessment tools for easy data analysis

If your PLC is working on data analysis after formative assessments, or after summative quizzes or tests, you may want to think about giving assessments that gives you easily-analyzed data in a spreadsheet or even does some analysis for you.

The Quiz feature in Google Forms is useful; you can get a quick read on overall scores and frequently missed questions, or you can use the raw data in the spreadsheet to do your own data analysis or contact students who fall below a specific threshold.

In addition to multiple-choice questions, Google Forms allows you to hand-grade answers that are subjective or free-form. You can also use a grading add-in like Flubaroo to do similar tasks. Check out some additional grading add-ons here.

Many teachers also use GradeCam, which lets you create, print and grade scantron-like multiple-choice assessments using a webcam or document camera, or an app on your smartphone . Everyone at Homestead already has an account established, with your classes and students already entered. Go to https://app.gradecam.com to log in (if you don't remember your password, choose "password help" and await an email, or contact Amity if you are still unsure). GradeCam gives you individual item analysis, the ability to share assessments, release scores to students, or download scores into a spreadsheet for your own data analysis. Check out their easy-to-use tutorials on creating assessments and viewing reports.

You can even grade a Google Doc using a rubric and gather usable data without hand-entering scores or numbers. You can use a basic Google Doc add-on like Orange Slice (read more here) or a more involved but more powerful combination of Doctopus and Goobric. Instructions on how to use Goobric/Doctopus to grade with a rubric can be found here (or check out instructions from another school) And, as usual, you can always ask at the library or check with any of the teachers who are currently using it to grade and give feedback.

Video annotation for students!

Students have been learning to annotate text to gain a deeper understanding of what they read and to create meaningful responses after reading. The same kind of "deep viewing" is possible with video content, and two cool tools make it easy for students to annotate and share video.

VideoAnt is developed by the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Minnesota. It allows you to annotate any YouTube video just by loading the video and clicking to make a note. Students can share it via a URL -- one link to collaborate and one link just to view annotations. Teachers can see students' annotations either within the video or as a list with timestamps to the side of the video. Very easy to use!

ThingLink is another video annotation tool that works much the same way (load a YouTube URL and pause videos to annotate, share via URL) but the annotation must be viewed as part of the video, not as a timestamped list. (ThingLink does allow for image annotation as well.)

Lessons that leverage technology and more

Common Sense Media (which you may know from their digital citizenship modules, or for their reviews of media for young people) also has a large educational section with lots of content on issues like technology's role in formative assessment or digital distractions for students, and a place where teachers can search for and share tech-infused lesson plans in a variety of subjects. For instance, there is an interesting section with video, infographics, downloads and app recommendations for setting up and managing your classroom for device use.

The shared lesson plan structure is also very user-friendly, both for finding already-existing material created by other teachers, or for sharing your own. Here's an example of an interactive lesson about the Electoral College and one about current events and social media using KQED's online platform. It's definitely worth a few minutes to explore!

How to forward emails in FUHSD Gmail accounts

Teachers who are using Google Classroom know that all Classroom notifications and announcements go to students' FUHSD Gmail accounts. This year, student's School Loop contact email is also their FUHSD Gmail account. Unfortunately, not all students check their FUHSD Gmail regularly and may miss important teacher communications. There are a few ways around this. Students can either forward all their FUHSD email to a personal email account, or set up a filter to forward just certain emails.

Here's how to do both. First, add a forwarding address in Gmail. Go to settings by clicking the gear icon and choosing Settings.

 Click the "Forwarding and POP/IMAP" and choose "Add a forwarding address".

Once you've added the email address, a verification message will be sent to the email address you've added. Click the link in the email to verify the new address.

To FORWARD ALL EMAILS, go back to Settings --> Forwarding and select "Forward a copy of incoming mail to". You can choose how to deal with the original emails (best choice is to either keep in the Inbox or to mark copy as read). Click "save changes" and you're done!

If you want to just forward certain emails, you can set up a filter. Click on "create a filter" from the Forwarding tab, or go directly to the Filters tab to do the same. You can filter emails based on criteria like sender, content or subject line. 

Once you've chosen your filter criteria, you can specify what to do with emails that meet those criteria. For this purpose, choose "forward it to" and then select the email address you've added. You can also use this same feature for other actions (like starring emails from specific people or automatically archiving emails on a certain topic). 

Voting using Google Classroom

Google Classroom recently added a small but useful function to its Question feature. In the past, students have been able to give short answers to teacher-posed questions, which could be private responses, or which other students could either see or see and respond. Classroom now gives your the ability to have multiple choice questions --again, where students can either see a summary of responses or where only the teacher can collect answers. This could be a great means for quick classwide formative assessments, but it's likely that many teachers will also deploy this feature as a fast means for taking a class vote.

The Explore tool in G Suite (formerly Google Apps for Education)

At the end of September, Google Apps for Education underwent a change of name to become G Suite for Education. This was mostly a marketing change but there's one notable addition and subtraction in Google Docs, Slides and Sheets. In the lower right corner of any Doc, Slides or Sheet document you'll see the Explore icon (you can also get to there in Docs and Slides through the Tools menu).

Explore opens a sidebar with Google search capability, which allows you to search the web, find and add images, and search your own Drive without leaving the document. In Slides and Sheets, the Explore tool will also make recommendations on design or formatting based on content. In Sheets, you can even use the tool to create formulas and charts or other data visualization.

Unfortunately, the addition of Explore is tempered by the loss of the Research Tool, which had similar functionality in Google Docs but also included the ability to add citations and footnotes directly into a doc. Since it's early days yet, the citation tool may be revived in the future.  

Submitting late work to Google Classroom

Google Classroom has lots of amazing features to streamline workflow and teacher feedback, but it does have some drawbacks or missing features. One potential problem is with work that is submitted late or resubmitted -- there's no notification for teachers to let them know that new work has been turned in. One way around this is to require students to leave a private comment on any work that is submitted late, or that is resubmitted, or for whatever reason needs special review. This creates an email to the teacher that includes both the comment and a link to the assignment for quick review.

Student adding a private comment

Email notification of new submission

You can see more of this at http://alicekeeler.com/2015/11/09/google-classroom-submitting-late-work/

Rewordify to simplify online text

Rewordify is a flexible online tool that teachers and students can use to simplify text and to improve vocabulary. Students can use it to "translate" challenging English by defining difficult vocabulary within the text. Teachers can use it to create vocabulary lists and quizzes from specific texts. It's web-based, so it works on Chromebooks or most phones without issue. You can use it immediately with hard text (without logging in or setting up accounts), or you can set up  teacher and class accounts to create individualized assignments and track student progress. It's easy to modify to suit your needs. Quick and potentially very helpful tool!

Tech for good

I thought this was such a good idea. I'd love to see this start to happen at Homestead.

Make webpages more readable for students with EasyReader

Students who are easily distracted or need some visual supports when reading online may benefit from using the Chrome extension EasyReader. This extension strips out distractions like ads, sidebars or extra images, and allows users to customize the appearance of text (like increase the font or change the color contrast). It's easy to install and use on any device that uses a Chrome browser -- just click the extension, click the section of text you want to read and go.

Mercury News online article

Mercury News article with EasyReader

OverDrive for Homestead!

The Homestead Library is happy to report that we have e-books and audiobooks on offer for students and teachers through our new OverDrive service! It's very easy to use on a variety of devices, like Kindles, smartphones, computers or Chromebooks, just by logging in with the same username and password combination we use for most other on-campus services.

 Right now we have a mixed selection of curriculum titles (like To Kill a Mockingbird, Beowulf and 1984) along with popular titles like Throne of Glass and An Ember in the Ashes. There are also audio and audio-supported curriculum titles in our collection. Please check it out and recommend it to students who might benefit or prefer a e-book version of text. Right now these are single titles while we see what the demand looks like. Explore and let us know what you think!

Google Forms new quiz feature

Google Forms has a new "quiz" feature that allows you to quickly gather and grade data using multiple choice, drop-down or check-box questions. It also gives a really quick snapshot of student results, including frequently missed questions and answer distribution, and has the ability to send immediate responses to students as well.

To use it, create a form as you normally would, then use the Settings icon to make it a quiz. You can add various points values and create an answer key at that point. It's not as robust as using Flubaroo to create and grade online quizzes, but its quick and easy interface makes it a good choice for speedy formative assessments at the beginning or end of classes. For Google's instructions on how to do this, click here.

Setting up a secure password

We often give our students advice on making wise decisions with their passwords (not sharing it, not writing it down, keeping it safe) but often we as teachers do not take the same care with our own password. Here are some guidelines we offer to students in creating their passwords:

1. It should be secure (hard to guess or hack but easy to remember). Most passwords are one or the other.\
2. It should be at least 8 characters in length (more is better).
3. It should have at least 1 number and 1 symbol in addition to letters
4. It should use both upper and lower case letters

One method is to take a word or phrase you can remember and substitute symbols and numbers (such as "0neR1ng2rul$" or "U$Ag0ld-R1O2o16". You can also take the first letters of a memorable phrase or quote and do the same thing (for instance, "Two out of three dentists prefer Crest for whiter teeth" becomes "2oo3DpC4wt"). Extra symbols or letters at the beginning or end can always be added as well (so, #2oo3DpC4wt@@). Some people choose a base password and then add different prefixes or suffixes depending on where the password is being used. Passwords like these are hard to guess or hack but easy to remember.

You may also be interested in a password vault or password manager, which can store, generate and manage multiple passwords for various sites ... but you still need one password to get in, so the above tips should still help.

Taking your Google work with you

For graduating seniors, work that has accumulated in their Google Apps for Education accounts will go away after graduation when their accounts are de-activated. This is also true for teachers who may be leaving the district. But you can take just a few steps to make sure you can hold on to any work you have created. There are two main ways to do it:

By individual document (share and copy)

If you only have a few projects, presentations or papers you’d like to keep, this is the best choice. You can share the document with an outside (personal) Google account, and make a copy of the shared document that will be owned by you. Make sure you make a NEW copy -- if you just share it with your personal account, when the original document goes, so does your shared access.

BENEFITS: You keep the documents in Google format exactly as you created them.

DRAWBACKS: The process must be repeated for every document you want to keep. A short video explaining the process for students (but which applies to teachers as well) can be found here:

http://screencast.com/t/8j4BjdROn

By entire account (Google Takeout)

If you have lots of data, many documents or just want to have an archive of the work you’ve done at Homestead, you can download your entire account using Google Takeout. More information about downloading your data can be found here: https://support.google.com/accounts/ answer/3024190?hl=en

BENEFITS: You can download your entire account with a few clicks.

DRAWBACKS:  The process converts your files to Word, PowerPoint, etc. (it does not keep your documents in Google Docs format). If you want to continue to use your documents with Google Apps, you will need to re-import them to a personal Google account.

To use Google Takeout, go to https://www.google.com/settings/takeout. A short video explaining the process can be found here: https://youtu.be/Xi4NfudYhLo (again, the video explains the process for students but the same applies for teacher accounts).  Ask at the library with any questions.

Tagul.com -- Word Clouds for Chromebooks

Many teachers like to use word clouds either as a teaching tool themselves or as a tool for students to look at and analyze the content or themes of their reading and writing. Unfortunately, many of the most popular tools are not compatible with Chromebooks, which has limited their use in classrooms where most devices are Chromebooks.

Tagul.com is a tool that allows you to create very customized word clouds with ease. It allows single log-on with Google, so it's very compatible with our Google Apps for Education environment. It also lets you customize word choices; choose shapes, colors, fonts and layouts; and download or share in a variety of ways.

Control Alt Achieve has a review of other Chromebook-compatible word cloud generation tools as well as Tagul.

Tech integration training from and with Google

With spring break just moments away and summer around the corner when we return, you may be thinking about some opportunities for professional growth and development. One easy way to both learn and be recognized for how you are currently integrating technology into your curriculum and classroom is through Google for Education training. Google offers free online courses in both Fundamentals and Advanced use of Google Apps specifically in education, from the basics of using Google Drive and Google Classroom to using conditional formatting, charts and pivot tables in Forms to analyze academic trends in student data.

You can complete the entire course, check your skills by "testing out" of subject areas you are already adept in, or just select the specific skill you want to focus on to improve your classroom workflow. If you really get motivated, you can take a certification exam to become a Google Certified Educator at either level (fundamentals or advanced). Have fun exploring!

Chrome extension that supports good digital citizenship

Reword is a new Chrome extension that may help prevent online bullying behavior by drawing a red line through hateful or insulting words or phrases and asking users to reconsider their choices, almost like spell-check. It's a very simple idea but might be the thing that causes a potential harasser to rethink the words and actions they are using. I've tested it on Twitter and Instagram and while it is still in its infancy and doesn't work on all insulting language everywhere, I could see this having a very positive impact.

Here's a link to an NPR article on the subject.

Audio recording and editing

Several teachers are using Chromebooks for in-class audio recording. This can look like traditional voice recording, like voiceovers for multimedia or individual podcasts, but some classrooms are using audio tools to record group conversations for lit circles, foreign language discussions and other kinds of formative assessment tasks. In the past, teachers could only meaningfully hear and assess one group at a time, but with audio recording, both teacher and student participants can archive and retrieve group conversations, brainstorming sessions, and other informal communication. Here are some tools to do it on a Chromebook:

Vocaroo is a web-based tool that uses the device microphone OR a plug-in mic to record audio. It has a single click to record and stop, and then allows you to share a link to the recording in a variety of ways, OR download the recording as an mp3 file to be saved in the student's Google Drive account. Teachers could have students submit the file itself or a link to the file through Google Classroom or School Loop. There's no ability to edit your file -- you are just recording what the microphone hears.


Voice Recorder is the Chrome app of the same simple feature. Students can add this app to their Chrome browser and use it for simple recordings. The only additional feature is the ability to trim the size of recordings.

For more advanced audio edits, TwistedWave is another online audio tool that provides many more features for audio editing, like trimming, effects, etc. It's also available as a Chrome app. You can record directly into the app or upload a file to make edits to it. Free accounts are limited to 5 minutes in length.


Using a USB microphone can greatly improve the quality of the recording and the reduction in ambient noise. The library has a set of 6 omni-directional snowball mics that can pick up the conversation of a group or can focus the audio of an individual speaker. There are many applications of audio recording in the classroom -- have fun with the experimentation!

Google add-ons for writing

Google Docs offers a whole bunch of add-ons to explore that can support and enhance student writing and evaluation, or can just make it more efficient. Here are a few to check out:

First some simple ones that can add efficiency. One is called Change Case, and does exactly that. You can select a block of text and change it from ALL CAPS to Title Case to all lower case to Sentence case and back again. A potentially useful time saver.

Easy Accents is another time saver, especially for students or teachers writing in another language with a primarily Roman alphabet on a Chromebook (which makes simple keystroke combinations a little more difficult than on a laptop or computer). After launching the add-on, users have the accent or symbol they need right at hand as they write.

The Highlight Tool is more involved but also more powerful. Students can establish their own highlight colors and labels, have them on hand in a sidebar, and export them in a document either by color or by sequence. Teachers or collaborators can also share pre-established highlight colors for a group to use together for consistency. For example, teachers could create a set list of highlights labelled with key aspects of writing or research (e.g. thesis, evidence, counterargument, etc.). Students could self- or peer-evaluate using those highlights, export just the highlights into another document and submit it using Google Classroom.

To add, use or manage add-ons, go to the Add-ons menu in any Google Doc and go to Get add-ons (to see what's available) or Manage add-ons (to change or get rid of add-ons you don't use). Once added, you can start using any of your add-ons from that same menu. Enjoy!

Using Revision History to battle procrastination and cheating

Google Docs has a great tool called Revision History that can help teachers look out for the nefarious issue of cheating and the prosaic but pernicious issue of procrastination.
Revision History lets you click through all the changes in a document, along with a timestamp and the person that made the change. You can restore older versions of a document, or just see what changes or progress has been made (and if any large chunks of text were posted or if any other user made contributions). This can corroborate (or disprove) a student that claims to have been working really hard and but not making progress by demonstrating when they've accessed or modified the document.

It's easy to find.

The revision history is grouped into time periods but can be expanded to see individual changes. 

Eric Curts, a Google Education Trainer, has a more detailed post on avoiding and addressing cheating using Google Apps here: http://www.controlaltachieve.com/2016/01/student-cheating-google-apps.html

Gale Opposing Viewpoints database now at HHS!

If you are not yet using Gale Opposing Viewpoints with your classes for research and curriculum support, you may want to explore it. This is the first year that Homestead has subscribed to this database and it has a number of great features for both teachers and students.

Gale has a wide variety of content, from traditional reference to consumer-driven publications to more than 2000 academic journals.

The content is searchable by level, from easy-access (green) to general audience (yellow) up through academic content (red), which makes it accessible for students at a variety of achievement levels.

The content itself is easy to work with. All articles provide persistent links to content, an audio read-aloud feature, direct download to Google Drive, sharing to Google Classroom and a variety of annotation features. The coolest option is the ability to download annotated articles to Google Drive with the annotations intact.

Please explore this fantastic research tool with your students.