Had some Blogger issues during some previous post attempts, so I am going to try to journal again this year with our successes and challenges in Going Google at VVMS.
School has started. Yippee!!!
We decided this year to change our naming formula for student accounts, and that will make managing accounts easier for me. Students will have their promotion from middle school year precede their names. Thus, Joe Blow, an 8th grader, will be 13_JoeBlow@vvms.org. I remind you here that we don't have e-mail for students yet. I plan to make this request, but want to be a bit further down the road before I start working with the district on that one.
I created the form again this year that had students fill in their first and last names and student numbers. I had some other fields on the form, but realized that I could have Google Spreadsheets do at least some of the work for me.
The challenge with the spreadsheet was to type less and have fewer student errors (you wouldn't believe how often they misspell their own names). The form data simply asked for student number (A1), first name (A2), last name (A3), and grade level (A4).
To create the user name, I wanted the spreadsheet to look at the grade level and automatically fill into another cell the year of promotion, something of an if-then statement. If A4=8, then A5=13_. If A4=7, then A5=14_. Get the idea? I couldn't figure out how to make that happen, so I manually filled in the promotion year into A5.
To create the user name in A6, I used the formula =A5&A2&A3, which created 13_Joe Blow.
I also wanted to add a fixed text value ("vv") to the student number from A1 to create the password, but couldn't figure out how to do that either. So I simply added the vv text into A7, and into A8 typed the formula =A7&A8.
All of this I copied and pasted into another spreadsheet, simplified the columns to include first, last, username, and password, and saved as a csv file. I uploaded it and created all the student accounts.
I would like to do a few things next. I would like to transfer student work from the old account to the new account, and I saw today how I could do that manually. I would then be able to delete all the old student accounts without the current naming in place.
I would like to have a spreadsheet of accounts I've created. Since I've had to manually create and add accounts as well, I would like to be able to download and save a whole list of the "final" ones. It would be much easier to have that accessible rather than go through 30 names at a time online, looking for the correct account to reset or even to create if it hadn't been created.
There are the basics of getting my accounts set up. So far, Google has approved every request for additional accounts, so I am up to 400 now. I do need to delete last year's 8th graders, and will do so soon.
Friday, September 7, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Adding Calendar and Sites
The students figured out how to share their word processing documents fairly easily. I loved being able to grade from my own computer, and giving feedback that they could see from home or school. I also loved having NO papers stacked on my desk other than the mess that seems to always be there!
Last week I assigned a new project. I wrote the guidelines on a document, which I then shared. However, they couldn't find the document, which was annoying. I needed to give a link using their online gradebook homework information. I really wanted to avoid handing out all that paper. I haven't yet figured out why this didn't work.
Anyway, they are going to design a website (using Google Sites) based on teaching a standard, working in self-selected groups of 2-4 students.In the team, they needed to decide on a standard.
1. Create a document and share it with the rest of the team and me.
2. Create a calendar and share it with the rest of the team and me. (Most of them were able to figure this out, but I did have to teach them how to share the calendar.) Onto the calendar put milestone and due dates for each team member..
3. Create a Google Site which includes the following:
A. A front page with title, team names, etc.
B. A standards page with the standard written out completely
C. A works cited page with all citations, including links to videos, pictures, etc.
D. Various pages to introduce/teach the standards.
Last week I assigned a new project. I wrote the guidelines on a document, which I then shared. However, they couldn't find the document, which was annoying. I needed to give a link using their online gradebook homework information. I really wanted to avoid handing out all that paper. I haven't yet figured out why this didn't work.
Anyway, they are going to design a website (using Google Sites) based on teaching a standard, working in self-selected groups of 2-4 students.In the team, they needed to decide on a standard.
1. Create a document and share it with the rest of the team and me.
2. Create a calendar and share it with the rest of the team and me. (Most of them were able to figure this out, but I did have to teach them how to share the calendar.) Onto the calendar put milestone and due dates for each team member..
3. Create a Google Site which includes the following:
A. A front page with title, team names, etc.
B. A standards page with the standard written out completely
C. A works cited page with all citations, including links to videos, pictures, etc.
D. Various pages to introduce/teach the standards.
Monday, April 2, 2012
Getting Started With Students
On a Monday, when I was feeling rejuvenated (!), I introduced Google Docs to my students. I had them each log in. Using the projector, I showed them how I could create a document, and then how I could share it. I simply shared with one student in the class, and he edited/commented (depending on what I allowed). The students were hooked.
They had finished researching for an upcoming project, so collaborating to get and give feedback was the exciting reward. They opened their Word research document, and then copied it to a new Google doc.
They re-titled it with their first name and "Project Design", which would make it easy for other students and me to find in our own documents list. It was funny to watch them ask each other how to spell names, and then getting up to check if their document showed up in their peer's list. We discussed the differences between "edit" and "comment" and "view" rights, and students were inconsistent at how they handled these with their peers. (I wasn't too concerned, since we still had the original Word document as a back-up.)
Once they had commented and received comments, I encouraged them to make improvements. The following day, after corrections/improvements, they were instructed to "share" with me. The one confusion was that my name didn't match the student naming pattern, and some were confused.
Following that, they were encouraged to start planning for their project, and getting some insight and support from peers using their Google Apps.
They had finished researching for an upcoming project, so collaborating to get and give feedback was the exciting reward. They opened their Word research document, and then copied it to a new Google doc.
They re-titled it with their first name and "Project Design", which would make it easy for other students and me to find in our own documents list. It was funny to watch them ask each other how to spell names, and then getting up to check if their document showed up in their peer's list. We discussed the differences between "edit" and "comment" and "view" rights, and students were inconsistent at how they handled these with their peers. (I wasn't too concerned, since we still had the original Word document as a back-up.)
Once they had commented and received comments, I encouraged them to make improvements. The following day, after corrections/improvements, they were instructed to "share" with me. The one confusion was that my name didn't match the student naming pattern, and some were confused.
Following that, they were encouraged to start planning for their project, and getting some insight and support from peers using their Google Apps.
Account Management
Student Accounts
Once all the staff members had accounts, it was time to create accounts for students. I decided that I would start with my three year-long classes, since they were the most ready for collaboration. I also didn't want to deal with hand-entering all the students' information, so I created a fairly simple form. The students created their usernames (FirstLast@___.___), passwords, and then gave me some other info that will help me ultimately delete accounts as they move to high school. (Of course, there were students who spelled their names wrong, or wrote someone else's name in the space, but fixing a few was far easier than creating 100 accounts one at a time.)Once I had the spreadsheet from the Google form, I created the account spreadsheet and simply uploaded it over the course of an evening. When it was finished, I received an e-mail that the records had processed, and if there were any error records. It was easy to correct and reload the records.
Organizations/Sub-organizations
My other challenge was that I wanted to keep the staff e-mail access intact, but not yet implement student e-mail (per the district admin). I figured out that I could create two sub-organizations called staff and students. Both would only be able to access features I had turned on through the Dashboard, and I could turn off whatever features I didn't want to enable for each of them. Thus, e-mail was still accessible for staff, and inaccessible for students. It took a while to re-designate each group, and I will have to figure out if there's a way to do this easily before I next upload student accounts.
Once all the staff members had accounts, it was time to create accounts for students. I decided that I would start with my three year-long classes, since they were the most ready for collaboration. I also didn't want to deal with hand-entering all the students' information, so I created a fairly simple form. The students created their usernames (FirstLast@___.___), passwords, and then gave me some other info that will help me ultimately delete accounts as they move to high school. (Of course, there were students who spelled their names wrong, or wrote someone else's name in the space, but fixing a few was far easier than creating 100 accounts one at a time.)Once I had the spreadsheet from the Google form, I created the account spreadsheet and simply uploaded it over the course of an evening. When it was finished, I received an e-mail that the records had processed, and if there were any error records. It was easy to correct and reload the records.
Organizations/Sub-organizations
My other challenge was that I wanted to keep the staff e-mail access intact, but not yet implement student e-mail (per the district admin). I figured out that I could create two sub-organizations called staff and students. Both would only be able to access features I had turned on through the Dashboard, and I could turn off whatever features I didn't want to enable for each of them. Thus, e-mail was still accessible for staff, and inaccessible for students. It took a while to re-designate each group, and I will have to figure out if there's a way to do this easily before I next upload student accounts.
Thursday, March 8, 2012
Updates and Forms
Progress...
Custom Logo for Sign-ins
I created a simple logo for Valley View to use in place of the Google logo. In the dashboard, I went to "Domain Settings" and "Appearance", and uploaded my logo. I hope to have our art teacher create something a bit more fanciful, but this will be a fun way to start.
Domain Updates
Our district admin changed the log-in screens using the CNAME process at the domain provider, so that these are the following sign-ins:
1. mail.vvms.org
2. docs.vvms.org
3. calendar.vvms.org
4. sites.vvms.org
Forms
I decided that forms were going to be the most fun way to get my colleagues interested in Google Apps. I created a "quiz" for them with four or five questions, which I e-mailed out and many have already answered. At our staff meeting, I will show them how the form results come out on the spreadsheet, and how easy grading from one piece of paper can suddenly be. I have also been looking for information on creating forms/quizzes that are self-grading, so that's my next step.
Challenges
As our school staff has become more tech savvy, we are having a greater draw on our one computer lab (my tech classroom is the second lab). I had a colleague get really excited about a project with her seventh grade science classes. However, when she went to sign up for the lab in a month, other teachers were already signed up. I will be tweeting for information to find out how many labs other schools have. We will need at least one more, but I could also see the benefit to one lab dedicated for CORE (English/SS), one for Science, and one for other subjects.
Custom Logo for Sign-ins
I created a simple logo for Valley View to use in place of the Google logo. In the dashboard, I went to "Domain Settings" and "Appearance", and uploaded my logo. I hope to have our art teacher create something a bit more fanciful, but this will be a fun way to start.
Domain Updates
Our district admin changed the log-in screens using the CNAME process at the domain provider, so that these are the following sign-ins:
1. mail.vvms.org
2. docs.vvms.org
3. calendar.vvms.org
4. sites.vvms.org
Forms
I decided that forms were going to be the most fun way to get my colleagues interested in Google Apps. I created a "quiz" for them with four or five questions, which I e-mailed out and many have already answered. At our staff meeting, I will show them how the form results come out on the spreadsheet, and how easy grading from one piece of paper can suddenly be. I have also been looking for information on creating forms/quizzes that are self-grading, so that's my next step.
Challenges
As our school staff has become more tech savvy, we are having a greater draw on our one computer lab (my tech classroom is the second lab). I had a colleague get really excited about a project with her seventh grade science classes. However, when she went to sign up for the lab in a month, other teachers were already signed up. I will be tweeting for information to find out how many labs other schools have. We will need at least one more, but I could also see the benefit to one lab dedicated for CORE (English/SS), one for Science, and one for other subjects.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
First Forms
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.
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.
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?
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