Naming versions of Google Docs to keep track of drafts

One powerful thing about using Google Docs for teaching the writing process is the ability to see the revision history of any document. As students make changes, add and delete content, and respond to feedback from teachers and peers, they can return to previous versions of the document. Here's an older post that talks more about that (note that Google has changed "revision history" to "version history" but the rest remains the same).

A more recent feature of Version History is the ability to name specific versions of a document. This doesn't stop all the changes from being tracked; it just allows you to return to one or more specific, important past versions. You might name one "Rough draft", "Revised draft after peer edits", "Revised draft after teacher edits" and then "Final draft". Either the student or the teacher can do this and see the named versions.

Here's how it works:

This is a helpful way for both teacher and student to be able to see improvements over time.

Copying or Printing Google Docs with Comments

If you are using Google Docs with students to give teacher feedback, or as part of a peer-editing process, there are times you will want to either be able to copy or print the doc with all the comments intact. This used to be a headache but it's easier now.

First, Google has recently added the ability to simply copy comments when making a copy of the document. You can choose to share or not with the original collaborators or with others. Here's a short video showing how:

The work-around for printing Google Docs with comments is still to download the document as a Microsoft Word document and print from Word. Although there are a few Chrome extensions that  offer to print Google Docs with comments, I haven't found them reliable. Here's how to to download a Google Doc as a Word file:

Adding, organizing and sharing files in Google Drive

When you create or share Google docs from Google Drive, the organization is easy, but what if you want to add files of a different sort, or quickly organize and share files and folders? Here's a very short video that shows several ways to do that:

NoveList: a tool for finding the perfect book

More and more classes, especially in the English department, are adding independent reading and response to their curriculum this year. Homestead provides access to a tool that can make it much easier for students to find the perfect book for outside reading.

NoveList Plus lets you search for a book in a bunch of different ways; not only by genre, subject or age group, but also by adjectives like "quirky" or "suspenseful".  One of its best features is its "title read-alike" or "author read-alike", which helps students expand beyond the books they've already loved to try something new.

This video shows how to look for "read-alikes" in NoveList:

Using Google Forms and Google Classroom for self-grading quizzes

Using Forms and Classroom for quizzes is getting easier. For a while now, Google Forms has allowed you to create quizzes with multiple choice or short answer options that can give students instant feedback, or allow you to score manually. Here's a short video showing that process (or the written instructions if you prefer):

Now you can also have the grades automatically imported to Google Classroom as part of the assignment. When you post the assignment and add the Google Form, you'll have the option to "enable grade importing". If you select that, when you look at the assignment itself once students have taken the quiz, you'll see an "Import Grades" button. Click that and watch students' scores magically appear in Google Classroom, a very useful trick. 

Remind app for parents and students

At Back to School Night, many of us are looking for ways to be able to more quickly and easily keep parents and students informed and engaged. Remind is an easy-to-use text message app that lets you send text-message group reminders and updates, schedule announcements and see who has seen each message. Lots of parents and students are moving away from email as their primary communication tool and text messages are often more likely to be seen and read. Users sign up for specific invited groups, and Back to School Night is a good time to make that happen for parents.

Check it out here: https://www.remind.com/

Short videos for quick response, conversation and more

Using video can be a welcome change for soliciting student response, either to a teacher prompt or to each other. It can also be a great way to get to know students early on (particularly those who are quiet or reserved, or have difficult-to-pronounce names). Flipgrid is an easy-to-use tool that lets students share, discuss or reflect via video-based discussions. Teachers post prompts or topics, and have control over how they want to moderate or respond to incoming content. Students can use any device (computer, Chromebook or phone) to respond without needing any specific log-on information or account. (Students using phones do need to download the free app.) 

I used it with freshmen during HOP day and in less than 5 minutes I was able to get very short (15-90 second) introductory videos from hundreds of incoming 9th graders and could also share their videos back out with them. It was a great way to start to match names with faces, find out a little about each new student, and hear them say pronounce their names in their own voices. There are tons of other ways this could be used for formative assessment in the classroom, and what student doesn't love to see themselves on camera?

 

Starting the year with Google Classroom

Google Classroom is such an easy way to manage student work, especially when you want to be giving ongoing feedback, and this tool from Ben Cogswell is a really great overview to help get started:

Using and annotating PDFs in Google Drive

Student research can generate lots of paper -- drafts of student work, of course, but also lots and lots of printing of articles, websites, book excerpts and anything else students are expected to annotate as part of their research. Online annotation can be a solution to this, but it requires some thought about how you interact with your documents.

For students who are saving everything as PDFs in their Google Drive, there are two useful solutions. One is to convert PDFs to Google Docs (did you know you can do this?) and then highlight, comment and annotate away. Just right-click on the PDF from Google Drive in a browser window and select Open with --> Google Docs to create a Google Doc with the same name as the PDF.

This works better for files with less formatting but the conversion is pretty good overall.

Another much more robust way to do this is to use a Chrome app called MetaPDF. Go to the Chrome web store to add it as an app. Then you can open PDFs using MetaPDF to highlight and comment directly on the PDF. Changes are all synced to the PDF in your Google Drive. Check out what that looks like here:

(If opening the MetaPDF app on the first use freezes the browser, here's the super-quick solution.) I found this very easy and useful; please share with your students who are looking for an online annotation solution.

Same news content, different reading levels

Being able to read and comprehend informational text across subject areas is an essential part of the
Common Core standards and having the same text content written at different levels can be an important tool for differentiation in the classroom. Teachers have traditionally created their own leveled sets, but there are a number of online tools that can support this. Here are a few that provide current events news articles:

Newsela is the best-known of these tools. They continually update current events and general interest articles on their website and readers can choose the lexile level that is most appropriate to them. The Pro version allows teachers to link assignments to Google Classroom, assign quizzes, provide formative feedback, and track and analyze student progress. Students who are enrolled in the Pro version receive adaptively leveled articles after they've read and been quizzed on several different articles. You can get a free 30-day Pro trial to check out some of the features.

TeenTribune is produced by the Smithsonian, and provides similar content and services as Newsela, but for free! The news articles are leveled and come with quizzes teachers can assign. It's a little less comprehensive than Newsela but does provide some of the student assessment and feedback options without the cost.

News in Levels covers general news at a much more basic level, and without the tracking and data analysis features. It's not updated as frequently as Newsela and is appropriate for beginning English learners.  Breaking News English is similar in nature, with articles listed "harder" and "easier" but still offering leveled content within those articles.  . http://www.breakingnewsenglish.com/ sdfs

Lastly, Front Row is another that has both ELA and Math content where you can monitor student progress (fewer features in the free version), but it doesn't focus on news/current events.





And Rewordify is a pretty innovative tool, for teachers and students, that modifies complex text into easier-to-understand vocabulary, and provides both hard and easier words in a format the reader can choose. Just cut-and-paste (or provide the URL for) the text you want. Teachers can also use the text they select for vocabulary lists, quizzes, and more. It's definitely worth some exploring!
What else are people using?

Making Google Slides more interactive

Google Slides has a little-known "Q&A" feature that allows your audience to post questions during your presentation, allows them to vote on each other's questions, and allows you to keep a history of questions asked.


To start the Q&A feature, go to "present" and choose "presenter view". This launches the Q&A feature (you can also see your speaker notes from this view).


When the Q&A is active, your audience sees a banner across the top of your slides with "Ask a question" and a short URL.

When they go to that site, they'll have the option to either ask a question or vote on a question to be answered.

You as the presenter can either see the questions in real time (in presenter view) or track them via the Q&A History (from the Tools menu). Even if there's no time to take Q&A during your presentation, the Q&A history is saved, so you can go back to it at a later class and answer questions, or tailor the next lesson accordingly. You can also have multiple time-stamped sessions of Q&A if you'd like each class to have their own individual questions.

Check out Teacher Tech for more cool Google Slides features.

Choosing the right tech tools

Technology can often be a great enhancement to a lesson, but not if it's selected just for the sake of using technology. The right tool can make all the difference.

This chart (click to get the full visual) starts with the student learning goal or activity. It then asks some questions about the task (like "is this a collaborative task?" or "is this a quick in-class activity or a longer-term project?") before providing some recommended tech tools for reaching that goal. This chart is intended mostly for laptop or Chromebook users, so it's a good fit for our school, and while there is a range of intended ages within these tools, almost all are high-school appropriate. This comes from the Talk Tech with Me blog which has other great resources as well.



http://talktechwithme.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/Backwards-EdTech-Flow-Chart_2017.pdf

Resources for combating fake news

Many classes are undertaking their second-semester research projects and working on the challenging skill of evaluating sources for their reliability and credibility. But "fake news" presents a new problem in critiquing sources, and with the rise in frequency of false statements by prominent people, fact-checking is even more essential for students and teachers alike. Here are a few reputable sources for checking facts found anywhere from social media shares to national news sources

Politifact.com Winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 2008 for their coverage of that year's election, Politifcat. checks the accuracy of claims by politicians and other political leaders or activists and rates it on the Truth-O-Meter, from "true" to "pants on fire". They have a detailed methodology for their fact-checking listed on their website.

FactCheck.org A project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania. They focus on presidential/candidate statements during election years, on Senate statements during mid-term elections, and on Congressional actions in the off-years. They also detail their fact-checking methodology on their website.

The FactChecker (from the Washington Post). Led by journalist Glenn Kessler, the FactChecker rates political statements from one to four Pinocchios, based on its accuracy, and awards a Gepetto checkmark to the most accurate claims.

This is also a good infographic, from the IFLA:

Differentiation feature in Google Classroom!

Finally, Google Classroom has added a small but mighty feature that allows teachers to select all, some or just one student for each assignment. This lets you specifically differentiate the work you are assigning based on individual student need. If everyone's doing the same thing, no need to change anything. But if you are providing extra support to certain students, or giving others the opportunity to push themselves, now Google Classroom lets you do that. It's also extra helpful when students are working in groups and you are providing different rubrics, resources or other support based on their group. Easy and extra awesome -- and don't forget, you can schedule assignments to post in the future as well! Check it out here: