White Bear Lake Innovation Spotlight.

Today's classrooms look eerily similar to the classrooms that I experienced in my own K-12 education. That's not bad per se. I mean, I know a lot of great people that are products of the traditional, factory-style, approach to teaching. This model is tremendously successful at preparing workers for an industrialized society. 

By and large, today's educational workforce are products of the industrial style of education. We teach learners how we were taught and we don't know what we don't know.

The rub, for me, is that our world has enough adults that show up on time, tie a Double Windsor, and color inside the lines. That doesn't cut it, anymore. We require world changers. Young people that are creative, gritty, well spoken, critical thinkers, innovators, and problem solvers. An approach to teaching that is direct-instruction-centric, with assessment valuing regurgitation of googleable facts, will fall short of our ideals. If we continue to teach the way that we have always taught, then we can expect the same results that we have always got.

What does it mean to equip students to be future ready? In the name of overused clichés, take inspiration from the immortal words of Walter Gretzky, as passed on to the world through his son Wayne: “Skate to where the puck is going, not where it has been.”

If you accept that education would benefit from a makeover, then how do we promote change? Dean Shareski, insightful educational thinker, thought that investing equal parts promoting ideas with highlighting innovation that is happening would be a good start. 

Our district is filled with innovative people, spaces, and ideas. The innovation spotlight highlights innovation worthy of replication.

The first installment showcases Michael 'Mick' McCollough using a Google Forms, Google Docs, and a Google Sheets add-on, AutoCrat, to efficiently create a behavior and effort self-assessment for students used to drive conversations at parent-teacher conferences. 

My next effort highlights Amanda Vernon and the innovative process that Amanda uses to prioritize content mastery in her math class. Her students were so focused on points that they seemingly forgot about the learning. Instead of using homework completion to determine grades, she assessed on whether students could tangibly demonstrate understanding.

Choice Eliminator 2 Add-On + Expeditions Update

Choice Eliminator Google Form Add-On

Choice Eliminator 2 will eliminate options from multiple-choice, dropdown, or checkbox types of question in a Google Form. Choice Eliminator 2 is great for signing up for time slots or having students choose topics without doubling up. Watch the video below for a quick tutorial or contact your digital learning specialist for help.

The basic work flow:

• Create your Google Form.
• Add the Choice Eliminator 2 add-on.
• Configure the Choice Eliminator 2 add-on to eliminate choices after a certain number of responses has been reached for a particular choice. 
• Use the response spreadsheet to see response data.

Update on District Google Expeditions Kits

We are very excited about how many of you are integrating Google Expeditions into your 4 C's lessons. The calendar has become a challenge and so to make sure the kit is where it is supposed to be on the correct days and times, we are asking that you contact your DLS to set up times. You will notice that you can see the calendar but only a DLS can schedule your expedition. Don't let this deter you! Look at the calendar and find a time, let your DLS know what day and time you would like and we will schedule it. Thank you for partnering with us!

#GoogleEDU Tuesday Tips + Google Forms

You can plan events, make a survey or poll, give students a quiz, or collect other information in an easy, streamlined way with Google Forms. You can create a new form from Google Drive or edit one from a preexisting template. Here are three examples and tutorials of ways to use Google Forms in your classroom.

Self Assessment Tutorial & Example

When grouping students for differentiated instruction, use Google Forms to have your students complete a formative self-assessment. This same process could be used to report progress on a long-term project or evaluate their attitude towards learning. 

Election Ballot & Example 

Instead of collecting paper ballots, use Google Forms to tally votes in real time and foster the habit of voting in your classroom. This process could be used for any election, poster contests, or to simply showcase democratic choice.

Logic Branching & Example

Google Forms allows teachers to create sections so that all of the questions are not all on one screen. In some circumstances, the questions do not apply for every student. If you are using a Google Form as a formative assessment you can direct students to a page with instruction on the topic if they get the question wrong or go to the next question if they get the question correct.



Google for Education has introduced, “Tuesday Tips,” a weekly spotlight on Google for Education tools. This is a fantastic new resource from Google for Education. These tips come in the form of a published Google Slide Deck (see links below). So far, they have released tips for Google Expeditions, Google Forms, and Google Classroom. 

Classroom Tips: https://goo.gl/WcJdpp
Expeditions Tips: https://goo.gl/sWtqWC 
Forms Tips: https://goo.gl/f36Hjz 

Form Publisher + Flipgrid One

Form Publisher

Google Forms is a powerful data collection tool, but it does have its limitations. As you may know, the responses to a Google Form are all recorded in a spreadsheet. Working within a spreadsheet is great when you need to do calculations with the data or if the information you are collecting is for a small audience and individual responses don't need to be shared. One of the questions that I am often asked is if there is a way to take the spreadsheet data and turn it into a more useable format. The answer is YES! With Form Publisher, you can create an individual Google Doc, Slides presentation or Google Sheets spreadsheet for each response to your Google Form. These merged documents can automatically be shared back with the respondent or sent to someone else via email.

Form Publisher is an add-on for Google Forms. See the image below to learn how to install add-ons within a Google Form. 

After Form Publisher is installed, click on the puzzle piece in the top right corner of your Form and select 'Form Publisher'. A menu will appear in the bottom right corner of your screen that will walk you through the process of creating your template document, slides presentation or spreadsheet. The video below has more detailed directions. 

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FlipGrid One

Flipgrid is a tool that allows students to submit video responses to a question. This platform, developed by a professor and graduate students from the University of Minnesota, now has a basic free version for all educators.  Check it out here.

Click here to sign-up for your free account.

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Collecting Files With Google Forms + Globally Collaborative PD

Collecting Files With Google Forms

Google Forms just got even more powerful. Users now have the ability to add "File Upload" questions to their Forms to collect things like images, videos, audio files, PDFs or Word files. This addition gives teachers another way to collect student work and check for understanding. This will also be useful for office staff looking to collect files from building staff or parents. 

First, add a "File Upload" question to your Form. Respondents will attach their files when filling out the Form. Files that are submitted are organized within a folder in your Drive and a link to each file is posted in the responses spreadsheet for your Form.  

You can read more detailed information on how this works here.

Education On Air

This weekend Google is hosting Education on Air, an online conference featuring speakers from all over the globe. Tune in to participate in sessions on a range of topics designed for teachers, school leaders and IT professionals. Check out the video below to catch a glimpse of what last year's event was like. 

"Share with and learn from other educators. Hear from inspiring speakers. Get tips and tools to help boost student engagement, collaboration and productivity and in the classroom."

REGISTER HERE

(FREE)

Street View Treks + Google Forms in Classroom

Google Street View Treks

I often dream of being able to fly my students all over the globe to experience my content firsthand. How engaging would it be to see, smell, hear and feel all of the things that we are talking about in class. Unfortunately, there are limitations to our field trip budget so for now I turn to tools like Google Street View Treks as a way to expose kids to the world outside of White Bear Lake. Treks are online experiences that use tools such as 360 degree panoramas, photos, audio narrations and videos to tell the story of a place. They have a growing collection of experiences for you and your students to explore including The Amazon Basin, Galàpagos Islands, Pyramids of Giza and The Great Barrier Reef.

Check out the list of available Street View Treks here and see if there is an experience that would be relevant to your classroom. Even if you can't find an overlap in your curriculum they are pretty cool to check out on your own.

Formative Assessment Forms in Google Classroom

Google Forms are great at doing one thing, collecting data. That's why many teachers are finding Forms to be a useful tool for formative assessment. There are a number of different question types that you can pose to your class to get a sense of where they are at with your content. Assigning these Forms through Google Classroom now allows you to see which students have completed the assessment and who still needs to finish. Follow these steps while assigning a Form in Classroom. 

1. Create a new assignment in one of your classes and give it a title. 
2. Click the Drive icon and search for the Form within your Drive.
3. From the dropdown menu, select all of the classes that you wish to assign the Form to. 
4. Click the 'Assign' button
5. As soon as students get to the end of the Form and submit it, Classroom will automatically show that the student has finished that assignment.

  

Google Slides Templates + Student Gmail Groups + New Google Forms

Templates for Beautiful Google Slides Presentations

Creating a visually appealing Google Slides presentation can take quite awhile if you're starting from scratch. Now you don't have to. Slides Carnival is a website that has templates complete with background images, layouts, fonts, and re-sizable icons. The best part is that they are all free!

I've added all of their templates to this Google Drive folder for you to easily access. After opening the one that you would like to use just click "File" and then "Make a copy" to start crafting your own stunning presentation.

Here is their latest template for Halloween 2015. 

Student Gmail Groups Synced from Skyward

Groups of student email addresses are now automatically generated for every class that is in Skyward.  No more creating email lists for your students in each class.  These can be used to send emails to classes, to enroll students in you Google Classroom classes or push Android and Chrome apps to student accounts.

Here are the steps to finding those addresses (if you prefer a video see below):

1. Go to groups.google.com

2. Click the "My Groups" button

3. Click the "isd624.org" link (under the Red Create New Group button, last one on the right)

4. Open the Group for the class you are looking for

5. Click the "about" link on the right side

6. You will see the address for that group.

100 second video shows all the steps.  https://goo.gl/xTs2zc

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Pushing Android Apps

Pushing Chrome Apps

The New Google Forms

Have you seen the new Google Forms? They just made a few changes including a more simplified design, new themes, and a faster way to view the summary of responses.

Get started with the new version of Forms

You can learn more about the new features here.

Warm-ups With Google Forms + Differentiating News Content for the Classroom

Warm-ups With Google Forms 

Bell ringer, eye opener, lightbulb question... I've heard class warm-ups called many different things. It's no surprise why so many teachers choose to add some sort of warm-up to their class routine. They can help students remember elements from the lesson the day before or be used as a pre-quiz to get a better picture or your students' prior knowledge on a new topic.

If your students have access to a computer, using a single Google Form for all of your warm-ups is an easy way to take this snapshot of student understanding in your classroom.

How-to

1. Create a new form in Google Drive and create two questions, one multiple choice and the other paragraph text.
2. After getting the form looking like you want it, shorten the URL to the form using a service like bit.ly or goo.gl.
3. Students can bookmark the link on their own devices or you can have the short link written somewhere in the room so students can navigate to your form easily.
4. Anytime you want to do a warm-up just post a slide with your multiple choice question or extended response. Students will fill out the generic form.
5. You can now see all of the class responses populating in the spreadsheet that your form will create. Use this information to steer the discussion for the day.

Newsela - Differentiate The News

It is often difficult to find text that is appropriate for all of your student's reading levels. If you teach current events or are looking for some good articles for class, check out Newsela. Newsela is a collection of news articles that is updated daily and each article is offered at 5 different lexile levels. Using this tool allows you to deliver the same content to all students while differentiating for their individual needs. There is also a quiz feature built in so that students can test their understanding of the article.

Turn a Google Document into a Google Form

Turn your Google document...

into a Google Form...

Have a paper test, quiz, or survey that you would like to make into a Google form? GFormIt is a Google document add-on that will allow you to take questions and answers and translate them into a Google form with the first submission of the form being an answer key for grading using another add-on like Flubaroo. Check out this video on GFormIt. 

To use GFormIt...

1. Install GFormIt as an add-on in your Google document.
2. Create questions and answers as with the same format as shown in the video.
3. Run the GFormIt add-on. A link to the form and the form responses will be emailed to you. GFormIt will take your answers as the first submission to create a key for grading with another add-on like Flubaroo.
4. You can edit the form after it is created to change the theme or questions.

Google Educator Certification

This week is the last week of the certification process. This week we are working on the elective lessons and taking the exam. Click here for training page. Remember that you will have to pay $15 to take the exam and will reimbursed for the cost of all of your exams upon completing the certification. If you need any help, please email Cassie or Matt!

Upon completion of the certification click here to submit for reimbursement. You will need to provide links to your receipts and links to your exam certificates. If you choose to do two electives you will be reimbursed $90.00. If you choose to do one elective you will be reimbursed $75.00.