WPP - Google Drive in the Classroom

Please watch the screencast I have created in which I summarize my WPP project: WPP Screencast

Below you will see WPP- A - D pieced together so that you can see how I went about creating this project and why,

WPP- A

1. What is the important educational need that you are seeking to address?

NO TIME FOR GROUP WORK! The Common Core and best practices call for the use of group work. I have seen the growth that can occur when students get together and are allowed to solve a problem or complete a project together; however it is difficult to find class time to allow for these opportunities. My school poses a particularly unique situation because we are an early college that accepts kids from multiple districts. Knowing this it is hard to force students to work on a project outside of class when it can be very challenging for them to all find time to meet after school. Therefore, I am hoping to use technology to better provide these opportunities for my students.

2. How you plan to address this educational issue with technology?

I am proposing using Google Drive as a way to combat the issue of assigning group work outside the classroom. For an assignment in one of my MAET courses my group used Google Drive (then Google Docs) as a means of communication/collaboration and it worked very well. One of the biggest draws to Google Drive for me is the fact that it is free to use. Given that I am a part of an urban school, money is always an issue for not only my students but also our school’s budget. Another draw is that students can share their file with each other, edit together in real time, and track who has made edits to the document. This allows for students to work together as long as they have internet access, they can talk to each other using the comments/chat feature, and it promotes accountability because group members and myself can see who made edits to the project (this is a secondary issue with group work... the group member who decides to do nothing because they do not think the teacher will know).

3. Logistics of solution:

I have chosen my 10th grade World History students as the guinea pigs for my Google Drive experiment. Last week I began the process by having students create Gmail accounts so that they could access Google Drive. I then created a short presentation assignment that small groups needed to complete and submit to the class Google Presentation as a way to practice. I had students work on this in class as they got used to the system so that I could be there to troubleshoot problems. I think that this made students more comfortable with the break from the norm and will make future Google Drive assignments run more efficiently.

4. Relevant research and resources.

Source 1:

·         Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy In History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects

o    Writing Standards for Literacy in History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects 6–12

o    Grades 9-10:

§  “6. Use technology, including the Internet, to produce, publish, and update individual or shared writing products, taking advantage of technology’s capacity to link to other information and to display information flexibly and dynamically.”

o    Citation:

§  Common Core State Standards for English Language Arts & Literacy in

History/Social Studies, Science, and Technical Subjects. Common Core State Standards Initiative, 2010. PDF.

Source 2:

·         Marzano Research on Cooperative Learning

o    “This suggests that on the average, the use of cooperative learning by teachers in the action research studies was associated with a gain in student academic achievement of 30 percentile points over what was expected when teachers did not use cooperative learning.”

o    Citation:

§  "Cooperative Learning." Researched Strategies. Marzano Research

Laboratory, Web. 04 Oct. 2012. <http://www.marzanoresearch.com/research/researched_strategies.aspx>.

Source 3:

·         “You'll find that Google Docs helps promote group work and peer editing skills, and that it helps to fulfill the stated goal of The National Council of Teachers of English, which espouses writing as a process and encourages multiple revisions and peer editing.”

·         See video embedded in site.

o    Citation

§  "Google Docs." Google For Educators, Web. 04 Oct. 2012.

<http://www.google.com/educators/p_docs.html>.

5. A plan for the portion you will implement during this course and the portion you will implement after this course completes.

Last week (9/27/12 & 9/28/12) I had my 10th Grade World History students create their accounts so that they would have access to Google Drive. I then created a brief group presentation assignment in which they were to use the Google Drive Presentation feature to create a lecture that they made. This was done entirely in class so that I could troubleshoot any potential problems that arose for their first time using the system. The next step is to create a group project that students will create primarily outside the classroom in groups using Google Drive to collaborate. This assignment will be based on World Religions in which students will be in pairs/small groups and will be asked to create an encyclopedia page for each of the major World Religions. They will create this on Google Drive so that they can both collaborate on the document and eventually share their findings with their classmates for peer editing.

6.                   How would you know you were successful?

1. The quality of the group work will be an indicator of the success rate of the assignment.
1. Student performance on the World Religion Unit Test will be an indicator of the success rate of the assignment.
1. Student feedback will be an indicator of the success rate of the assignment.

WPP- B

What is the TP knowledge for the solution?  

After thinking about teaching strategies/standards, I really do believe that I can utilize Google Drive technology for group projects in a meaningful way. Common Core Standards especially call for increased group collaboration and usage of various technological components in the classroom. Google Drive will address both needs. I can assign group work outside of the classroom and have students collaborate using a technological piece like Google Drive (documents or presentations).

What is the TC knowledge for the solution? 

There are multiple benefits to having students use technology to create presentations compared to the standard paper and pen method or, slightly more appealing to me, the paper and colored pencil/crayon/marker method. With the aide of a technology like Google Drive, and even more particular, Google Presentation, students can insert images, audio, video, charts, graphs, etc. into their presentation. This makes the presentation more dynamic and stimulating to all members involved (i.e. student and teacher). This is not unlike a traditional PowerPoint but the added benefit of using Google Drive is the collaboration component. Since I do not have to worry so much about giving students classroom time to work on a project I can add additional pieces to rubrics that perhaps I would leave out in the past because otherwise it would just take too long for groups to complete. Further, students can make comments (peer editing) and share their work with other classmates. This expands the learning environment so much more than an individual teacher could ever do.

Knowing all of the potential benefits though does not necessarily paint an accurate picture of Google Drive. Part of the TCK component is to understand the limitations of the technology in how information can be represented. I would like to make it known that I have not completely drank all of the Google Drive      Kool-Aid. There are a few drawbacks to this technology:

1.     If you ask students to create a presentation they will almost always use the Google Presentation feature.

a.      It is possible to install other presentation tools but rarely will you find students that will do this unless specifically informed to do so.

2.     Google Presentation has very few pre-programmed themes/backgrounds so creativity can be hindered.

3.     Just because it makes group collaboration easier and potentially creates more accountability since group members and the teacher can track individual contributions, does not mean that some students will all-of-a-sudden become involved with group work when they were not involved before using traditional methods.

4.     Google Drive requires not only Internet access but also preferably fast Internet access. In addition Google Drive requires a computer. Occasionally a teacher might have a student that does not have one or both of these necessities which creates a barrier to learning if the class projects are centered around this technology.

Taking the potential negatives into consideration, I still believe that Google Drive is a valuable technology for me to begin implementing inside and outside the classroom. 

What is the PC knowledge for the solution? 

Aside from the time component of group work that I tend to have issues with (i.e. not enough time), another big issue is that students will divide work up or allow one student to complete the whole project. Therefore students are not fully engaged in the assignment. With Google Drive students can work simultaneously on a group project instead of waiting for one person the complete their portion before handing the computer off to someone else. Google Drive further supports my cause because it eliminates the, “I forgot my flashdrive,” or “my partner has the project and isn’t here,” issues that never fail to arise.

Perhaps the bigger pedagogical reasoning behind using this technology comes from research surrounding Bloom’s Taxonomy and multiple intelligences/learning styles. At the top of Bloom’s list is the “Creation” piece. It has long been understood that one of the best ways to learn something is to actually create a finished product utilizing the knowledge that you acquired. Having students create group projects pushes them towards the higher level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. The other pieces to the puzzle, or the lower levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy, can be addressed by what the teacher is asking students to do. The final pedagogical reason to use this technology that I would like to address is catering to multiple intelligences/learning preferences. As I mentioned in the previous section, with this technology students can create projects that incorporate text, images, video, color, charts, motion, and sound which all together give students the opportunity to make the assignment better suit their needs. Overall the potential of using Google Drive inside and outside the classroom appears to just keep growing.

WPP- C

Listen to my reflection on how my first real attempt to use Google Drive in the classroom went.

• Google Drive - Take 1

See the product my students put together via my screencast created through Jing.

• World HST Ancient Greece Google Presentation 

Windows Movie Maker - Group Leadership Project

WMM Professional Development

1) What tool did your group use to deliver the PD tutorial?  Why?

For our group project we chose to examine the benefits of using a program like Windows Movie Maker in the classroom. With this professional development piece we examined how WMM addresses various teaching strategies and standards, and how it might be implemented in each of the core content areas. 

To package this tutorial we used Camtasia. Honestly I had never heard of this technology before but it was offered up by a group member as a good tool to use and so we decided to use it. This program was a little difficult for me to use, especially since it kept crashing my computer for some reason. Personally now that I have used Camtasia, I feel like I would be much more comfortable using something like Jing in the future. 

2) What did you learn during the development process of the final product?

As I went through this process I was able to get more familiar with Google Drive (we used Google Docs and Google Presenter for Part A & B). I did learn some of the basic functions of Camtasia but as I mentioned earlier it did not get along very well with my computer so it was difficult to get too in depth with the program. 

3) What would you do differently if you had to develop a similar product again?

In the future I am not sure that I would use a program like Camtasia unless a group member is very familiar with it and can explain some of the ins and outs. In general I would prefer not to use a completely novel program to put the finishing touches on such a large project. It appeared that everyone in the group was having difficulty with Camtasia and it created some problems with the group members. 

I also plan on double checking that group members actually have access to the program that is the basis of our  project. Towards the end of putting our tutorial together I was emailed by my group stating that they could not do the introduction to our tutorial because they did not have or did not know how to work Windows Movie Maker. This of course put added pressure on me after I had completed a significant amount of the overall project already. I created the introduction hesitantly only to find out that another group member went ahead and submitted just before I sent my version out. At the time I was frustrated but it is over now and it appears that the final product is done well. I did notice that my spoken portion seemed to lose some volume after it was converted and sent off to the other members to be compiled with their parts, but we just ran out of time to really work out some of the flaws. 

Professional Learning Plan

View my screencast that summarizes my PLP by clicking on the following link (I apologize for my voice, I haven't been able to shake a cold for a few weeks now...): Screencast

Joe Buffa

Professional Learning Plan

11/1/12                                                         

Another MAET course has gone by and I am finally able to look back and reflect on what I have

learned so far. There has been a lot going on in my life lately and most days I feel like I was overloaded. That said I still had very similar goals for this course as I did for my CEP-810 course (see document below- Google Drive, Blog/RSS Feeder, & 1 Technology per semester).

            Of those goals below, I think I succeeded in implementing Google Drive into my classroom. I made the effort to work on it with my WPP project and that kept me in line with meeting this goal. I actually expanded the use of this technology beyond my one Media Log project and it has been going very well. I also have been successful in learning one new technology to use in the classroom per semester (thanks to the MAET program). What I have failed to do is to incorporate blogging and the RSS feeder feature in my classroom. I tried it early on and it just did not fit very well into what I was trying to do. Really the reason behind this is that my school uses Blackboard (system very much like Angel) and I can post items/discussion forums there for students to access which really makes the blog and RSS feeder redundant.

            Keeping all of that in mind, I still think that my main goal is to fully submerge myself and my class into Google Drive. I have already had several students thank me for introducing it to them because they thought ahead and uploaded a document to Google Drive, so when they lost their flash drive they still were able to turn in their assignment. Although the back-up feature is very appealing, the productivity I have seen from group projects when they use Google Drive is even more promising to me. Therefore, I feel that I need to keep finding ways to incorporate Google Drive into my curriculum and begin expanding it beyond my World History students (a.k.a my guinea pigs).

            The question becomes how to continue to find new inventive ways to incorporate Google Drive into my curriculum. One possibility that I have been thinking about is using Google Drive to enhance student vocabulary. My school is really pressing Marzano’s vocabulary strategy in all classrooms and so far I feel that it has helped student retention of the meaning of key terms. However, students do tend to dislike creating visuals on their own for each word (something that Marzano suggests). I envision creating a running vocabulary Google Doc in which students will be asked to create their own definitions and search for images related to the word to include in the document. Students will then be able to look at the document or download the document whenever they want. I hope to begin implementing this in all classes by the start of next semester (beginning after winter break).

            I do have other technological goals in mind however I want to make sure that I at least accomplish this one by the end of the school year. So far the MAET program has exposed me to a number of wonderful possibilities to enhance my classroom. I have been working on using a number of technologies to flip my classroom so that I can spend more time having discussions and activities in class versus always lecturing. Right now Blackboard is helping me accomplish this along with creating mini StAIR resources and Webquests for students to tackle.

            All-in-all my growth with technology has been steady and on-going. There is room for improvement, but I am confident that it is not a result of any sort of glaring skill deficit I have, but rather inexperience with the new technologies that I am trying. What I have found thus far is that the more I work with the programs I am using the more proficient I become with them, and consequently I find better ways of how to include them in my curriculum.