Craig M Sheil

Day 1 of Google 2020

We are going to start simple today and look at some tips when using your own Google Drive. I don’t know about you but I would be LOST without my Google Drive. I wish there was a spot where I could find the number of files that I have created as well as the number of files that have been shared with me. I can only image what that number would be.

WORKSPACES

We are going to start with taking a look at workspaces. This is something relatively new. Basically it is an opportunity for a user to pull in different files that they may be using at the same time for a particular project/unit/time period. Workspace is not considered the same as folders in your Google Drive. Instead it is a space for just that user to quickly find and access the files that they need for the task at hand.

Re-Think & Re-Imagine – Teaching is Hard!

Teaching in 2020 is hard, challenging and difficult. We have all heard this through conversations at the grocery store, families, co-workers or even the news. I 100% agree. It is hard. It is challenging. It can be difficult.

The reason why many teachers find it challenging is not due to the fact that they don’t know their curriculum, it is the fact that teachers are having to rethink and redesign their lessons during their remote teaching blocks to help make learning as impactful and meaningful as possible. Teachers are not able to take every single lesson that they have taught before and ‘just’ put it online. Much more thought goes into making sure the lesson makes sense.

Two recent activities speak to the notion above, a mathematics and a science example. Pre-pandemic, in both scenarios, the teachers would be able to make photocopies of an activity they wanted students to complete with paper and pencil/color pencils, in either groups or individually. Seeing as though students are experiencing the lesson remotely at home, the teachers had to re-think and re-imagine how the lesson could run. It all came down to what was the true goal of the activity and how they could design the activity to fit the current situation that we all find ourselves in.

10 Days of Google 2020

Images from a slidesgo template

Here we go…back at it for a fourth straight year. As I have done in the past, I will be sharing different tips and tricks relating to the world of Google, starting Monday, December 7, 2020. My hope is that over the course of the ten days, you will find something that is new to you that you never knew you could do with Google or a great reminder of something you knew about but yet have tried it out.

While I will be blogging each day, I will also curate all blog posts in a single Google Drawing for ease. To view this Google Drawing in another window, click HERE. If you have any tips, ideas, or suggestions, let me know! Here is to a great holiday season for you and your family and that 2020 ends on a high note.

And that is my Spiel…

Supporting Curriculum & Pedagogy

All educators can agree on one thing. It has been an interesting nine months. I support teachers in a high school where students and teachers are participating in a hybrid model. Students show up to school for a class in the morning. Then in the afternoon, they participate in remote blocks online.

Teaching remotely is still a ‘new thing’ for all of us, regardless of the fact that we went remote back in March. Let’s face it, expectations were different and the curriculum taught was also different. All educators are still trying to figure out what works and does not work in this remote setting.

In an effort to support teachers, Jess Gilcreast, high school librarian, and I decided that we should curate all of the great resources that we are discovering on Twitter and hearing about in house from our colleagues. Sometimes, just finding the right template or layout of a task can help streamline things or help make planning that much better. While, Jess and I don’t have all of the answers, our hope is that with a bit of organization we can help staff.

Creative Uses of Jamboard During COVID Times

Jamboard is quickly becoming a go to tool for the 2020 – 2021 school year. I know that I have written blog posts before on how we utilize the physical Jamboard Kiosks at our high school (can read more HERE). However, now that Jamboard can now be part of Google Meets, as well as teachers realizing they need a way for students to collaboratively work together in an efficient way online during remote blocks, they are finding ways to using the web version of Jamboard. While teachers are still finding it challenging to ‘read the room’ when they teach remotely, they like how Jamboard is helping tackle the collaborative aspect and getting student voices heard.

I have been impressed with how teachers at the high school have adapted their teaching with Jamboard. Below are are a couple of examples in different disciplines.

Math

Example 1: Mrs. D. Phillips and Mrs. Taylor were looking for a way to mimic an activity that they have had students do on big poster paper around the classroom with properities of angles in Geometry class. They decided that Jamboard would be their solution to getting students to working collaboratively during their remote teaching block. Each pair received their own copy of the Jamboard file.

How was this created? The two teachers took screenshots of the the diagram as well as the angle information. They then created multiple stickies to match the angle names. Once each pair receives their copy, they have the ability to move the stickies to the appropriate spots. To see what this looks like in Jamboard, click HERE.