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This school year I am taking a class to become ISTE Certified. The class started with 2 full days of face-to-face instruction, and is now in the 10 week, 5 modules of online learning phase. It wraps up with a portfolio that I have to submit of artifacts that demonstrate that I understand and can apply the information that I learned.
For those who don't know what ISTE is or means...
International Society for Technology in Education
They have set standards for Students, Teachers, Administrators, and Coaches.
They also have standards for Computer Science Teachers and Computational Thinking Teachers.
One of my assignments is to create a blog post about a digital tool that I feel supports student learning in an alternative learning environment. In Kankakee, we have many different types of alternative learning environments going on, Avis Huff, homebound, CIPS!! When we return in January, our high school students will once again be utilizing "Anytime, Anywhere Learning" to give the construction crews and high school staff an additional week to work and prepare the building. There are several tools that our teachers used last time, and will again this time as well, like Flocabulary, Flipgrid, Google Slides, Google Forms, and many others. All of which is organized and distributed by Google Classroom.
Many of you came to the full day trainings I had this summer on Google Classroom. And, based on the number of hits, quite a few more are using the slide decks for Classroom 101 and 102 on your own!! (Go YOU!!) Google is constantly working on our favorite tool and are producing more updates as we speak. I am currently helping beta test their new gradebook feature and locked quizzes. Those tutorial videos and slide decks will be on the Classroom Updates page soon.
Students Need to Be Taught Too!
Students Need to Be Taught Too!
One of the fun things I was able to do earlier this school year was to sit down with a group of students who were struggling. Their Junior High teachers use Google Classroom differently, and much more, than their 6th grade teachers did. There is nothing wrong with that! It is to be expected. Everyone, myself included, assumed that the students knew the program! We were wrong!
Their previous teachers had only explored a small bit of what Google Classroom can do with them and they were now expected to be experts. We sat down as a group and explored Google Classroom over lunch one day. We looked at some basic features, some advanced features, and then they found a few features that I thought were lost to 'upgrades' but had been returned! They helped to develop a list of things that teachers may want to go over with students at the start of a class.
They also really enjoyed learning how their Google Calendar connects to their Google Classroom pages. But the thing they found most exciting, and we're talking 7th graders here, was that I could add their email address as a 'Guardian' email and they too could receive the weekly summaries!!! One of them stopped me before Winter Break to let me know that they got all high marks this semester!
ISTE Standards and Google Classroom
ISTE Standards and Google Classroom
The ISTE Student Standards (shown at right) can all be applied to Google Classroom if used correctly. In particular the Empowered Learner standard. When we use a digital platform, like GC, with our students, we are giving them access to their learning no matter where they are. They can be off campus at a field trip, home sick, or on vacation and they still have the same access to their learning opportunities as their classmates. They can still answer questions, participate in an online discussion, complete assignments, and turn in projects without physically being in our classrooms.
I have leveraged the power of Google Classroom to have students create the learning for their peers. By assigning different groups different topics, they can then add a post themselves to the Google Classroom with a Google Slide Deck, Google Drawing, and/or links to videos for their classmates. Who, in turn, can ask questions on that post to those classmates! This takes the traditional 'jigsaw' activity to whole new level and incorporates all of the ISTE Student Standards into one lesson, that may take a week, but still!!!
Sharing Time!!
Sharing Time!!
I know how I use Google Classroom, but I want to know how you use Google Classroom. Use the Padlet below to share with others!
What inventive ways do you use it?
What do you love most?
What do you not like?
What is one thing that you wish they did in Google Classroom?
What is one thing that you are happy that they added to Google Classroom?
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