Google Documents

First of all, here we are getting close to the end of the year and I asked my two frosh classes how many had experience with Google Docs, and probably one third to one half raised hands, which I think says something about what is going on in our school. Each of the seven groups ended up with at least one person who knew what to do. I think I had to help exactly one person get signed on to her group's document, because she was logged onto a Google account with a different e-mail address.

Secondly, even when I am not doing an official "CBL" I find myself thinking in that direction, and so I had my students who are exploring sacraments asking questions first and also documenting their thinking and research on a doc so that I can see the work in progress and get a glimpse into their collaboration.

Lastly: I love Docs. I can't be with every group all the time. In class I floated from group to group. But this morning I took a look at the documents and got a very good idea of what they've done and in what directions they are thinking.

Progress on the Projects

Some of my groups have been at work, and when I put out the rubric, that was a little kickstart in some places. But not all. Today there was some consternation at the mention of a deadline tomorrow, with a couple of students acting as if they had no idea what was going on. This despite the fact that it's all been out there in writing and I've given reminders in class.

But tonight I went to my Google docs and saw every single document title bold, indicating work has been done. I'll wait until after the deadline to see what they've been up to.

Tomorrow they will have class time to plan for their solution.

Revised project

Justice and Peace students are at it again, working on projects to do some research, and hopefully to make a difference. I've revised the project to follow Apple's challenge based learning format, because it's the direction our school is heading in, and because I hope the results will be richer than last year's.

But this is all pretty new to me, so I know there'll be some bumps in the road. Today the teams started Google Docs to record their brainstorming. In this way I can "listen in" even if I couldn't be with every group the whole class. I just finished writing some comments. They'll be recording their progress throughout, and will be able to communicate with each other while working from home.

Docs

"That's so cool " was the reaction of a freshman watching the words that her her project partner was typing appear on her computer screen on a newly-created and shared Google Doc. I agree. I think Docs is cool in how it allows for easy collaboration among students who do not always live near each other or have a lot of shared free time.

Positive feedback

Some of my "digital natives" come to class with not much knowledge beyond the land of Facebook and texting. Some of them are as resistant, because they miss the "feel of paper" or they are not ready to expend energy to acquire new skills. But at least some seem to recognize that it's worth the effort to learn some new things on the Web. Here is some unsolicited feedback about use of tech tools for an assignment. Students were to reflect on what they had learned, but it never occurred to me to ask them to include the Web aspects. I had in mind only the content of the research.

I think Diigo will be a great resource to have available through the rest of high school and college At first, I thought it would be a bit of a hassle, but I grew to like it. Once I began to learn how to use Diigo, I realized it has many more pros than cons. Another thing I am grateful for is that I am now a more proficient user of Google Docs. Again, I am sure this will be helpful in the future.

I read this, of course, in a Google document!

Docs

The Catholic Theology research papers have been in for a while, and I am finally starting with grading. They take a while, because I check out sources and such, and make a fair number of comments.

But at least all this is fairly painless with Google Docs. The pairs have worked together on their 5-page plus paper, and I can check the revisions to see what form the collaboration has taken. I have editing privileges, so I can insert my comments while reading online. Right now I am using a template in Word for the actual grading, and I mail it to them when I am finished. But it is occurring to me now that perhaps that could be a Doc, too, shared for viewing but not editing.

I required a proper Works Cited section ("page" doesn't seem to work for this), because students still need practice with such things. URL's were not needed (supposedly MLA doesn't  require them anymore), but I did make hyperlinks a requirement for each citation. I love the way I have immediate access to the sites if needed. Of course, this only works for electronic sources, but our subscription to a database of published articles provided some good sources outside the Web.

There are probably tutorials online for some of the things I want students to know, such as making hyperlinks, but I have enjoyed doing a couple of quick and very specific-to-my-needs videos with Jing to reinforce what I show the girls in class, and those are always available to them on Moodle.

Here is another advantage to Docs. The teacher who used to assign this project would offer students the opportunity to revise their work after the first grading. After one try I decided against that policy. But at the same time, I was able to allow for a learning curve. When the papers were first in I didn't read them for content but I did look over them for things like format and following directions of the assignment. I wrote an e-mail to the class suggesting specific areas they might need to pay attention to.With the papers on Docs, students could easily go and revise before I actually got to the grading. For some of them, I will need to take off fewer points in the end, and they also had to go back and pay attention to (and learn) things like how the Works Cited is formatted. Win-win.

The document question

At our department meeting today we started to work with a 50+ page document from the U.S bishops, their curriculum framework. It didn't take long to decide that it was too clumsy for us to go through it at a meeting. We wanted a way to make the document accessible to all. But how? I tried to do some cutting and pasting of a couple of pages of the PDF in Google Docs, but the formatting was horrible, not very readable.

Diigo! I think that would have worked. The thing is online, and we could all have it in our libraries and share notations. But, as I had that brilliant idea, another thought was gaining momentum in the group: paper. Let's just pass around a paper copy, someone said. I had to acquiesce, though I have my doubts. Since we want to work on one copy, it is going to take some time for six busy teachers to get a look at it. With Diigo, it would have been accessible to everyone, all the time.

Some feedback

Today our discussion in Catholic Theology got a little off track, but I thought it to be important stuff. Since I have not delved into DyKnow much, I got some of their impressions of its use, and the discussion turned to the area of privacy. The fact that with the software teachers could be viewing students screens even when they are at home is bothersome to some students. But even in the classroom, some students feel that it is their business what they are doing during the class. "It's our grade" is what they had to say.

There were complaints about not being able to use OneNote, where they would prefer to take their notes, when a teacher blocks everything but DyKnow, and about how each day's work is a separate file when they would like to organize their notes differently. Another problem is when a teacher forgets to "release" students from their class, and applications they need for homework are blocked well beyond the school day.

A complaint that I heard before was that the method of presenting, at least as used by some teachers, allows for too much passivity on the part of students. If the notes are there and they don't have to write them, they are not as engaged with the material. I do know that some teachers don't put all the material on the slides, which encourages students to add their own notes.

It was a natural jump from there to the tools we have actually used in the classroom. There was Diigo, and some students had major problems with it. The main problem seemed to have to do with the way it interacted with the databases we have access to at school. I solved that problem (I think), but too late for these students, who could not get back to articles they had marked. And I think that next semester I just have to take more time to familiarize students with the tool, as some this semester just found it confusing.

I need to do the same with Google Docs. Some pairs did not really take advantage of the collaborative aspects, but put their paper together and then pasted to Docs. In some cases they just found it confusing. One girl said that those who had used it for another teacher previously found it easy.

Some students just wished they could have done stuff on paper. They don't like reading on screens; they like to flip through the assignments they get back to read comments, not scroll. So much for the idea that all young people are digital natives who take to computer applications like a duck to water.

Even with so many complaints, I wasn't totally discouraged. One girl actually said that she liked Diigo. My basic conclusion for improving next semester: teach more of the tech.