When curiosity is sparked...

I have been dying to learn how to link specific topic headings within my external class website directly to specific portions within Google Document that contains information about those specific sections!

The Google Doc serves as a summary of the unit at hand. A running and flexible document that I, and students contribute to. The external website serves as a static location for all class lesson plans and resources. 

By linking the headings within the website we use on a daily basis, to the specific portions of the Google Document, students can target their studying strategically, directly from the website to the summary notes. 

I finally sat down and figured it out. Super easy! Check out the video below:

Before every major assessment I like to facilitate review activities in class. That being said, I can only handle the Kahoot theme song so much, play so many games of "Chemistry Jeopardy", or figure out another variation of Periodic Table Battleship to satisfy review of the whatever skills we are learning that topic. 

Not that there is anything wrong with the above games, or the myriad of variations. Indeed, if I played Kahoot everyday my students would be STOKED! 

However, the above review games, in my mind, always fall short in one area: student creation/invention.

This is where Google Forms is a powerful tool! During the past unit on Formula Analysis, distributed a different problem to each team of students. 

I then asked each of students to input their solution AND a Youtube video of them solving their problem on a whiteboard into  a Google Form.

I then made the output spreadsheet public, and students spent time solving one another's problems, and watching one another's solutions when they were stuck.

Although not as superficially engaging as Kahoot, watching students invent videos to explain their problems, and negotiate not only the problem, but also how to teach it, was incredibly inspiring, and IMO, much more engaging from an outside perspective. 

Although this post is represents an extremely simple application of Google Forms, one I'm sure many of you have already done before or experimented with in the past, the power of immediately sharing the output formula with students, containing live links to the videos THEY created, was worth sharing. 

Click here for the Google Form and here for the output spreadsheet. See screenshots below as well. 

Not a new idea at all, but I am always blown away by how productive class is when I assign a writing assignment and spend the class editing and providing feedback to all docs simultaneously. Today I pushed out this template, and groups of students relocated to a myriad of places on campus to complete their formal research article according to the template. I sat at my desk and provided feedback. Super fun. Super simple. Super meaningful. Below is a short video of the process. #embracethemess

Inserting a picture directly from the webcam of your computer into a Google Document is a, IMO, freaking powerfully simple strategy in the classroom. It was gone, but NOW IT'S BACK! YES! This feature embodies the kind of classroom technology I love: simple, efficient, and purposeful. Below are just a few of the many ways I have used this technique in my classroom: 

• Insert images of question artifacts or answer choices into a Google Form. 
• Insert images of questions or diagrams on a whiteboard or piece of paper in a Google Slide. 
• Insert images of prototypes during a design cycle into a Google Doc. 
• insert images from a lab a Google Sheet that is collecting quantitive data about the lab.  
• Insert images of evidence of learning during a project. 
• Insert images of problems solved in a shared Google Doc with the teacher as exist ticket. 
• Insert image of you or your group during an activity. 
• Insert a picture of scavenger hunt artifacts into a shared Google Dci with your the teacher. 

Below is a video that quickly shows how to insert an image as as snapshot in four different mediums: Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Sheets and Google Forms. 

Yes. I know what you are thinking. This entire post is mute given the functionality of Google Classroom or the myriad of other scripts. However when I want to quickly share a Google Doc template with students or teachers whom I am working with for a short period of time (workshop, science camp, etc.), this process works great. Below is the logic and video tutorial. 

Logic
Creating a template from a Google Doc is extremely useful when you want to streamline the way students gather data, or engage in a unified activity. When the ridiculously long Google Doc URL template is created (see below video for method), writing a short version, customized URL on the board is very efficient. By customizing the link students do not confused  "1" for an "l" an "O" for an "0", etc. 

Tutorial