Terry's Tech Tips

Are students giving you feedback that work you returned to them after grading is now showing as 'late' or 'assigned'?   The addition of the Grading module to Google Classroom has impacted this process.  Read on to understand what is happening and how to fix it! What is happening? Let's follow through the typical workflow in Google Classroom where students are submitting work to you.  You create an assignment in Google Classroom and assign the appropriate points to the assignment .   You assign the work to students, which puts the work in status ' Assigned ' in the student view.   After updating the assignment, students turn in or submit work back to you by clicking the Turn In button.   The work status changes to ' Turned in.' After grading, you return work to students.  This is a necessary step to ensure the student owns the document.   The status now changes to ' Returned ' if you...

Have you ever faced a situation where two Google documents exist that are similar, and you want to quickly figure out the differences?  Last week's blog post covered how you can use Version History to compare a single document's changes over time - and even restore a previous version if you had an 'oops'! This week we explore the newly introduced option to compare two separate documents. If you are a teacher who has students submit one document as a 'rough draft,' and students submit an entirely different document as their 'final draft,' you should love how easy it is to see what suggestions students incorporated into the last version. Comparing Two Google Documents: To analyze the differences between the two documents, open the first document.    From the toolbar, select Tools > Compare Documents. In the dialogue, click on Choose document to select the second Google Doc to compare against.  In the “Attribute differences to field,” ent...

Students are writing across the curriculum - essays in English, papers in Social Studies, and lab reports in Science.    For any significant piece of writing, teachers usually provide students with valuable feedback to better their written assignments. Grading written work with feedback: Grading these assignments can be confusing.   It can be challenging to determine what changes the student made (if any) to improve the writing.   Many teachers like to have students turn in a 'rough draft,' give feedback with comments, and then have the students resubmit 'final' drafts.  Sometimes, teachers do this within the same document, while others have separate documents. If you face this problem, here is a solution you might want to use! If you use one document as both 'rough draft' and 'final draft.'   If you like to use one document to see the comment threads, you may already know you can click File>See Version History  to view how...

Student plagiarism can be a problem.  The world we live in makes it easy for students to copy/paste,  using works not their own. Identifying plagiarism and addressing it is a big part of students learning to be good digital citizens.  My last post outlined the new Originality Reports in Google Classroom, which check student submissions for plagiarism and incorrect or missing citations.    Occasionally, you will have a situation that needs a thorough investigation.  The Google Chrome extension Draftback is your superhero in this situation!  (Shout out to the Science Department, who discovered this gem!) Can't I see a document's version history? You may be aware that you can look at the revision history for any Google Doc or Slide.  Click File>Version History>See version history.   You are provided a right sidebar.  You can click on any revision to review the document at that time.  Changes from the pr...

Presentation season is upon us!  In many classrooms around CCHS, students will complete research and create Google Slides to present findings to their teacher and classmates. One of the challenges for teachers is being able to both observe and provide grading/feedback during presentations.  It feels awkward to have your laptop open, and the computer can feel like a barrier to fully engaging in the presentation.  Paper rubrics feel friendlier for this task.  But you must keep up with the paper and share the feedback with students. What to do?  Create a Google Form and use your phone to document your observations!  Most rubrics are constructed similarly to this CCHS Presentation Skills Rubric: You can quickly create a  Linear Scale question for each row  in Google Forms: You will see the options presented like this: Once the form is complete, email yourself the link.  While students present, use your phone to...

Google Forms are magic - they are so flexible!  They give you an easy way to:     collect information get feedback or check for understanding collect digital assignments gather student reflections of lesson or unit obtain formative assessment data create review packets Click on the caption below the graphic to see some samples of Google Forms hard at work in the classroom.  Many of the examples are from your fellow colleagues! Click here for active links Creating a Form: Navigate to forms.new  to create a new Google Form.  Or go to  forms.google.com where there are Forms templates, or New>Form from Google Drive. (Tip:  You can create any new Google app by typing in Slides.new , Docs.new , or  Sheets.new for example.) Google Forms offer many different question types, allowing you lots of flexibility to accomplish your goal for using the form!  Note that you can  collect student work  u...