Google Classroom

Ok, so I am totally late to the party. But I can cope with that. I have been toying with trying Google Classroom for a while now. We have a VLE at school where we have to put our homework assignments, so it seemed kind of redundant for us. But then, this week I changed my mind. I wanted to find out what it was all about.

No guesses about the outcome of course. I loved it.

Why? Well, I loved that my students had to turn in their work. One of the major problems I was having with allowing my year 8s to turn in their work on Google Drive was that I never got it. They would spell my name wrong, or share it with the wrong email address. The email address I use for Google Drive isn't one I can actually get access to, so I never knew. With Classroom they have to turn in their work, and I can hassle the ones who are late in doing so. I can give them a grade that they have to look at, and leave them a comment with suggested targets for next time.

It's Tuesday. I've already used it twice. Already one pupil has asked if he can use it next week. I'd set his class a presentation task on the theme of sacrifice. I usually wouldn't see their presentations, but this time I can have a flick through before they present them and grade them before the rest of the class sees them.

Just in case this doesn't convince you. Here's a handy Youtube Clip with lush music.

Let's Geddit: OK?

Whenever I have been to teachers' conferences they have always spoken about how to assess learning has been accomplished in the lesson. As someone who teachers years 5-8 the often suggestion is to use traffic cones. This suggestion is to allow children to offer a response of red for not understood at all, amber for some good understanding and green for complete knowledge and understanding. While I think this is a good idea, in practice I have never given my pupils three cups of different colours and while I teach lots of different classes; 12 in fact, it has never seemed practical. I was therefore excited to find an online web tool where I can assess the understanding taken from my lessons; Lets Geddit.

The basic premise of this is that the teacher can both set the pupils questions to answer during the lesson and so can assess their learning. But above the question comes a bar char where they can input their level of understanding. This ranges from  being a master to showing some difficulty. You can also just have them just check in. As they do this they can make a comment to you, perhaps asking a question about something they have not yet understood. In this they can access you, without having to ask infront of the class which they might be too nervous to do. My favourite part of it is the hand waving which can be done at any point when your attention is required. All you have to do to use it is sign up, create some classes and then give your students the class code so they can get in too. In that way it works quite a lot like SocrativeI have used it several times; the first time I forgot to turn off my whiteboard. There was one girl who said that she had struggled and she was then embarrassed that this was on the board. But when I spoke to her afterwards she said that she had really liked the chance to express her concerns. She would not have done this if she had not had the software. I used it with a colleague in her class and they really liked it too. In particular it was really lovely to see some of the less able boys saying that they felt like masters. In the evening you get sent a report which summarises pupil responses so you have a chance to look over them once again, hopefully before your next lesson. 
I'm definitely going to continue using Lets Geddit, probably with the years 7 and 8s when we are discussing something difficult and complicated and when I want to get some honest feedback from them about their understanding. 

In my exploration of technology that I would like to start using in my classroom next year I have come across an App called Aurasma. It helps you to use augmented reality in the classroom. This to me, is a new and very exciting concept and I have heaps of ideas of how I will use it. In my excitement I began a little twitter dialogue with someone who was asking me about the difference between doing this and using a QR code. I will be honest, I had not even thought of using QR codes on worksheets and around the classroom but I can see that it would work too, but to me the idea of Aurasma is even more exciting. 

Here are some ideas of what I would like to start doing, (please bear in mind that I teach Religious Studies so my ideas are based around that subject).

1.) When I introduce a new religion and we look at different artifacts after the initial discussion of what the different objects are, have each one linked up to a website with an explanation of them. Then children can then find out if they were right of wrong. I could also get the children to work in groups and then link up the item so that another group could potentially learn from them.

2.) On worksheets have a video on YouTube linked which features a clip of the bible passage that we are studying.

3.) If a text has more complicated words in it I could link up a dictionary definition of the word.

4.) I think there is some scope for gifted and talented pupils having the opportunity to help their peers, by creating links to them.

5.) As I have a classroom which as some interesting artifacts on display all the time I could create some links so children could go around finding out what was displayed. This would work well with a science lab as well I thought, particularly if you were introducing your class to the dangers of a lab for the first time.

While investigating I found a very good blog, which has some fantastic ideas. I love the fact that when I wonder how to do something I can always find someone who has gone before me and has lots of tips and ideas. HOORAY.

I would love to hear your ideas about augmented reality and any ideas of good Apps to use and how to do it well.

A webtool I came across last year was this; Tour Builder a Google Earth plug in. In fact I even explained this when I was at a conference in the demo slam. And I won!! So exciting. I've only used it a couple of times in class, but I do totally love it.

The basic premise of it is that you can create a tour across the world using Google Earth. This can then have different pictures and videos added to come up with an explanation of each stop along the way.

I used mine to create one about the journey that a Muslim will go on if they are doing Hajj. My Tour Builder began at Heathrow aiport and then flew across to Jeddah. There will links to the Ka'baa and the pillars of Jamraat in Mina. It was really easy to make and I loved using all the search boxes to find the pictures I wanted, rather than having to save them and then insert them. You could change the icons for the different places you stopped off at and then in the white box on the side insert detailed information to explain each one, or even link in a video. I did struggle to work out how to put the videos in. That is something I will need to work on as it wasn't quite as straight-forward as linking a youtube clip. 

What I really liked about it was the ability to see the distance that a Muslim will travel, thus realising that a tremendous undertaking it is. The class were seriously impressed by it. At points we could have done with zooming in on the writing, but we were able to make the pictures bigger which was necessary so that everyone could see. My normally not wonderfully behaved class completely lapped it up! I guess I will have to wait till next week to see if they actually understood or took anything in. One boy even said later that the lesson was too fun for him to have learnt anything. I think he did. They'll be a tough answer and question session for us to try out next week....

You can see it here. 

Picking a name out of a hat is boring

Here is something I love - I used to pick out of a jar, or let children answer when they have their hands up. But then, I found this: fruit machine. I think it is very important as a teacher to have good questioning and answering sessions. People who are shy are unlikely to put up their hands and often it is the loudest people who get the chance to share. Previously I have used jam jars with all the names of the class in them, but this is quicker and more effective and I never seem to get round to making my jam jars. This is easy to use and I love the noises it makes when it selects the child. I now need to work out how you can have all the names of different groups saved so you don't need to imput them everytime. 

I'm planning to try it out in a lesson tomorrow with a year 7 class. I have a new teacher coming to observe my lesson and we will be using all manner of different internet based tools; I can't imagine what he'll think. But maybe he'll catch on and I will find a partner in crime. 

Screen Cast

Sometimes when I have met with parents to discuss their child's progress they have said to my that their son or daughter has sometimes expressed a lack of understanding in how to answer the different questions they have to complete in their Religious Studies lessons. This is a completely understandable issue. I have been thinking recently about the concept of flipped learning. By this the learning is done at home in preparation for the lesson and in the lesson instead of doing the teaching you are able to do fun and creative activities in order to demonstrate what has been understood.

I am a little daunted by trying this out, but in my reading one thing which struck me was the importance given to videos as a means through which information could be shared with the class. I have already written about how much I love that here. I thought therefore that it might be sensible to create some videos explaining the different answering structures we use and how they could be deployed. Encouragingly in one of my lessons I said to a class I had made one, and one of the boys in there said he had already watched it. Result. I plan to make some more for each of the different questions so that in homework time I can encourage the classes to watch over the videos as a reminder of what they should be doing.

To do this I used a tool called Screen Cast O-Matic. It's terribly simple; just open it up, pull the recording area to the right amount of your screen and hit record. You can even record a voiceover of you awkwardly explaining something. I am the Queen of Awkward so this of course was right up my alley.

The best Chrome Extensions for teachers.

So I totally do not want to be all over dramatic. But I do feel chrome is like, utterly fantastic. It still amazes me that I can have all these awesome extensions in my toolbar, some of which I use several times a day. Here are a few my life is all te better for:

• Eye Dropper:

This allows you to pick any colour on a webpage and find out the colour value. If you are then designing a webpage, or social media banner you can use consistent colours. Instead of endlessly trying to match the colour by pressing at the right point on the colour circle, you can get the precise one quickly and easily. I showed this to a friend on Saturday who was designing a web banner to match her book cover and she said it was revolutionary.

• Tab Scissors

With this you can cut open your tabs. Then the two tabs will appear next to each other on the screen. I find this so useful in class when we might be looking at a bible passage and I also want to be completing a quiz saved on a webpage. Or I might want to refer to two webpages at the same time.

• Glue

After you have finished with the tabs, use this extension to glue the webpages back together again.

• Save to Google Drive

This saves any webpage you have been looking at to google drive. When I am discussing big ethical issues with my scholarship class such as euthanasia or the just war theory we will look at websites together and then anything good can be saved to the shared Google Drive folder and they can refer back to it when completing essays and preps for me.

• Padlet

I use the webpage Padlet a lot in my classroom in order to collate the opinions of my students. With this extension I can easily see the names of all of my walls and quickly make a new one for the class without having to go to the full page and sign in.

• Save as a PDF

With this I can save any website as a pdf. Super useful if I want to print off easily what is stored on a whole page. Maybe I want them to refer to the stickies we made on Linoit in their homework. Well with this I can do that easily. The PDF quickly downloads to my computer and I can save it on my computer and print it out for them or save it to the VLE. .

• Snippy

This allows you to just save one section of your webpage. So if there was a particularly useful paragraph in an article I was reading on an ethical issue I could snip it and save it to my snippets to print off for class later. So so much easier than saving the whole thing and then cutting out the best bit manually with scissors. I basically don’t even use scissors anymore. Ha.

Well I am sure there are a lot more super cool chrome apps that I do not even know about. Would love to hear which ones you find super useful.

And just a final picture, here are all the chrome extensions I have on my computer in all their beautiful glory.