I've Got a Cart Full of Chromebooks, Part 3: Sharing & Collaborating with Google Drive

At this year's parent open house, lots of moms and dads asked me questions about supplies and notebook setup: Does my son need a 3-ring binder?  How many inches?  What tab labels should my daughter write on her dividers?

The truth is, once we're fully running with our Google accounts and have daily access to our Chromebooks, there might not be enough paper floating around in our classrooms to warrant much fuss about these issues.  Instead, we can set up digital notebooks in Google Drive for organizing all (or almost all) of the work students do each day.

Why Google Drive?
Let's check out the SAMR model for the bigger picture of what we want to do with tech in our classrooms.

If we are to take advantage of what a digital transformation has to offer, then we must move beyond doing traditional work in a digital format.  Additionally, we must offer a more substantial rationale for our tech choices than "It's more fun/engaging for the kids."  The key word is transformation: What learning experiences can we offer our students that we could never pull off without the tech?

I am not suggesting here that everything we do must hit the Redefinition level.  However, we should strive to keep the image above in mind and push ourselves to develop lessons that leverage technology to arm our students with the critical thinking and collaboration skills that members of an active, thoughtful citizenry need.

For that reason, Google Drive is the workhorse of my classroom.  It allows my students to collaborate with one another asynchronously and in real-time, and it gives them a space for working efficiently with collaborators throughout the world, as well.  Drive makes for easy and constant revision and iteration, and I can provide more timely, more human feedback via text and voice comments.  Apps that hook into Drive offer opportunities for multimedia projects, remixes, and mash-ups, and housing their products in a digital space makes the jump to publication much more manageable.

But what about Edmodo?
When I decided to make the switch to housing most of my students' work in Drive, one of the biggest questions I wanted to answer for myself was "What does this offer that Edmodo doesn't?"  The kids know Edmodo and tend to be proficient in using it.  Widespread use throughout our school and system has made parents comfortable with it, as well.  However, Edmodo doesn't offer much to support student collaboration, nor does it play well with other tools.  So while I do use Edmodo still for quick notifications and occasional posting of resources, Drive tends to meet our current needs in ways that Edmodo does not.

How do you set it up?
For our general purposes, I start my students out with two folders:

• a personal class folder they can edit, in which they create their assignments (in our class, we call it their writer's notebook) - each student shares this with me so that we can communicate about their work throughout the year
• a  view-only folder in which I'll place documents they need for their work - students have access to this folder but cannot make changes to documents in it

Step 1 is to make that view-only folder, which I create myself, naming it "[Class Name] Handouts" or some other informative label.  Then I share it with students using the Can View setting.  Students will be able to view all documents I place in this folder but will not be able to change or move them, making it an easy place to deliver electronic handouts.  

See the video below created by the ed tech facilitator for Norfolk Public Schools to guide you through this process with both teacher and student views.  The video also demonstrates how students can make a copy of a document if they do need to place it in their own folder and edit it (i.e.lab reports, templates, etc).

Step 2 requires the students to create the class folders that will house their work for the year.  They make these, naming them using criteria I specify, then they share it with me at my email address, giving me Can Edit rights.  Once they've completed this step, I'll have access to every document they place in the folder.  I can drop in digitally as they work and offer feedback or assess a class's progress without lugging around stacks of notebooks.

Here's a video walk-through of Step 2 from the student perspective.  Please note that, for consistency's sake, you may want to develop folder naming protocol at the school-, grade-, or team-level.

For those who are a little more comfortable with Google tools, there are ways to automate folder setup using Google templates and scripts.  If you're interested in learning more, check out the instructions here.  

Once your folders are up and running, you've got a powerful system for managing student work and a space in which students can collaborate with others both within your building and beyond.  What ideas do you have for using shared folders in Google Drive?  Please share your thoughts in the comments below. 

Check out the first two posts in this series:
Part 1: I've Got a Cart Full of Chromebooks. Now What?
Part 2: HP Pavilion 14 Tour

Laren Hammonds is an 8th grade English teacher at Rock Quarry Middle School.  She's @_clayr_ on Twitter and blogs about her classroom experiences at Game to Learn. 

Work Orders and You

When you come across a computer problem and you need some help, what’s the first thing you do? No, I mean after you swear at it and sigh in disgust. Right, you put in a work order! That’s the signal flare in the sky that tells us you need us to come and take a look at something that isn’t working.

It’s really more than that, though.

Work orders are the way that you can communicate with us about problems that you’re having. When you put in a work order, the more you can tell us, the faster we can get it fixed. I’ve had some experience in elementary schools being referred to as “the computer doctor,” and that’s actually a really good way to look at it.

When you go to the doctor and they ask you what’s wrong, you don’t just say “It hurts.” You tell them what hurts, when it started, what aggravates it, what you’ve done on your own to try to alleviate the pain, any history you may have… all manner of things, right? So sticking with the medical metaphor, let me give you an example.

“I can’t log in.”

Okay, to what? What error message are you getting? Are you on a desktop, laptop, tablet, phone, Chromebook? Novell? iNow? Groupwise? Those are all important details that could help us get you back up and running much faster if we had them.

“I can’t log in to Groupwise. It’s prompting me for a password, but I’ve never had to enter one at school before. None of the passwords I know will work.”

Just from those three sentences, I know that you’re logged in “Computer Only” and that nothing’s going to work quite right for you. That little bit of extra info was all I needed to diagnose exactly what your problem is, and I can immediately respond in the work order and tell you how to fix it, which, for the record, is to log out, click on the “Log in to Novell Network” link, and log back in.

Don’t be afraid to put too much in there. There’s no character limit, and everything helps. Something that you might not think matters might be the exact thing we need to diagnose the problem and get you fixed. Like they used to say on those GI Joe PSAs that ran when I was a kid, “Knowing is half the battle!”

Erik Hammonds is a computer tech for the Tuscaloosa City Schools.

Using Aurasma to illustrate IB learning skills

Our school has launched a Design/Technology course for all students in grades 6-8 this semester in order to meet the requirements for our IB authorization visit, which is approaching quickly (on October 7th and 8th, to be exact).  After learning just a tiny bit about augmented reality and the application, Aurasma, from Robert Mayben this summer at the Tuscaloosa Tech Meet, I discussed using this tool for our authorization visit with the faculty at TMS-M.  I made my own simple aura on my iPhone,  and taped the trigger picture up on the wall. I also used Robert Mayben's trigger pictures/auras to demonstrate the app's potential as a learning tool for our students.  Then, I asked the teachers to download Aurasma on their devices and to follow my channel, TMSM and Robert Mayben's channel.  They walked around the faculty meeting area and hallway, pointing their devices at my makeshift aura "gallery," oohing and ahhhing.... Remember the first time you experienced Aurasma?  As you can imagine, the faculty went nuts, thinking of all the possibilities for the projects that they already do in their classrooms.

At first glance, Aurasma appears to be a super-cool, nifty way to engage students in any subject matter -- and it is.  But educators must be mindful of the extent of the planning and design of their projects when they implement Aurasma as a tech tool. As a previous post on this blog cautions, we must think of the learning outcomes first before we sling a new application at the students and tell them to just "do it" and make it look nice.  What is it, really, that we want the students to come away with at the end of the tech-embedded project?  That's why I was encouraged when the veteran faculty members began to brainstorm ways that Aurasma could enhance the content and learning objectives of their successful projects from years before.  I was also encouraged when the conversation steered in the direction of how we could use the app for the approaching authorization visit from the IB team.  "Why don't we use Aurasma as a touring tool," they asked, "to show what the kids know about IB learning skills?" GREAT IDEA. And so, our first purposeful project in the new Design/Technology class was born.

Lucky for us, the IB course in technology employs the design cycle as the guiding set of objectives and assessment criteria for every project we do.  Let me explain.  The design cycle has six components: investigate, design, plan, create, evaluate, and attitudes in technology.  If executed to fidelity, working with students in guiding them through all six of these components will produce a sound, cohesive product.  For more information on our course, please visit the IB Programme page on the TMSM website.  The Technology Course item is listed on the right side of the IB page.  Our course is also listed on Moodle.  The subject matter/content of our auras, the IB Approaches to Learning skills, are posted on our website and on Moodle as well.  When we are finished with our learning skills auras, they will be posted on our hallway for all visitors to enjoy.

Our purpose and main goal?  If students are given the opportunity to create something by doing (planning, scripting, staging, recording, editing the trigger pictures and overlays), they will view these learning skills as skills for life success. We hope to have them completed by October 4th, so feel free to stop by the Magnet and view our efforts!


Lavanda Wagenheim is the IB Coordinator for the Tuscaloosa Magnet School - Middle.  Connect with her on Twitter, where her handle is @ELavanda.