Google Forms:
- When students submit an assignment, such as a Google Doc, or a website, or anything with a link, create a form for them to submit the link to you. This will timestamp when they submitted, or "turned in," their work in the spreadsheet attached to the form. A caveat: Make sure (if it's a Google application) that they share their document/site/whatever with you first, so they don't submit a link that ends up being blank or unfinished. It was advised to consider the assignment incomplete if the student did not share the document with you before submitting the link in the form.
- If you have students submit assignments in the way described from the previous example, then you have a spreadsheet to which you can add columns such as "Grade" or "Comments," and basically make this spreadsheet your mini-gradebook for this assignment.
Google Calendar:
I was completely new to Google calendar, but what I saw today rocked my little Google world. We learned the basics, such as creating calendars, entering events and tasks, embedding them in web pages (and Google allows you to lots of options to customize the features and look of the calendar you will embed), and sharing calendars. For a basic tutorial on Google Calendar, click here.
But the feature in Google calendar that I found extremely useful was the new appointment slots feature. This allows you to select certain times (in week or day view) that you are available to meet with people, and they can sign up for appointments with you right in their calendar (they have to have a Google account to do this). You do need to select what time increments your appointments are in, the smallest being 5 minutes. But why is this so exciting? For two reasons:
- If you want some one-on-one face time with students--either to check in with them during a project, administer individual formative assessments in oral or written form, or have students that need to make up work or a test with you at a time outside of class, then you could have them schedule an appointment with you on your calendar. If you have notifications set up, it should notify you ahead of time.
- I am a teacher coach, and this would be a great way for teachers to sign up and see me during my available times. After you set up your appointment slot, you can send people a URL (or post a link on your website) to your appointment page, and they can sign up. This might be something I do weekly. It would be nice if I could set up the appointments repeatedly (since I am always free at the same times each week), but it seems there isn't an option for that right now.
Again, I was totally new to Google Sites, but was excited to learn about this because I want students to have this as an option when they develop ePortfolios for me this year. But another way you could use Google Sites in science is to use them to make digital science notebooks for lab experiments. After my summer school class, I was thinking about how I could differentiate the science inquiry process better for students who don't do a good job filling out stuffy old lab report forms, and I think this might be a great option for them--especially since it could be a part of a larger ePortfolio quite easily. They could have a page for each part of the experiment, embed videos and pictures of their experimental procedure and their results, publish their data tables and graphs, and even embed other Google gadgets. I think it would be a great alternative to the boring old write-up I've been making them do.
For a Google Sites tutorial click here.
As you can see, good stuff today; stay tuned for more tomorrow.