Google Classroom Make Google Drive Work For Students

Google Classroom is almost  one-year-old already and it has already made an impact on many classrooms. It is still maturing and being improved, but you may find that it will help you do great things with Google Drive and your students.

We have created a training document that can step a teacher through getting Google Classroom setup to use with students.  You might find it very helpful in getting started on your own:  bit.ly/aisdgclassroom .

Probably the biggest feather in Classroom's hat is that it helps organize documents shared with students.  By sharing documents within assignments, Classroom will place the new document in a folder in the student's folder (created by Classroom) and include the student's name in the document filename.  This standardization will help the teacher to file locations for all students in the class.

Classroom is able to change ownership of student work.  When students Turn In assignments to the teacher, the teacher becomes the owner and can grade/comment on the work. Students can get the paper back to continue editing it, but it again changes the ownership and will be reflected in the Turn In date recorded by Classroom.

There are almost too many ways to share conversations between teacher and student.  Classroom discussions can be shared in the main class stream. Students can comment on the assignment directly to the teacher before turning it in when it is turned in and after it is turned in. 

One of the last updates opened the door to having multiple teachers in one classroom and allows for saving assignments as drafts.  Saving drafts is incredibly valuable since you can pre-create several assignments and publish them when you are ready.

There is much more to Google Classroom.  Check out the training document linked to above or contact Instructional Technology for personalized on-campus training.

Do you have experience with Google Classroom? What worked well for you? What did you have to problem-solve? Share your experience or questions below in the comments.

Safe Video Viewing In The Classroom?

Video used well in the classroom can both engage students and help the teacher express ideas in different ways. Showing the perfect instructional video with Party In Padre ads on the page, however, can be distracting and ruin the points being made.  There are some great tools that work well with YouTube that teachers can take advantage of.

SafeShare.tv is a resource that allows you to not only block the ads, but present the video on the page all by itself.

Choose the color of the border around your video, give the video a new name and even choose beginning and ending points for your safe video.  (We suggest that you don't use SafeShare's download option, but instead use KeepVid to download your YouTube video.

SafeShare.tv provides you with a URL that can be shared with students which presents the video with all of the settings you chose.

KeepVid.com is a different site that lets you download the video to your computer.  The best rule for using video with students is to plan for a busy network and use video from your computer rather than a web-streamed source.  KeepVid gives you options for downloading the video to your computer.

KeepVid provides a box to paste your YouTube link into before clicking the Download button. The result is a list of downloadable files.

The (Video Only) options are just that, videos that include no sound.  Those are actually fantastic resources for some class projects.  For example, have the students drop the video file into WeVideo and provide their own soundtrack that teaches the viewer a lesson!

We have provided an Anchor of Support that steps you through both of these online tools. Check out these Anchors:  SafeShare.tv (bit.ly/aisdsafeshare) and  KeepVid.com (bit.ly/aisdkeepvid)

How would you use these in your classroom? Do you use a different tool for sharing YouTube videos with students?  Leave a comment below to share!

Multiple Google Accounts in One Chrome Browser?

For years now, we've suggested making life more simple by using one browser on your computer for your personal Gmail and a different browser for a work Google account.  With changes made this year in Austin ISD, we're finally able to use the power behind the Chrome browser and manage multiple accounts.

The Issue:
Forgetting to log out of my personal gmail, I may have problems being able to edit School District-only Google Docs.  This occurs most often when teachers are sharing documents and the receiving party doesn't see the docs in their Shared with me folder.

This is a user's personal Gmail account logged into Google.

Clicking the icon shows that this is an AISD Google account. 

Students can quickly see if they are in the student AISD domain.

One Possible Solution:
Described very well for all devices in this Google Support Link,  the Google Chrome browser does a fantastic job of managing different Google IDs within one browser.  The trick is to log more than one user into Chrome.


Click the User button at the top right of the Chrome browser and then click Switch Person.  You can follow the prompts to add your personal Gmail account as a new user in your Chrome browser.

Each user will have their own set of bookmarks, apps, extensions in this browser and the same set will automatically be available on any other computer where the user logs into their Google Chrome user account.

This power is quickly experienced when a user logs into a Chromebook and sees all Chrome apps, bookmarks and extensions already available to them.

With more than one account installed, you can work in your school Google Drive in one window and continue to have your personal Google Gmail and Hangouts running in a different window at the same time.

You can use the People menu to switch back and forth or right-click the name button at the top right of the browser window.


Mobile Devices?
The same Google Support Link above has directions for different computer platforms and devices, including Android, Chromebook and iOS devices.  Learning to manage multiple Google accounts within the Chrome Browser will be a great time-saver and productivity enhancer.

Automagic Copy Command With Google Apps

One reason Google Apps are great for the classroom is because how easy it is to share documents with students.  Teachers sharing documents for students to edit have a few ways to give edit rights. One way shared online by Trevor Beck provides a nice shortcut that works well in some situations.

A Google Draw document I want to share with my students has been shared using the URL:
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1OQ3sL7dTjq4pa8BGOl8wtSXY4jZhyxTVgr0nCdlzhEU/edit?usp=sharing

Notice the word edit near the end of the URL.  Copy the entire URL, but replace the word edit with the word copy.    The new URL:
https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1OQ3sL7dTjq4pa8BGOl8wtSXY4jZhyxTVgr0nCdlzhEU/copy?usp=sharing

Now, when you share this new URL with students, the first thing they see is:

Students have no choice but to make a copy of the shared document and the teacher does not have to worry about students remembering to make a copy first.  Keep in mind, students must be logged into their Google Drive accounts before the copy will take place.

This tip is much less important if the teacher is using Google Classroom, uses group addressing to share or trained students already about File-Make a copy in Google Apps. Still, it's a neat trick.

Google Drive Revision History - A Powerful Tool for Teachers

This is the first of a series of posts on Google Drive features that classroom teachers may find quite valuable.

As a classroom teacher it is not enough to grade an assignment and move on. Why a product misses the mark is as important (if not more so) than the mark itself.

This was a problem I struggled with as a classroom teacher.

Is the work below expectations because I did not present the concepts well? Did the student misunderstand the assignment? Was the project completed in a rush the day before the deadline? The answers to these questions each suggest a different way to help the student and teacher improve.

In the "dark ages" of classroom technology, we used Clarisworks/Appleworks.  Students would bring their printed writing to the writing conference. We would discuss the work. I might make a few suggestions for improvement. The student would work on the revisions and later turn in a revised final draft. It wasn't chiseling on stone tablets but it was Old School. I am certain, but couldn't prove, I frequently received a freshly printed copy without any changes.

I needed a good way to find out the "who, what, when and where" of the project timeline.

• Who contributed (especially important for group assignments)?
• What was contributed, changed, pasted or otherwise added?
• When was is done?
• Where was it done? (This one is easy.)

Teachers and students in Austin ISD now have access to Google Drive and the extensive suite of productivity applications it provides. There are too many features for one post.
I want to highlight the revision history available in most document types.

Revision History shows time stamped changes in the document. It is accessed from the file menu within a document.
File>See revision history

There are several useful features in revision history:

WHO?
Notice that each collaborator is listed with different colored text. Collaboration is a crucial skill but group projects can be difficult to assess. Did everyone contribute or did Vanessa, Diane and Shelley do all the work while Marc and Howard played "Monty Python quotes" and made rude noises? That almost never happens but you get the idea.

WHAT?
Clicking on an entry in the revision history will show the changes made at that time. Did Howard change one word and call it a "revision"? Did Marc paste an entire paragraph without citation? Once again, examples are for illustrative purposes only.
Howard never does revisions. His work is perfect from the first draft.

WHEN?
Every entry in revision history has a time stamp. Now it is easy to tell if an assignment was finished two weeks ago and polished or if it was done start to finish the night before the deadline.

A teacher can easily tell the who, what and when about the work from revision history.

WHERE?
That is easy- anywhere there is internet. Google Drive is available on the internet 24/7, no software to install and nothing to buy. A device with a browser and an internet connection is all that is needed to use it.