4 Fantastic Rubric Tools for Google Docs

On the 4th day of Tech-Mas my true love gave to me… four rubric writers.

Note: This post is part of my "12 Days of Tech-Mas" series for 2017. You can see all of the posts for each day as they get released in the main post here: "12 Days of Tech-Mas 2017".

It has been said that grading is more of an art than a science. It can be easy to perform mathematical gymnastics on a stack of numbers, and then feel like we have arrived at a truly accurate grade because the result goes out to three decimal places.

In reality points and percentages can only go so far when evaluating student work. If possible, we can benefit greatly from taking a step back to get a holistic view of what a student has produced. Rather than just counting the number of problems they have missed, we (and they) are better served when we look for the patterns that reveal the reasons behind the mistakes.

One tool that can help move us closer to a fair assessment of student learning is a rubric. A rubric is an evaluation tool that uses a range of criteria to assess a student's skills or performance on a continuum from excellent to poor, with qualitative descriptions for the different levels.

As useful as rubrics can be though, since they are more sophisticated, they can also be a challenge to manage in a digital world. Thankfully there are many tools that we can use to create, deploy, and grade with electronic rubrics. In this blog post we will look at four such rubric tools and how they work. The tools range from simple to complex, so hopefully you will find one that matches your needs, or inspires you to try out a rubric for an upcoming assignment.

3 Tools for Making Memes in School

On the third day of Tech-Mas my true love gave to me… three meme makers.

Note: This post is part of my "12 Days of Tech-Mas" series for 2017. You can see all of the posts for each day as they get released in the main post here: "12 Days of Tech-Mas 2017".

Memes are everywhere. As a popular meme might say, "One does not simply go on the Internet without encountering memes."

However, if somehow you are not familiar with these ubiquitous images, a meme is a picture with superimposed text, used to convey a message. They often have an element of humor, and the text usually follows a pattern based on the image chosen.

We see memes daily in social media posts, on websites, and in advertisements. However, they can also be used as a fun and creative tool for education. Memes can be used by teachers and students to:

• Define a vocabulary word
• Explain a science concept
• Give an opinion on a historic event
• Illustrate a theme from a novel
• Demonstrate a mathematical law
• Create class rules
• And more!

Rather than just use memes made by others, students can create their own to show their learning and communicate ideas. There are loads of tools that can be used for this purpose, but in this blog post we will take a look at three useful, but very different, options for making memes.

Fair warning though, students will have a blast doing this project. So "Brace yourself. Memes are coming!"

Teaching Coding with Turtles

On the second day of Tech-Mas my true love gave to me… two turtle coders.

Note: This post is part of my "12 Days of Tech-Mas" series for 2017. You can see all of the posts for each day as they get released in the main post here: "12 Days of Tech-Mas 2017".

Over the last few years coding has become a much more common topic in schools. Students of all ages are learning about coding thanks to the rise of Hour of Code, STEM programs, robotics, and more.

One of the most popular coding tools for kids is Scratch from MIT . In the Scratch programming tool students use block coding to move and manipulate Scratch the cat to create games, stories, and animations.

Well you may know about the cat, but do you know about the turtle?

Back when I was a student (in the 70's and 80's) I loved computers (big surprise) and especially coding. At that time, one of the main options for coding in schools was Logo. Basically Logo was a programming tool where you wrote commands to move a "turtle" around the screen to draw pictures and learn the basics of coding. Logo was a direct influence on the development of Scratch many years later (so the turtle is actually the parent of the cat!)

This year is Logo's 50th anniversary, and with this being "Hour of Code" week, it is the perfect time to revisit one of the first programming languages ever developed specifically to teach children how to code. Below we will take a look at a brief overview of Logo, as well as two online tools for your students to learn and use Logo today.

Supercharge Google Slides with Pear Deck Add-on

On the first day of Tech-Mas my true love gave to me… an add-on for a Pear Deck.

Note: This post is part of my "12 Days of Tech-Mas" series for 2017. You can see all of the posts for each day as they get released in the main post here: "12 Days of Tech-Mas 2017".

It is no surprise that "Death by PowerPoint" is a well-known expression. Whether it be PowerPoint or Google Slides or any other multimedia presentation tool, we all know the potential boredom that can come from presenting with and learning from a slideshow.

Certainly we do our best to be engaging presenters, to include humor, interesting information, and maybe some animations to keep the audience's attention. Still we know that our students will learn more if we can engage them and make the presentation more interactive.

Well thankfully we have just the tool for that! Recently when Google rolled out add-ons for Slides, one of the first add-ons to be released was Pear Deck. This tool was already a popular resource on its own, but now with the improved integration with Google Slides it is easier than ever to add true interactivity to your slideshows.

See below for directions on how to add and use the Pear Deck add-on for Google Slides. For more details on this, also be sure to catch my upcoming webinar in January all about Google Slides add-ons.

What's New in Google - November 2017

Catch up on everything new in G Suite for Education from November 2017, and see great ideas and resources!

Below is the recorded video from our November 2017 Google User Meeting, along with the meeting agenda and all the awesome resources and G Suite updates from the last month. This includes 21 new Google updates and 42 Google resources for your class.

The monthly meetings are hosted by the Google Educator Group of Ohio, but are open to anyone from any location. The purpose of these meetings is to:

• Connect Google-using educators
• Share the latest Google Apps news and features
• Provide tutorials, demonstrations, and how-to’s
• Share best practices of how Google Apps is being used within schools
• Ask questions and get answers

The video from the meeting is recorded and available for later viewing for those who cannot attend or connect live. See below to view the recorded video, agenda, and all the resources from the November 2017 meeting:

The 12 Days of Tech-Mas 2017

With the holiday season here, I am excited to share some of my favorite things in educational technology!

I will be doing this in a series of blog posts throughout the month of December that I am calling "The 12 Days of Tech-Mas".

Each blog post will provide a list of useful resources corresponding to the number of that entry, from 1 through 12.

See below for options on how to access each entry for "The 12 Days of Tech-Mas".

How to Force a Docs Copy WITH Pre-Loaded Comments to Help your Students

We are always looking for new and improved ways to provide additional assistance to our students when they are doing digital work. Recently Google rolled out a new feature in Google Docs that, with a little tweaking, can give teachers new ways to provide support for students in their assignments.

The new option is available when you make a copy of a Google Doc. With this update you are now able to also copy any comments that are in the document. This is a great feature for you as an individual to keep comments in the copies you make. However, this can also be a creative way to provide additional resources, links, and assistance to your students in their projects.

Instead of just getting a copy of a worksheet, HyperDoc, study guide, or other document, students can also have comments pre-loaded into their copy of the document. These comments can provide them with:

• Additional directions
• Hyperlinks to resources
• Voice recordings from the teacher
• A checklist of items for the student to resolve
• And more

See below for details on the URL trick you can use to force a copy of a document with the comments included, as well as several examples of how this could benefit students.

Note: If you do not have the "copy comment" feature yet, it is still rolling out to some users. According to Google, full rollout should be complete by November 29th.