Student collaboration on shared documents: prepare for disaster ahead of time!

How much experience do you have with students collaborating on shared documents? Sometimes, it goes surprisingly well... small groups with each member working on the same digital graphic, pairs of students peer-editing essays, or partners collaborating to write a two-voice poem.

Other times... yeah, it all falls apart and goes very, very bad. As in, someone thinks that the whole thing needs to be changed to purple sparkly font bad. Or that each slide transition needs to show a cheeseburger bad. Or even random screaming Donald Trump memes bad. (Yes, sadly those have all really happened in my classroom.)

Worse yet is that collaborative projects open students up to deliberate sabotage by others, which no matter how much net etiquette and community-building you've practiced (preached!) in class, can and does happen. Thankfully in all of these cases, collaborating in Google Suite products means that as the instructor you can go back and revert to the appropriate copy of the students' work by checking out the revision history. You can also figure out which of your 28 mutant kindergartners eighth graders needs a visit from the discipline fairy.

Having attempted lots of successful collaborative projects and my fair share of failures, I've found that the shenanigans tend to happen with more visual products such as Google Slides. With a couple of projects my students are working on, my ultimate goal is to have each student produce a small number of slides that will then become part of a larger, whole-class presentation for us to use as a long-term learning resource. With several dozen students all working at the same time in one slideshow, this is NOT the time to have to deal with student sabotage. It would be nice to think that I've (you've) been able to build an entire classroom community of students who purposefully support each others' learning. Hmm...

Is there a better way to end up with the same collaborative result while ensuring that the quality of all students' work is preserved? YES! There are two suggestions I have:

(1) Students can create individual sets of slides in their own Google Drive and then copy entire slides to insert into a group presentation. Then they can get all of the layout figured out ahead of time without anyone else needing to step in with unwelcome "advice." This ensures that the original copy of the slide is preserved in the student's own Drive. However, it doesn't prevent others from manipulating the layout after it's added to the group presentation.

(2) Students can create layouts of any paper / slide size in Google Drawings. The way you manipulate the drawing tools is so similar to Slides that students have no trouble transitioning to this less-familiar tool. The great thing is that once the layout is fixed, a student can download the whole thing as a .jpg or .png image file.

This composite image can now be used in all sorts of ways, one of which is inserting the composite image onto a Google slide. Now, the whole image layout is "fixed" and cannot be accidentally or intentionally changed. Sure, it can be deleted from a slide altogether, but this is pretty rare for students to try knowing that it's super easy for a teacher to pinpoint the exact culprit from the revision history.

Regardless of what you do, it's important to be upfront with students that you can (and will) do regular integrity checks while students are working collaboratively. Reassure them that accidents happen, too, and that the "undo" button is always the easiest way for a quick fix. And take it easy on those 8th graders - they learn by baby steps.

"Upgrade the Worksheet" - My Humble Attempt

Since really diving into professional development networking on Twitter over this past summer I've come across so many fantastic ideas, many of which have come from the same set of amazing educators. Weeks ago I ran across one of many great ideas on Alice Keeler's Teacher Tech website (via a tweet): a post encouraging us to Upgrade the Worksheet. For elementary math teachers, it's a great way to engage students in an authentic critical thinking experience as they practice place value skills.

Of course I ran across this post just a few days too late to actually use it in my class (though it's filed away for review time and for next year!). Thankfully, though, it put that seed in my head that kept nagging at me to create a good "math lab" of my own.

Here's the result (as well as a link so you can make your own copy):



NOTE: Wondering about how to share a document that automatically prompts others to make a copy? Yup, that's Alice Keeler's help too, in this tutorial.

My students that will be working on this activity have just been introduced to multiplying whole numbers by decimals, and it's time for some good practice. This should do the trick. It's also a great opportunity to have the discussion that multiplying by a decimal is like talking about "parts," "percents," or "fractions of the whole." With a decimal as one of the factors, the product should be smaller than where you started. If you were to visit a smaller planet with less gravitational pull, your weight should be less than it is on Earth. That's a nice visual way for students to think about this concept.

We're fitting this activity in to the day before Thanksgiving break, so 40 minutes is really all the time it's going to be able to take. My students have very little experience with spreadsheets, so I'm hoping the format is user-friendly. One of the sheets allows them to check their answers - the best way to free up the teacher from having to constantly give directions and provide basic feedback just on facts. Students working on these problems can be a little more independent, allowing the teacher to work more closely with those needing greater skills development, or to ask more probing questions about a student's thought process.

The immediate action I'd take to really up the value of this activity is to have students do their own research to find the gravitational values of each solar system object on their own. Here's a link to a NASA site for those of you who'd like to do that. It could also give you a chance to review rounding if you'd like the students to have gravity values to the nearest hundredth.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving! I, for one, am deeply thankful for the ideas of other educators that consistently prompt me to do something a little bit better each time I share it with my students. I'm so humbled by the many educators who so freely share their great ideas with the rest of us. THANK YOU!!

"Do the Math" with Google Forms

One of the best reasons for adding technology to the classroom is that it can have an immediate impact on the quality of formative assessment. With technology, teachers can collect student responses and aggregate data in real time. Formative assessment only really works when teachers can turn this data into feedback for students, and tools like Google Forms make this entirely possible.

I typically love Google Forms for its ease of use. It mimics other Google products in the idea that you can start really simply and gradually build in more complex functions. Math teachers might not agree. There is not a built-in equation editor like with Google Docs, so entering algebraic expressions becomes a bit cumbersome.

Of course, there's an Add-on that can step in and help. The gMath Add-On is available for Google Docs, Forms and Sheets (use the "Add-On" menu within each app to search for and add gMath).

From there, there are multiple ways to create a quiz with even the fanciest of math expressions (or graphs if you are feeling particularly adventurous). Regardless of your method, you will need to get used to the format of typing in math expressions (you can use some basic text entry like 3x^2 + 1/2 x - x^2 and it will help you with the format - or you can choose pre-made pieces of the expression and then edit the variables using LaTeX). There is always an image preview so you really just have to keep adjusting the expression until it looks correct. Here's a LaTeX / Docs tutorial if you need more of an introduction.

I test-drove a bunch of different ways to integrate gMath and Google Forms; here are the options I liked in order of increasing complexity...

Method #1: 
Write your expressions in Google Docs (it's kind of nice to see all the problems before you build the actual quiz) and then add the images to Forms.

Here's a tutorial for that (it's the old version of Forms but it's all the same function as the current version). I put this method first because the video shows a bit about how to edit the LaTeX expressions - helpful if you've never done so.

For this type of quiz (as well as Method #2) you are creating a quiz that is formatted with technically two fields for each question: Image 1 (the "question" - your expression, graph, etc.) , Answer 1. Image 2, Answer 2. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Method #2: 
Use the gMath add on directly in Forms to "Create a Math Expression." With this method, there is no need to work back and forth with Google Docs.

When you are ready for a question that requires an expression or graph, choose gMath from the Add-Ons menu in Forms. I was able to experiment with all the options except for "Multiple Choice." I'm not sure if it's a bug or just something wrong with my technique, but the directions in that choice were blurred out and I was left to just guess how it worked... unsuccessfully.

Instead, keep it simple and just write a new expression. When you do so, it inserts the expression as an image field, and adds an answer field directly after the question. You can always change the type of answer to something other than the default short answer text.

Method #3:
Use Google Sheets to create a question bank of images. You can create the images with the gMath Add-On for Sheets, or even find existing images from the Web. Have access to online databases of questions? You may be able to add them to your question bank.

 You can add a different expression or graph to each of the cells in Google Sheets. If you want them in a certain order, work only in one row or column. Each of these cells is going to become a different question - so think about how you want the text or directions to appear as well as the expression itself (you do this all with the gMath Add On the same way you create the images in methods 1 and 2 above).

The next part is the cool one - select ONLY the questions you want to build into your quiz, and use the gMath "Quick Quiz Creator" to make a new form. Once again, the new form is built in the same format with an image field followed by an answer field. You can edit the form after it's built to enhance how it looks.

The BEST part of this is that you could create a continuous bank of quiz questions throughout the course of the year. Then, select only the questions you want before building the quiz. It would be great as you go along as well as during review time.

Method #4:
Use Google Sheets to build your entire quiz - questions, answers, everything. This is an advanced technique, but in the end so much better than trying to build complex questions individually in Forms. When the questions and answers are on a Spreadsheet, you can easily look through them, re-order, edit, etc.

You'll need the formCreator Add-On for Google Sheets. Once it's installed, run the Add-On so it can format your sheet. It will put in all the column headings that you see below.

Use those column headings to add two types of questions. The "Image" type should be your gMath expression. Run the gMath Add-On while you are in the cell for ImageURL and add your expression. Follow that up with another question type such as Multiple Choice, Text, Check Box, etc. This is where you should set up your answer field if you want your form pre-populated. Do this for as many questions as needed. Using the Multiple Choice option will allow you to run your Google Form as a Quiz and enable Auto Grading.

When you are ready, use the formCreator Add-On to create the actual Form. In the end, it might be worth the trouble of figuring this way out because the format of the Spreadsheet makes entering questions / answers really quick - not just for math quizzes but for all subjects.

***One note: I had to edit the ImageURL text to be sure that the URL is https:// and NOT http:// like it defaults - I'm not sure why it wouldn't create my Form otherwise. If you've stuck by this method this far, you'll know how to do that! (Save time and run a "Find and Replace" from the Edit menu. Have it search within formulas to find every instance of http and convert it to https.)

I'd love to hear if you try it out! Unfortunately there are aspects of each method that are just not intuitive - you have to play with it and go through the experience to see what works best for you. At any point if (and when) you get stuck - just post a comment and I would be happy to help you out!