A useful Googledoc Trick: Force "Copy Document"

Sharing a Googledoc or Googleside in order to have your students work collaboratively is magical. But sometimes, you need them to make a copy of their own, of the document or the slide, to save in their Drive, share with you, and work on, on their own.

You COULD give them very CLEAR instructions for how to make a copy:

...and maybe most students will do it right.... aside from the 1 or 2 who don't read that carefully or don't really understand how to make a copy or WHATEVER.....

        ....and then they fill in your master file and other students copy it and - in short - a big mess.

So in THIS blogpost I want to teach you how to AVOID that.

It's easy.

In one sentence, you copy the link you want to force people to make a copy of, and replace the word in the link that says: "edit", with the word "copy".

This works for Googledocs and slides!

Need more of an explanation? Here is my DOUBLEHEADER tutorial for this week!

And if you are still not sure of how to handle those messages which force you to Copy Document, watch the tutorial that follows.

Hope you find that helpful!

Still got questions? Write me!

And don't forget to subscribe! Here AND to my YouTube Channel!

Digitally yours, 

@dele

Encouraging your Students to Write Creatively

I used to spend hours cutting pictures out of magazines to do this activity, but with the Internet, it's gotten so much easier to find funny, thought-provoking pictures to get your students' creative juices running!  Great for teaching/ practicing writing descriptive essays. 

The following two activities can be done either on Google Classroom (in which case, create a new "Assignment" with the instructions, and set it to  "Make a copy for each student"):

..... or, if you do not have Google Classroom, make a Googledoc that you share with each student on the sharing level of "Can view". Each of them make their own copy, give their Googledoc their name, save it in their Googledocs file and share it with you:

Activity One: Story Sparker for Creative Writing

Stage One:

Teach students the Hamburger Method of organizing a paragraph. There are lots of sites that show this. Here is one as an example. 

Stage Two:

Share the following instructions on Google Classroom (or Googledocs, as explained above):

Choose ONE of these pictures to describe a scene. Copy it to your Googledoc

OR.....

Find your own picture! Paste it in your Googledoc!

YOU are here! Who are you with? Why are you all here? What are you all doing? Describe the scene, write your story from YOUR point of view.

Use adjectives prolifically.

Use adverbs wisely.

Include as many senses as you can (sight/sound/smell/feel/taste)

Stage Three: 

Students have to paste their chosen picture (either from a batch I share with them, being careful to only use pictures that are not limited by copyrights, or they can choose their own and get my approval), and start writing!  (80-100 words  ...or whatever you decide.)

Make it a process-based writing activity, where you add comments, students make corrections and submit again. This is a great opportunity for one-on-one  help, to each student according to their need. 

Activity Two: Collaborative Creative Writing

To be done in a computer room or in a classroom where all students have their own device.

Another use for these pictures is to have each student start their composition, and then after a few minutes ring a bell (you can use and online time app). Each time the bell rings, students all need to stand up and move one computer to their right. They look at the picture on their new computer, read what had been written before, and continue the story. (You can have them add a comment with their name on the section they wrote, if you wish.) 

Continue until each student gets back to their original station. 

July 2017 addition: Another option is to have students share their googledocs with other students. In that way, they don't need to physically move- but I like the idea of physical movement, personally.  

If there is time (or for homework) each student corrects mistakes, and tries to make the final product as cohesive as possible.  Take this opportunity to teach students how to use an online thesaurus  to make their writing more interesting! (Sharing this lesson idea for teaching thesaurus use.)

Do you have any ideas for doing creative writing with your students, using digital pedagogy? Share it here in the comments! 

Want to learn more about using Google Classroom? Come watch the playlist I have put together for this topic on my YouTube channel! (And please subscribe to my blog AND YouTube channel! I wouldn't want you to miss anything! ;-)

Digitally yours,

@dele

BLOG FLASH! Adding a Googledoc to more than one folder

It's summer and I have been ultra-busy doing stuff ASIDE from Digital Pedagogy and English teaching (who knew?! I actually DO have a life!!! ;-)  

I am now busy gearing up for the new school year, in which I plan to get into GOOGLE CLASSROOM! I will keep you updated about that, but while I was doing OTHER stuff, (hint: it's connected to next  year's Google Translate Community Competition... will uncover that when it's ready) I came across something that is REALLY handy. 

So I thought: I'll incorporate a series of short and sweet "Blog Flashes" for when I learn something useful. A "Blog Flash" will not be a regular blog post (which I usually spend quite a bit of time composing and investigating) rather I'll just shoot it off - then can share on Facebook, Google +, Twitter, and it's here for safekeeping!

So here is my first discovery!

I gave a talk at the summer ETAI in Ashkelon about the Google Translate Community Competition. I wrote it up in Googledocs and it was in my Drive in a folder for "ETAI 2016". But I need that data again now, as I prepare for the coming year, and want to be able to access it easily when working on this year's competition. However I ALSO want to leave it in the "ETAI 2016" folder in my Drive. 

I considered just making a copy - but then, any changes I make on one, will not show up in the other. So I Googled my query :-)  and to my joy, found the solution I was looking for, on a site with tech guides called: "Digital Inspiration"!

From Digital Inspiration:

How to Add a File to Multiple Folders in Google Drive

Here’s how you can place existing files or folders inside different multiple folders on Google Drive without making copies of the file.

 Open the Google Drive website in your desktop’s web browser and select one or more files or folders. You can use the Control key on Windows ..... to select non-consecutive files and folders. Now press Shift + Z and you’ll see an “Add to Folder” pop-up....... Next select the folder where you wish to add the selected files and click OK.

 That’s it. You have neither copied nor moved the files to the destination folder, you’ve merely created references or aliases to files inside the other folder. You can use the Shift+Z keyboard shortcut again to add the selected files to any other folders in your Google Drive.

To read the rest of that site, click here. 

I hope you are all as excited about the new school year as I am! (36 years in the classroom and still excited, mostly thanks to the digital age which opened a whole new world for me! Woohoo!!!)

Digitally yours,

@dele

Meaningful Learning: When School and Reality Meet, Continued.

Back in November, I wrote about a writing project I was doing with my students, encouraging them to write about what it was like for them to live through a war. The project was named: "Kids on the Front Lines". Most of my students live very close to the border with the Gaza Strip. Others live farther away, but regardless of their proximity to the violence that reared its ugly head this summer, they all were affected by it, to one extent or another. 

I, myself , found that writing about our lives here, describing my fears, my concerns and the realities of living in a war zone, helped me analyze and digest what was going on. I thought that maybe it would help my students do so, as well. 

By now (January 12th) I have finished uploading all of the reports that they wrote and shared with me on Googledocs.
Out of 31 students, 23 actually completed the process of writing their reports (including comments from me, improving and rewriting using the Googledocs) and gave their permission to post them on CNN iReport.

As a teacher, it was easy for me to keep track of their work and editing, (as long as I filed their original report as soon as it was shared with me, in a folder designated for their reports) thanks to the "Revision History" capability one has in Googledocs.

In conjunction with another project I am doing, I made a webclip explaining my reasons and the process. I am sharing it here, and hope it serves to clarify even further.  

Have any of you out there ever done a similar project? Are you interested in using Googledocs for process writing or CNN iReports for authentic writing? If so, share your ideas here! 

If you have any questions or suggestions, you are always welcomed to contact me!  If you need a tutorial about using Googledocs for process writing, give a yell, I'll make one and do my next blog on it!

Digitally yours,
@dele

Meaningful Learning:When Reality and School Meet

“Meaningful Learning” is the latest buzzword in educational circles - in the Israeli Ministry of Education it is, at least. It can take many shapes and be different in different situations, for different subjects, but it popped up and smacked me in the face on September 1st this year, when I was suddenly - after literally decades of teaching - petrified to go into the classroom.

I live in Israel, in a community situated on the border with the Gaza Strip, and this past summer, for around 60 days, my community was literally a war zone.  Throughout the summer, I remained in my home despite the pleas of family and friends to go someplace safer. I did it for a number of reasons. The most significant of my reasons for staying was that I was able to make a difference by being here. I have lived in this community for almost 40 years, and so I know it very well. As a native English speaker, who does not have any inhibitions speaking to strangers, I found myself fulfilling the role of a war correspondent, literally, giving an average of an interview a day to many of the major tv channels in the US and Europe. And I wrote.

In 2012, when there was the previous flare up of hostilities on the border, I had started to write my eye-witness accounts on a platform called CNN iReport. It is a place where anyone can write about anything they want, and if CNN feel that the item is newsworthy, or compelling for other reasons, they will vet it, and give it wider exposure.  When the current hostilities flared up at the end of June, 2014, I started writing again.

And so my summer went - running for cover, giving interviews, and writing. It was a traumatic time, to say the least, and our community was tragically impacted, with two members of our community being seriously injured, and two more killed. The war ended suddenly, and not very securely, in a tenuous ceasefire on August 26th. Less than a week before school was set to commence.

Usually I spend my summer planning my syllabii for the coming school year, preparing my gradebooks,  and doing different “rituals” that get me set for walking into the classroom with a feeling that I am there to give my students something, enrich them in some way. This summer’s progression left me no time for anything like that. I felt that, after a summer of dealing with life and death issues - literally - on a daily basis, I had nothing of relevance to bring into that classroom with me. I couldn’t get my head around the juxtaposition of depicting life in a war zone, getting our collective voice heard throughout the world, as opposed to going into the classroom to teach a bunch of teenagers (who… let’s face it… would rather be outside chatting up the opposite sex) about grammar and reading comprehension and other EFL issues.

Not to mention the fact that my students, themselves had had no summer vacation, since they, too, live in this area that was under fire. Many of them were taken away from their homes for weeks at a time in order to be in safer environments. Even those who live further away from the border were affected by what was going on this summer. After all, even though there are a certain percentage of them who do not live directly in mortar or rocket range, and were not personally threatened by the possibility of infiltration by terrorists through tunnels that were dug into or near their communities, their school is. They faced the prospects of having to come daily to a school, situated less than 5 kilometers from the border. Although it is reinforced and rocket-safe, they still have to take busses to get to school, and walk from class to class around the campus. In addition, in each of the 6 grade levels in our school, there is either a student who lost one of their fathers, or whose parent or grandparent was one of the seriously wounded.  Not to mention the students who had siblings, parents, neighbors who served in the armed forces during the war of this summer. All of the students in my school were touched by this unreal situation. All of them are affected by it.

I went to speak to a psychologist (one of the many who came to my community to help us come to grips with the realities through which we had lived), to share my concerns of being incapable of going into the classroom, segwaying seemlessly from functioning as war correspondent into EFL teacher.  He gave me some very wise advice: “Bring the war correspondent into class with you.”

So I did.

This is how I came to introduce Twitter into the classroom (not very effectively - yet). This is how I came to set one of their writing tasks as a projects to get them writing about what THEY experienced. Writing throughout the summer not only served a patriotic function, for me. It also served as a way for me to try to get my head around what was going on (sometimes: falling apart) around me.  So I thought: maybe for some of them, writing will serve that function, as well. I am a strong believer in getting one’s voice out there. I have 31 11th grade students who experienced war this summer, most of whom will be joining the military, themselves in two year’s time. They all have voices that deserve to be heard.

I set the task: write about the war of this summer through YOUR eyes. Don’t write only facts and figures. Those are important as well, but anyone can read about that in the newspapers. Write about what you felt, about what it is like for a teenager tp experience what you experienced.  

THis is when we get to the part that is relevant for “Digitally yours”: I told them that what they wrote would not just be seen by me - it would be out there for the world to read. I told them I would publish their reports to CNN iReport.

They started out by writing in the classroom. Their homework was to type up their reports on Googledocs and share them with me, to look for or take a relevant photograph to accompany their report (it HAD to be one that they had taken or had permission to use) and to get their parents to send me an email with permission to publish what they wrote.

The Googledocs have gone back and forth, commenting, suggesting, trying to eek out of them the ability to share what they experienced, what they felt, what they thought and hoped for, all in a foreign language about an emotionally-loaded topic. Not all of them have finished yet. Writing is a process; it takes time and patience. Not all of them agree to publish. That’s fine too. But they ALL have to write something. This is where school ends and reality begins.

I opened up a new CNN iReport account, dedicated to this project. Each morning I upload another student’s report. I use photographs that they give me - and if not, I add my own (I took a lot of pictures this summer). I then “send it out”, not relying on CNN alone, I publish it over Facebook (different professional development groups in which I participate, as well as a group I am in that has Israelis and Palestinians who write about their concerns, experiences and desires for coexistence) and Google +. I tweet it to the world.

I have been in touch with CNN and they seem excited about this project, and are looking for ways to “showcase” it. I am also trying to get other teachers interested in joining the project with their students. From BOTH sides of the border.

On each of the CNN iReport pages, we can see how many people have read the report, how many have shared it and some of the reports have even gotten comments. In these comments, readers thank my students for sharing their impressions, ask questions, encourage. I even received a letter from a teacher in another school in the region, asking permission to bring some of the reports to her class to read them, as part of their lesson.

How wonderful would it be for people around the world to be able to read the impressions of teenagers who are living and growing up in this region? Now I say THAT’s meaningful learning if I ever saw it.   

Here is the link to our project page on CNN iReport:http://goo.gl/FHUkI7 You are invited to read, respond, interact, pass it on. If you have any ideas for getting your kids writing using Googledocs and CNN iReport, please share them here.

Digitally yours,

@dele

Keeping Track of those Grades with a Three Year Follow-Up Page in GoogleDocs

I've written about GoogleDocs before, but this week I want to encourage the use of it for an administrative purpose in schools that have programs which span the length of more than one year, when it is vital to keep clear of records of students’ grades over the years.

In Israeli high schools, students sit for their matriculation exams from the 11th grade (until now - they could begin in the 10th - but in light of new directives, bagrut-fever will be postponed, thankfully ;-).  There is the curriculum for literature, which some schools begin teaching in the 10th grade. High school EFL students also need to read four library books and get graded on the reports they write for them, and do a research project at some point in high school. All of these grades, accrued during the 3 years of high school, are used as part of their yearly grades (sort of buffer grades) when they sit for their matriculation exams.

As a teacher-counselor, I have heard more than my share of horror stories, ending up with the loss of students’ grades: teachers leave the country/ switch schools / leave projects in cars that got stolen . Not only teacher-triggered, foul-ups can also happen when students move during the space of these three years (more often than one would think) and their grades do not always move with them! Even in the simple case of moving from one class level to another during high school can cause records of grades to go astray. It has become harder and harder to reliably keep track of these grades.

A while back I started urging staffs with whom I work, to use a 3 year follow-up page. This entails filling out a page for each student when they are in the 10th grade. On this page, the teacher records all of the grades that need to be saved for their matriculation grades. The teachers were then asked to give these pages to their coordinator at the end of each year and the coordinators were advised to save them all in a large binder.

On the surface, it may seem like annoying bureaucracy. However, really, it is simply responsible professionalism, ensuring that the grades that students earn, are reliably saved and kept to be used when needed. Unfortunately there were teachers who did not fill these pages out, or coordinators who did not collect them. And pieces of paper sometimes get lost. There were additional complications if you wanted to fill out the record in the middle of the year, you would have to go to the coordinator, take all your pages and then remember to bring them back to the coordinator. A misfiling nightmare waiting to happen.

With the inception of GoogleDocs this whole procedure has become  much simpler and more user friendly. I have prepared a template out of the 3 year follow-up page (linked here - or just do a search on Google for “Googledoc templates”, and then write:“3 year follow up” - it will pull up the template I made) . Granted, the first time you fill out a page for each student is tedious, I admit. It makes it easier if you add any information that will be common to all (name of literature text, or teacher name even, for the first time you use it, then each time make a copy and add the student’s name).  But if you save these pages in a folder in an organized manner in your GoogleDrive you can then share the folder with your coordinator. This will enable the coordinator at any point of time to see what a student's situation is regarding these grades. It will also enable the teacher to be able to add grades as work is completed,  be it different pieces of literature or projects or book reports. Or, if the student changes teachers or moves to a different school, you can share it with the new teacher. And no more worries of mis-shelving a form! It’s digital! Just a search in your GoogleDrive and it will be found!

Providing the 3 year follow up pages have been organized into a folder, and the folder has been shared with the English coordinator, if something happens (say,if a teacher leaves, or the student has been  moved from another class) it is much easier to keep track of these important grades and to ensure that they do not go lost.

It is even possible to share each student's file with the students, themselves, so that the students know where they stand. By sharing it with each student, granting them rights to view or comment (NOT edit), they can stay up to date on the grades that are going to seriously impact their final grade.

It takes a while to get used to the idea. It takes some effort, especially at the beginning, but believe me: it is worth it in the long run. It is a responsible, logical, and professional way to keep track of grades and share them with whoever needs to see them.  

Digitally yours,

@dele

Postscript: This is my 15th blog posting. The 10th since resolving to see this as being a weekly responsibility of my job as counselor for ESL and Digital Pedagogy. And I have as many followers (just checked - yep - 15!) I share the blog all over (relevant FB groups, Google +, Twitter, email) and feel sort of pushy with it - like I’m asking for handouts, or running for office. But, in fact, I’m just trying to share my enthusiasm about the helpful digital tools I come across and find convenient and productive. So…. if YOU find this blog of any value, please subscribe! It will be great for my ego ;-) Also, do let me know if there is anything specific you would like to have me write about here!

Getting Excited about Speech-to-Text in Googledocs

My three previous blogs have been about using Googlesites with students for doing project work. I described the procedure that I went through with my students to teach them how to build a site to house their projects. By developing their projects on Googlesites, it enabled me to preserve them online, in one easily accessible place, without the worry of my students misplacing or losing their projects by the time the oral exams roll around in two years’ time, when they will need to present and discuss them with an external examiner.

At the heart of the Googlesites work for the project, are the Googledocs, themselves. I have been using Googledocs for quite a few years now. Ever since being first introduced to them while collaborating with two colleagues who live in different areas of the country, in order to devise a training program for teachers.  Googledocs has the magic of being able not only to crumble walls and cause the constraints of distances to evaporate, it dematerializes barriers that would exist  even if I had been working in the same room as my collaborators. As opposed to  pen-and-paper, or even other word-processor options, a collaborative Googledoc enables all collaborators to write on, edit and annotate the same document at the same time, as talking through our plans.

As if that were not cool enough, Googledocs has just gotten even more magical for me, because I have discovered that I can easily record my text on my tablet or smartphone as I am doing right now for the draft copy of this blog entry. The potential this holds for EFL teaching simply boggles  my mind when I think of the uses that it has for working with my students in the classroom.

I intend to experiment with it using it not only to help my students develop their writing skills but also as a form of objective feedback - a way to help them improve their pronunciation, by using the Googledocs as a non-threatening, non-criticial way of mirroring how clearly they pronounce words and sentences that they want to say in English. The program transcribes what it “hears”. If they pronounce “tree” instead of “three”, Googledocs will write the plant and not the number.

I, myself, use the speech to text options often. I rarely type text messages anymore because it is just so much easier to record them.  If I am out walking and I want to write an email, I will as likely as not, dictate it in gmail on the phone.  However it seems that most English speakers that I know never even consider this option. For Hebrew speakers, the idea is even farther from their minds because speech to text options are nowhere near as good in Hebrew yet as they are in English.

So what am I thinking about using this tool for?

Thanks to the projects that we just finished my students are reasonably proficient in Googledocs, and all but one or two have smartphones. Therefore, what I plan to do is a session on developing their writing skills. I will assign a topic for a composition and then teach them how to dictate into a Googledoc on their smartphones. This will be used as their first draft. They will share it with me and we will be able to conduct process writing using Google Docs.

There's only one glitch that I can see: on the standardized matriculation exams that they will have to pass in two years time, for which they need to hone in on their writing skills, they will not be able to use a computer to write, let alone Googledocs to dictate. Still, in the meantime, maybe this will be a help in teaching them how to compose their thoughts into a few paragraphs while working on their aural skills, as a bonus!

But hey! I see my job not only as a trainer of passing standardized exams. I'm trying to teach them a skill for life.

Have any of you ever tried anything similar? Can you think of any other ways to take advantage of this incredible feature of Googledocs? (Am I the only one getting excited over this? ;-)