I've been using Google Apps myself and with my after-school GATE students since I first "met" them. One of my challenges is to consider how to introduce colleagues to Google Apps, and how to make them applicable to use with students.
A recent thread in a group trying to solve a colleague's challenge made me think of forms. While the process of creating forms seems to be the least collaborative, I think they are very easy AND can help to gather information quickly. They can even be used for grading tests, which I hadn't even considered before my training in October.
Today, I created forms for my students to access from a web address. The purpose of the form was to gather students' comments about peers' projects, and recommendation for inclusion into our first annual film festival. I simply asked for the feedback, listing each of the participating students, and then had students fill out the form.
Challenges: I wanted to easily duplicate a form and make changes to it, and I didn't see that process easily. I did it once, and then found it more efficient to just start over. I need to get that working better. I also found that I got confused between WHICH URLs I was using, since different ones refer to the form itself that the students will fill out or to the results I receive. I will get better about this.
The easy thing would be that students could access a form embedded in a teacher web page from school or home. Homework would look very different, won't it, if students didn't have to turn in anything, and could even access their work from the school library or home computer. Grading spelling (my most hated task as an English teacher) would be a breeze!
I did share the results with a colleague, and we both saw huge potential for improving teacher efficiency and for gathering instant feedback while in the computer lab, whether for a class-wide test/quiz or other. We also saw the benefit to all of the results being printed on one or two pieces of paper per class, rather than a page for each student. My next steps will be to gather examples of forms used so that we can get ideas.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Sunday, February 26, 2012
G-Mail? E-Mail? MX What? Accounts?
I have successfully set up g-mail accounts that I can mail FROM, but not TO. Apparently, this will require configuration through the domain name service provider, which is not an account I have access to at this time.
In my first "background" post, I mentioned a question about MX records, since that's how we can set up the e-mail to come in. I appreciated the response posted, but was limited by my access to the provider control panel. It SHOULD be easy, right?
While I do have admin access to the Google part of our domain, I don't have access to the control panel through our provider. I sent the following link to our district admin, with the hope that he'll be able to set up whatever it is that needs to be done: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33352
So why do we need to have g-mail access if we already have our district e-mail? Well, at this point, I don't want the pilot group, including me, to be limited as we explore how we're going to get our Google Apps implemented. We may decide later that we can use our non-gmail accounts successfully, but my experience with Google Apps is that it's much more complicated to use other e-mails to access them.
At this point, we also don't have district permission to set up student accounts. Our district admins are consulting with legal about how we can best handle this.
In researching, I saw a permission letter to parents where a teacher had set up student accounts, but not e-mail accounts, for her students. I will be interested in seeing if that's a viable option for us, if we can't do the e-mail.
The district near us did a complete Google Apps implementation, including e-mail. It was wonderful, as a parent, to watch my daughter sign on to her G-mail account, pull up a form posted by her teacher, and then follow a link to a video posted by the teacher about the topic taught in class that morning. She was then expected to comment on the video, which gave the teacher a record of her watching it, along with a time-stamp of the comment. Beautiful! No more "That's not how my teacher taught it!" arguments at home, because we could see together exactly how the teacher taught the concept. No excuses from the student that she did the work but didn't remember to bring it, because there was a date/time stamp for the comment, and if the student didn't actually watch, it was her responsibility, not the teacher's. I envision those options as "down the line" goals, and certainly understand that the teacher has been piloting the options for her district, too.
I am looking forward to adding more users in the future. Here's the link for requesting more user accounts, so I will store it here for future access.
http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1625803
Hmmm... next steps?
In my first "background" post, I mentioned a question about MX records, since that's how we can set up the e-mail to come in. I appreciated the response posted, but was limited by my access to the provider control panel. It SHOULD be easy, right?
While I do have admin access to the Google part of our domain, I don't have access to the control panel through our provider. I sent the following link to our district admin, with the hope that he'll be able to set up whatever it is that needs to be done: http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=33352
So why do we need to have g-mail access if we already have our district e-mail? Well, at this point, I don't want the pilot group, including me, to be limited as we explore how we're going to get our Google Apps implemented. We may decide later that we can use our non-gmail accounts successfully, but my experience with Google Apps is that it's much more complicated to use other e-mails to access them.
At this point, we also don't have district permission to set up student accounts. Our district admins are consulting with legal about how we can best handle this.
In researching, I saw a permission letter to parents where a teacher had set up student accounts, but not e-mail accounts, for her students. I will be interested in seeing if that's a viable option for us, if we can't do the e-mail.
The district near us did a complete Google Apps implementation, including e-mail. It was wonderful, as a parent, to watch my daughter sign on to her G-mail account, pull up a form posted by her teacher, and then follow a link to a video posted by the teacher about the topic taught in class that morning. She was then expected to comment on the video, which gave the teacher a record of her watching it, along with a time-stamp of the comment. Beautiful! No more "That's not how my teacher taught it!" arguments at home, because we could see together exactly how the teacher taught the concept. No excuses from the student that she did the work but didn't remember to bring it, because there was a date/time stamp for the comment, and if the student didn't actually watch, it was her responsibility, not the teacher's. I envision those options as "down the line" goals, and certainly understand that the teacher has been piloting the options for her district, too.
I am looking forward to adding more users in the future. Here's the link for requesting more user accounts, so I will store it here for future access.
http://support.google.com/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1625803
Hmmm... next steps?
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Waiting...
After last week's triumph of getting our domain name, I've been stuck.
I have been waiting for our site to get access to Google Apps for Education. I think there was a bit of confusion between my district admin and me about this process. I thought I was supposed to wait for the application to be reviewed. After a week, however, I realized the application hadn't actually gone in. I visited http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/edu/get_apps.html, and submitted the request.
Early this morning, I received an e-mail from Liz at Google, who explained that I needed to turn OFF Google+ (didn't even know it was on!), and then they'd get me started.
Here's the information she sent (for the next people who are going to try this):
In the Google Apps administrator control panel, make sure that Google+ is not available or turned “off”. You can learn more about enabling/disabling Google+ in this Help Center article http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1631746&topic=1631857
I was able to do that easily, and wrote her back. Within a few minutes, I received the e-mail saying that we now have Google Apps for Education.
As it happens, I am in the middle of a bunch of "pilots" and equipment trials at our school. This project, along with the others, needs to be rolled out carefully, so that we really are focusing on ways to enhance student learning and achievement, and not just implementing "cool" or "easy". I've been collecting reference sites, and welcome comments sharing favorite sites as well. I would love to have subject specific sites (for middle school), as well as general use sites.
Thanks!
I have been waiting for our site to get access to Google Apps for Education. I think there was a bit of confusion between my district admin and me about this process. I thought I was supposed to wait for the application to be reviewed. After a week, however, I realized the application hadn't actually gone in. I visited http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/edu/get_apps.html, and submitted the request.
Early this morning, I received an e-mail from Liz at Google, who explained that I needed to turn OFF Google+ (didn't even know it was on!), and then they'd get me started.
Here's the information she sent (for the next people who are going to try this):
In the Google Apps administrator control panel, make sure that Google+ is not available or turned “off”. You can learn more about enabling/disabling Google+ in this Help Center article http://www.google.com/support/a/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1631746&topic=1631857
I was able to do that easily, and wrote her back. Within a few minutes, I received the e-mail saying that we now have Google Apps for Education.
As it happens, I am in the middle of a bunch of "pilots" and equipment trials at our school. This project, along with the others, needs to be rolled out carefully, so that we really are focusing on ways to enhance student learning and achievement, and not just implementing "cool" or "easy". I've been collecting reference sites, and welcome comments sharing favorite sites as well. I would love to have subject specific sites (for middle school), as well as general use sites.
Thanks!
Tuesday, February 14, 2012
Background
Background... the boring stuff!
In 2007, I attended a hands-on session at EBCUE's Cool Tools on using Google Tools in the classroom. It was presented by Chris Walsh, one of my favorite leaders in EdTech. I attended his presentation again while at the CUE conference later in the year, and was very excited about the possibilities. However, implementing this was a challenge. I tried several things, but ran into "roadblocks". There were issues with student access, for example.
I did step forward with the after school GATE program, however, once I switched to teaching middle school. I set up e-mail addresses for each of the participating students, and taught them a few basics. Then I got out of the way. The students were collaborating across the room, creating documents and slideshows, and I just got to watch it all happen. I was hooked. The students continued to work from home, sharing their projects with me and excitedly looking for feedback and extension ideas. I just couldn't seem to make it happen with my larger groups of students, which was disappointing. We did other types of collaboration, of course, using a wonderful program called Thinkquest. But it wasn't quite the same.
In 2010, I was excited to see another training offered, but even though I was willing to pay, I wasn't able to attend per my new administrator. I was determined to attend in 2011, and I did, along with another colleague. This time, I was at Northern California CUE (if you're not familiar with CUE, you should get familiar!) and got to see some great presenters in action (Alice Keeler and Dave Childres are two who come to mind). Once they began talking about getting a school domain for Google Tools, I knew what needed to happen. I sent my principal an e-mail, and he forwarded it to my district administrators right then and there. The conversation began. My principal was fully on board and ready to support whatever my colleague and I wanted to implement, knowing that we would focus on student access and achievement as the ultimate goals of this project.
In the meantime, the high school my daughter attends implemented Google accounts, and each student was assigned an account. I was so jealous! Watching her log on from home to see a video or worksheet her teacher had posted into their shared Google space was rewarding from a mom's point of view, and envy-making from my tech-teacher point of view! (Can you see the drool through your screen?) When meeting with County technology personnel, I was told that my child's district had implemented Google district-wide, and that the roll-out was very well thought out and implemented systematically.
Again, I started to pester people, referring them to the smaller district that had done a full implementation. I was simply asking for one site as a pilot! They were cautious, as we would hope and expect. They wanted to make sure that we had the correct permissions in place, legal concerns addressed, etc. My Assistant Superintendent was on board, after meeting with our principal, but we still weren't communicating in all the right ways. Ultimately, I agreed that we wouldn't start with student accounts, and that my principal would continue to work with admin to get those permissions in place. I would start with a core group of teachers to develop the backbone of what we wanted to do.
Last Thursday, I got to pick our domain name. Yippee!!! We now owned VVMS.org, which Joe at the district obtained for us. As of Friday, it was verified through Google, so we could begin setting up accounts. We are not yet verified as a school, so we don't have access to the education-based sites quite yet. We are currently in something of a limbo-land, which may take a few days to work through.
I spent the weekend setting up my pilot group (principal, core teacher, science teacher, math teacher, and me) with accounts, and playing with e-mails. Joe, in charge of tech at the district, is also a part of this team. As I have tried to do different things, he's responded quickly by letting me know what idea I have works, and what doesn't.
The purpose of this blog is to journal this journey so that we can gather suggestions from others AND know later how to support others at the beginning of their journey too. We're going to make many mistakes, but we're going to have some fabulous, exciting successes.
Thoughts/questions at this moment:
How to open Blogger on the new domain
How to get the MX records thing working so that we can receive e-mail as well as send it
When will we be able to use the Google Apps for Ed, and not see all the business ads, etc.
What next? So many ideas... where to start!
In 2007, I attended a hands-on session at EBCUE's Cool Tools on using Google Tools in the classroom. It was presented by Chris Walsh, one of my favorite leaders in EdTech. I attended his presentation again while at the CUE conference later in the year, and was very excited about the possibilities. However, implementing this was a challenge. I tried several things, but ran into "roadblocks". There were issues with student access, for example.
I did step forward with the after school GATE program, however, once I switched to teaching middle school. I set up e-mail addresses for each of the participating students, and taught them a few basics. Then I got out of the way. The students were collaborating across the room, creating documents and slideshows, and I just got to watch it all happen. I was hooked. The students continued to work from home, sharing their projects with me and excitedly looking for feedback and extension ideas. I just couldn't seem to make it happen with my larger groups of students, which was disappointing. We did other types of collaboration, of course, using a wonderful program called Thinkquest. But it wasn't quite the same.
In 2010, I was excited to see another training offered, but even though I was willing to pay, I wasn't able to attend per my new administrator. I was determined to attend in 2011, and I did, along with another colleague. This time, I was at Northern California CUE (if you're not familiar with CUE, you should get familiar!) and got to see some great presenters in action (Alice Keeler and Dave Childres are two who come to mind). Once they began talking about getting a school domain for Google Tools, I knew what needed to happen. I sent my principal an e-mail, and he forwarded it to my district administrators right then and there. The conversation began. My principal was fully on board and ready to support whatever my colleague and I wanted to implement, knowing that we would focus on student access and achievement as the ultimate goals of this project.
In the meantime, the high school my daughter attends implemented Google accounts, and each student was assigned an account. I was so jealous! Watching her log on from home to see a video or worksheet her teacher had posted into their shared Google space was rewarding from a mom's point of view, and envy-making from my tech-teacher point of view! (Can you see the drool through your screen?) When meeting with County technology personnel, I was told that my child's district had implemented Google district-wide, and that the roll-out was very well thought out and implemented systematically.
Again, I started to pester people, referring them to the smaller district that had done a full implementation. I was simply asking for one site as a pilot! They were cautious, as we would hope and expect. They wanted to make sure that we had the correct permissions in place, legal concerns addressed, etc. My Assistant Superintendent was on board, after meeting with our principal, but we still weren't communicating in all the right ways. Ultimately, I agreed that we wouldn't start with student accounts, and that my principal would continue to work with admin to get those permissions in place. I would start with a core group of teachers to develop the backbone of what we wanted to do.
Last Thursday, I got to pick our domain name. Yippee!!! We now owned VVMS.org, which Joe at the district obtained for us. As of Friday, it was verified through Google, so we could begin setting up accounts. We are not yet verified as a school, so we don't have access to the education-based sites quite yet. We are currently in something of a limbo-land, which may take a few days to work through.
I spent the weekend setting up my pilot group (principal, core teacher, science teacher, math teacher, and me) with accounts, and playing with e-mails. Joe, in charge of tech at the district, is also a part of this team. As I have tried to do different things, he's responded quickly by letting me know what idea I have works, and what doesn't.
The purpose of this blog is to journal this journey so that we can gather suggestions from others AND know later how to support others at the beginning of their journey too. We're going to make many mistakes, but we're going to have some fabulous, exciting successes.
Thoughts/questions at this moment:
How to open Blogger on the new domain
How to get the MX records thing working so that we can receive e-mail as well as send it
When will we be able to use the Google Apps for Ed, and not see all the business ads, etc.
What next? So many ideas... where to start!
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