Teacher time-saver alert: You can now import grades from Google Forms Quizzes directly into #GoogleClassroom https://t.co/mD2rXIq96t pic.twitter.com/5vitvpSAHW
— Google For Education (@GoogleForEdu) September 26, 2017
Thanks to Mark Herring for sharing this one on twitter. Amazingly useful for teachers.
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Congratulations to Deborah Hassall for being the first teacher to utilise the new Thinglink school account. We weren't sure how to refer to it, as it's not really a file as such, so we are currently referring to them as "thingie's!!!
Anyway, this activity was for her students to see and learn from. She then in future wants the students to be able to create their own for this activity. Remember to hover over the tags on the photo to find out the information they contain. Many of you will be ready to add some documents to your Appraisal google site. As many of you are now using google documents, I have created instructions specifically to putting google docs onto your appraisal. There are two ways that you can do this.
Embeding a document means you can see the actual document on the Appraisal website page. Where as if you put a link, to view that document you then have to click on the link to open it. In my opinion embeding a document is the best option. It just looks better. If however you are putting a lot of documents onto one page then the links is the better option. The left link is to embed and right right link is to add the document as a link. The following is from the post on the 'Educational Technology and Mobile Learning' website. Kharbach, M. (March 15, 2017). Over 30 Good Infographics for language teachers [Blog post]. Retrieved from (http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2017/03/over-30-good-infographics-for-language.html). Today as we were looking into GrammarCheck tools we discovered this great resource of infographics designed specifically to help enhance students writing. There are over 30 visuals which cover a wide variety of topics including: top 10 grammar errors, how to write better emails, British vs American English, 5 basic rules of American writing, 44 overused words and phrases to be aware of, visual guide to English prepositions and many more. You may want to have a look and see if you want to use any of those materials with your students in class. For the purposes of this post, we have chosen for you a sample infographic from GrammarChekc’s collection. It is titled ’The Visual Guide to English Prepositions part 2/2’. One of the most important things we as teachers know is that our students are pretty smart. I recently overheard a conversation between some year 12 students the other day who were complaining about one of their other teachers. Now as teachers, this happens to us all the time, with the majority of the cases being, well, mostly absolute rubbish! Students who are usually over-reacting or just plainly disliking the teaching style a particular teacher has.
However this conversation continued on to describe how their teacher always just puts the work/notes onto google classroom and that is as much interaction that the teacher has with the students in their lessons. Now while I am sure this isn't entirely true and has some exaggeration to it, it does however bring up an important point about our newfound use of technology as teachers. The point being, that just like the old textbooks, worksheets and dictionaries, any tool even a digital one can be used poorly. Google classroom in itself is a way to manage workflow, documents, share and ask questions, and provide a digital medium for feedback to students. This doesn't mean that our students don't still need us. They in fact need us now more than ever. As we now don't have to writie pages and pages of notes onto the board for students to copy or to write up a list of activities that they must sit and diligently work through in silence. This means we have TIME. One of the most precious things to a teacher is just that, TIME. We have time to talk to our students about the topic we are learning, show our passion for the topic, spark some interest in our students, do more experiments and practical learning activities, ask them questions about what they think, find out how else they might work through a problem, support our low ability students, help our Maori/Pasifika/ESOL students in a way that we never had time to before now and so much more. Google Classroom and etools if used well, gives us TIME. But what we choose to do with that time is up to each one of us. As tempting as it might be, catching up on absences, or emails during our lessons are not the best use of our time in terms of our students learning. So I am keen to know how you use your time in your lessons to best benefit your students. As always sharing is caring and helps us all become better at our craft. Please share your ideas in the comments below. Click on the button below to listen to a podcast (audio) on how Google Classroom can make life a whole lot easier. It covers some of the questions below.
Alice Keeler is a teacher on special assignment at ACEL charter high school, adjunct professor California State University Fresno, Google Certified Teacher, New Media Consortium K12 Ambassador, Microsoft Innovative Educator, curriculum designer, consultant, speaker, presenter. An expert in educational technology Alice innovates instruction through gamification, redesigning classroom space and blended learning. Just a small note, I have only checked out a couple of these myself and as I'm not a maths teacher, I will leave the evaluation of the sites up to those who know far more than me!!
Kharbach, M. (March 18, 2017). An Interesting infographic featuring 20 of the best youtube channels for maths teachers[Blog post]. Retrieved from (http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2017/03/an-interesting-infographic-featuring-20.html). |
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AuthorPlease be aware these are links to other people's work. Most blog entries are written by me unless stated otherwise. I am happy to share all my ideas. |