Student Homework/Classwork Check-In

Whether you collect homework or classwork, this form will help you stay organized and save you time by having the students check in the work for you.
In my classroom, my students sit in groups. It became too time consuming for me to keep going around checking planners, then checking in any homework so I created group check in papers. Over break it dawned on me that I could digitalize my check in sheets!
I created this Google Form and set it to where it saves the email address so that way I know who is submitting the information and what time it is submitted. After the form is submitted I set up the spreadsheet with conditional formatting, this way I can quickly look at the colors and get an idea of what's been completed. 
When I need to adjust the titles of the rows on the Form, I learned to delete the current rows and then add new ones, this will create brand new columns on the spreadsheet. Then when I use the spreadsheet, I can hide unneeded columns to view only what I want to.
Here are links to a copy of the Google Form and the Sheet you can link it to, conditional formatting has already been set up. If you want to view it, right click on a cell and select it from the menu it.

Iron Chef Slides

I was introduced to Iron Chef slides at sessions I have attended by Jon Corippo and Cori Orlando. The goal is to crowd-source information and have students share it with their classmates in a short amount of time.
My first activity, suggested to me by Jon Corippo, was to have students research Parkinson's Law. In the slideshow, I added my directions and the secret ingredient, which is an additional piece they have to explain in their presentation. I then added 15 blank slides and labeled them Group 1, Group 2, through 15. 
Students got into partners and I went over the directions with them. They would have 10 minutes to research Parkinson's Law AND create a single slide to share information. We discussed the difference between thin and thick slides. Thin slides, which have images, a quote, or single words, have the presenters actually talking to the audience. On the flip side we have thick slides which are filled with text and could be copied into a paragraph, these type of slides usually have the presenters reading right off the screen. I encouraged my students to create their very best thin slide.
On Google Classroom, I added the presentation to an assignment and gave them all editing rights so it would be one complete slideshow.  As soon as the students were ready, I started the time and played the "Iron Chef" theme song to add to the mood.  My kids flipped out! Some of them were really into it and others struggled where to begin. It was interesting to hear conversations during this time and how the students organized themselves with the work load.  
When it came time to present, there were a few groups who did not finish, so we had a discussion of what their game plan would be for next time and what they learned from this first activity.  
I have seen this project be done using vocabulary words, academic vocabulary, researching important people and so much more!  Jon even recommended using this with the book, Who Moved My Cheese, in place of the typical Book in an Hour activity.
You can see my students' activity below:

Happy Techie Tuesday!

It's another Techie Tuesday! I hope your week has gotten off to a great start!  Check out this edition for some great Google Chrome suggestions from #DitchBook Twitter chat, amazing TED talk suggestions and more!

New Year! New Techie Tuesday

Happy New School Year everyone!
Here is the newest edition of Techie Tuesday. If you wish to be automatically updated when they are published you can click the "Follow" button on the right hand side. 
As always, I am always looking for new ideas to include or to drive the newsletter. Please feel free to comment here with any suggestions or comments.

The Importance of Sharing Part 2: Share Your Struggles

After writing my post last week on the importance of sharing, I kept thinking of my current situation and what I choose not to share.

Currently, I have been struggling with a new English Language Arts adoption. I have been trying to figure out how to make it work in my combination class without going insane bouncing around. It seemed like each week I was trying something new, based off of new feedback I was given. Then there was finally a light when we received some grade level time with a trainer from the company. Let me tell you, that room was bright with all the "light bulb" moments going on. Does that mean I'm set now? Nope, not even close but I at least have a better idea of how to implement the new adoption.

Did anyone online know I was struggling? No way. I was not going to share all of this craziness that was going on with the new curriculum. I posted in a Facebook group asking if anyone was familiar with it then was referred to another group that had more experience with the curriculum, but I NEVER shared I was struggling. You know what's sad? I wish I had shared my struggles because it would have reached a lot of other teachers and we could have formed a great support group for each other.

So many times we want people to only see the happy, rainbow, light bulb moments in our classrooms, that we forget teachers are people too and we make mistakes, get confused and struggle. We have a tendency to hide that from others and to stay on our "Island of Isolation" when it comes to struggling. By doing this, hiding our struggles, we make others feel like it should be sunshine and rainbows in their room too!

We need to share our struggles and our failures. Throw it out there on Twitter, talk about a lesson that flopped, or ask for help with something you are struggling with. IT'S OKAY TO STRUGGLE!

If we are expecting our students to believe that struggling is learning, we, as teachers, need to accept that as well. We need to practice what we preach.

You are not alone. We are all struggling with something in our classroom.

**See this post and more on my Techie Tuesday newsletter**

The Importance of Sharing

Back in October at the Kern Tech Fest, I had the opportunity to hear Christine Pinto speak as the keynote. She is a Kinder teacher who integrates technology and has her kinders using the Chromebooks for activities, reading, and projects, but also does the regular, fun hands-on activities. I really enjoyed listening to her and loved some of the ideas she shared.

Then she made this surprising statement. She said that she shares because people need to see what is going on in her classroom. While that in itself is not surprising, she continued on saying that people assume she does technology all day long because she is a 'techie' teacher so by sharing she is able to show people the variety of activities her class is doing.

Listening to this, I realized how right she was! I was one of the ones that pictured her kinders doing tech projects all day long, but seeing their hands-on activities made me realize there is more to her classroom and her teaching than technology. This made me think of comments I have heard about my classroom.

Many people think my students are on technology all day long because that is a lot of what I share. They do not see the hands-on Science and Math activities we do, or how we are still taking notes by hand when reading or watching an educational film.

I feel that there may be a stigma out there about sharing activities on Twitter. I worry that people think they can only share technology activities on Twitter because the edtech community is so large. That couldn't be further from the truth. People on Twitter share ALL activities. The important thing is to share!

We need to show others what is going on in our classrooms all day long. We need to share the good activities and the ones that totally flopped. People out there need to see that there is someone else going through something similar.

Don't be afraid of sharing on Twitter, I know that is easier said than done. Still, I overthink about what I am sharing and am working on getting past that. We worry what others are going to think or if it is going to get any 'likes' on Twitter. As educators, we can feel so alone and isolated. Sharing on Twitter helps break down barriers and connect us to others. We need to come together to support each other, sharing on Twitter or any way is a great way to start!

**See this post and more on my Techie Tuesday newsletter.**

GoNoodle Saves the Day

Do your students need brain breaks throughout the day? Are you left trying to figure out how to get in those PE minutes when it's raining or there's bad air quality?
Never fear - GoNoodle is here!!

GoNoodle is a wonderful, FREE site, filled with exciting guided dance videos, yoga, stretching, and fitness videos. When you sign up, you create a class with their grade level. Then you get to select a champ who will level up as you participate more.

I have used this in my classroom from 4th - 6th graders. Sure it takes some time for kids to get into it, but soon enough the ones that are "too cool" are the ones feeling left out because they're the only ones not participating.  If a student still does not want to participate because they are "too cool" I tell them if they do not participate, then one of my other lively dancing students will come dance by them.  Now please take this with a grain of salt, as I said I only do this with students who are "too cool", I never single out my shy students. Slowly my shy students start to feel more comfortable and start having fun with the videos and activities.
Living in Southern California, we get a lot of bad air quality days so GoNoodle has been a lifesaver to get in PE minutes when we can't go outside.
Here are some student recommended videos:      
Doing GoNoodle indoors does require some transition with students needing room to move around. This has just become part of our daily routines and procedures. My students know that if they do not transition quickly enough that they will not have a lot of time on GoNoodle.  Sometimes I use it as a reward where certain students will get to select the videos and lead the class. I cannot sing the praises of GoNoodle enough. It has brought smiles and joy into my classroom and always brightens up the atmosphere. Be sure to check out GoNoodle and try it out with your kids!
PS: They also have an app and a website if you want to sign up and use it at home with your own kids. My nieces and nephew love it!  

11/29 Techie Tuesday

The newest edition of Techie Tuesday is out!

This week we take a look at using Google Drawings to create graphic organizers. People are always amazed when I share digitized graphic organizers. Even more amazement comes when I tell them my students made my templates. I made a few of these graphic organizers that required more time and details, such as the writing graphic organizers, but the others, including more I don’t have listed, were student made. I’m all about crowdsourcing. Why spend precious lesson planning time creating graphic organizers on the computer when you can ask your students to create their own? I always put a nice spin on it. I tell them that the one who has the nicest and most effective graphic organizer will get it saved on My Drive and then shared out as a template with the rest of the class.  Once you put that spin, they take their time and produce some amazing work trying their hardest to be selected.

The Techie Tip is about using the revision history in the Google Suite. This has been a lifesaver for me personally because my cat likes to walk across my keyboard at home when I step away. Instead of clicking undo a crazy amount of times I simply access the revision history and go back to the version of my document BEFORE I stepped away from the computer.

Revision history also comes in handy with my students. With groups you get to see who has contributed, what they have done, and how long they spent on it. Individually you get to see when the student first began working on it and when they last accessed it. This has come in handy because I’ve had students brag about getting their work done late at night, so I look up their document, show it to the class and reveal the revision history which shows they hadn’t even started working on it until late at night. We then have a long talk as a class about being responsible and getting work done in a timely fashion. During class, I can also see who’s doing what on their documents and when. So when I get reports that someone is playing around, I can look up their revision history and see what they have been doing.

Finally, we tie it all up with talking about Hour of Code which begins next week! This is huge and is such a great program to expose kids to the amazing world of coding. Hour of Code puts it all in a fun perspective and shows real-world application of math. I love that they include fun and recognizable characters that the students love. If you haven’t tried it with your class, you totally should! It’s a lot of fun, even I do it with my class. Thanks to +Rae Fearing  for sharing your Hyperdoc on Twitter!

It’s Easy for You, You’re ______

It’s Easy for You, You’re (techie/creative/smart/crafty/insert whatever you’re good at)

Have you ever had these words said to you? It is one of the worst phrases anyone could say to a teacher or any professional in that matter.

I had the pleasure of seeing the amazing Dave Burgess at Fall CUE on October 28th, 2016. When he shared how much this phrase upset him and how it totally was set to destroy him, I wanted to jump up out of my chair and shout a couple of “Amens” as if I were in church. It was a point that completely hit home with me.

Being a tech teacher I hear this phrase A LOT!

It gets exhausting after a while and for some, just SOME it becomes an excuse for them not following through or not doing the work themselves. As Dave Burgess stated, “This completely dismisses all of the hard work I have done to get where I am and what I do in my classroom.”

“It’s easy for you, you’re techie.” “It’s easy for you, you have the smart kids” “It’s easy for you, your class is well behaved.” You want to ask them, how do you think I got there? How do you think I push my kids to perform their best? How do you think my class got their behavior under control?  It’s all because I worked hard, did research, and found things that worked in my classroom. It just didn’t hit me in the middle of the night and everything changed.

I love Dave Burgess's example of the “Blinding Light” syndrome where we just walk around and get hit by flashes of lights with good ideas or naturally graced with technology know how . That’s not how it works, we work hard to come up with our ideas and see them through to the end. It takes a lot of our time, lunch periods, staying after school, taking work home, until we come up with (what we think) is the perfect plan. Sometimes these ideas rock, other times they blow up and “break the class” (love Doug Robertson’s phrasing of that).

Do I have random ideas? Yes I do, sometimes. Do they all come this way? No, the majority of them I have to work for and go over the content, standards, materials, and see how I can get creative with integrating technology, PBL, go cross-curricular, etc. It takes a lot of time and work! Regardless of who you are, if you have a family or if you’re single, it takes a lot of work and this phrases just kind of dismisses all of it as if you had this great idea and then it magically left your brain and transformed into your unit, activity, or experience you are providing to your students.

People tell me I must be naturally good at using technology. They are always surprised when I tell them no. There is no way to be naturally good at something that is constantly changing and transforming. I’ve seen tech transformed from my days in elementary school playing Oregon Trail in the computer lab to our touchscreen tables, VR, AR, and robotics. There is no way anyone is just naturally good at that (unless you’re a super genius… which I am not…) What I am good at is pushing all the buttons and googling answers, and within all of that I start learning new things about technology. Just recently, I have been trying to fix some software on my computer and one of the fixes was to go into the command prompt and enter commands in the script. I was like woah… slow down… you want me to do what? Then I just went for it.

Is everyone at that comfort level? Of course not, but what they do need to realize and acknowledge is that whatever you are good at isn’t something that came naturally and easy. It took time to get where you are now and it still takes time to flesh out a good idea (even if it breaks the class). People need to just go for it and push all the buttons or take a new risk in their class.

Please… no longer use the phrase “It’s easy for you, you’re (creative, techy, smart, crafty, etc). Instead of using that phrase ask that person what tips they would have to get started on the journey.

Techie Tuesday - October 25th

Welcome to my second edition of Techie Tuesday!

The featured website in this week's edition is Class Dojo. 

Class Dojo is a fantastic site that is a new take on classroom management. Students earn and lose points based on skills/behaviors that you can select. It has basic behaviors to begin with, but then you are able to edit them or add new behaviors with point values. I really love this site because students can earn points back after they lose them. It's all about second chances and positive reinforcement.
One trick I have learned over the years, is to create a fake student. I have a student in my class named Whacky Wilbur. He serves as my warning when I am about to take away points. Typically all I have to do is give Whacky Wilbur a few negative points, the students hearing the sound and straighten up. It has been a lifesaver for those times when it's more than a couple students being disruptive.

Ghostly Goals

Goals are extremely beneficial to students, especially when students intentionally set them. There's no more "I'm going to get Honor Roll this quarter" generic goals. Now they have to explain the steps they are going to take in order to earn Honor Roll. Short term and long term goals are both equally important. I have students who need those shorter ones that help keep them on track for the larger goals, and then I have students who are always thinking big picture and looking further down the road. 
In the Hyperdoc above I included links to what my 5th and 6th grade goal sheets look like, as well as a link to a very simple SMART goal that can be used both long and short term. At my school we are fortunate enough to have planners, and that is where my students write their SMART goals.

Techie Tip of the week

A very useful trick in Google Drive is starring items. There are documents I use on a daily basis, ranging from my morning directions to my Math and ELA pacing guides. Instead of searching for them every single morning, I use the "Add Star" option.
When you come across a file or folder you would like quick access to, right click on it then select "Add Star". After that your file or folder will appear in the "Starred" section on the left hand side of your Google Drive. Isn't that handy?

Is there anything you'd like to see featured in Techie Tuesday? Any techie tips for using Google Drive you'd like to share?  Post below in the comments!

Techie Tuesday

Today I started my first Techie Tuesday. As the C5 Technology Teacher at my school, we are trying different ways to have professional development. Traditional PD is so yesterday with meeting after school, so it's on to something new and exciting!

Our district has a subscription to Renaissance Place for AR and STAR benchmark tests. With parent conferences coming up next week I thought it was important to share some new ways to share the testing data with the parents. The diagnostic report will show parents the grade level equivalent that their student tests at as well as the areas where they struggled on the test.
Being a GAFE district, we have been trying to get all our teachers logged in and using the different apps. The first step is to get the teachers logged in and using Google Drive. I remember learning about color coding the folders and it blew my mind! I wanted to share this with my teachers to show them a small step in getting organized with Drive.
At my school, the teachers can be very reserved about sharing their successes. I'm not quite sure why it is, but I LOVE hearing about successes in integrating technology, no matter how small! I created a Padlet where teachers can go and share their wins with the rest of the staff.
If you haven't checked out GoNoodle.com, now is the time! They just released this amazing new dance called "Dance Party".  Students create an account at home, create their own champ, and then link it to your classroom account. In class, you select "Dance Party" and their champs will show up in your class dance! The kids get the biggest kick out of it!
So far this has been a hit with my staff, I have received a lot of positive feedback. For me, it was hard to keep it this size. I get excited about sharing things and sometimes go overboard, but when you are first starting something smaller and more direct is better. :) You don't want to overwhelm anyone.

ISTE 2015

ISTE 2015 is taking place right now in Philadelphia, PA. Sadly... I am still here in California. One day I will attend ISTE. My favorite thing about conferences is my name badge... geeky right? :) I just love it along with the ribbons you can attach! Thankfully there is a #NotAtISTE15 name badge! Go to the Google Plus community Not At ..... EdTech Conference and you will be able to create your own!

What is ISTE?

ISTE is the largest EdTech conference in the nation.There are people from all over sharing ideas and tech for you to use and share with everyone. It's like the best PD session ever!

I hadn't heard of ISTE until I attended the CUE conference last year. CUE is an ISTE affiliate.

Learn more about ISTE at their website.

http://www.iste.org/home
Not at ISTE? Here's how you can keep up. On Twitter follow the hashtags #ISTE15, #ISTE2015, and #NotAtISTE15 I highly recommend using an app for Google Chrome like Tweetdeck. This way you will be able to add columns and following the hashtags easily.

Another way is to follow me on Twitter @CampsCrusaders, and I will be sharing from educators who are tweeting using the above hashtags as well. Over at The Edublogger they have listed more ways to stay involved with ISTE.

Not at ISTE? You can still have fun as if you were! Join the Google Plus community Not At ..... EdTech Conference. Here you will find a way to connect with other educators who are not at the EdTech conference. There are fun challenges and other ways to collaborate!

Open House

Every year in May my district has Open House. This is basically a showcase of student work in our classrooms. My students had a lot to show off this year, especially with technology!  Here are some pictures from my classroom:

Overview of my classroom.

Showing off tech projects: There were 6 laptops lined up here so the students could show their parents their Minecraft projects (MinecraftEDU in the Classroom) and then we had a few other laptops so the parents could see the Guardians of Time website the students helped build (Guardians of Time Project Part 2)

Several mornings a week the students would come in and have a writing prompt or picture posted on the board. Each of them had created their own Google Slides presentation to write in. I had my students choose their favorite morning writing, edit it, and then illustrate a picture of it to showcase on the board.

This is a fun project where the students get to create their own amusement park. The students get to sketch it out and find the ordered pairs of their attractions on graph paper. Then the students have to write a descriptive paper talking about their park, from the sights and smells all the way to descriptions of the attractions. If you would like to check out more details, you can download all the directions here.

I was a little nervous about this craft because there were so many pieces to it, but my kids LOVED it! This really helped them understand photosynthesis. You can check out the craft here.

My students also did a craft to learn about plant and animal cells. It was very detailed. This craftivity was made by Runde's Room and you can get it here.

I LOVE this wall! My kids had so much fun doing our Science Vocab Wall. You can find the freebie from The Science Penguin here. Instead of having it just a picture, I had my kids draw a line towards the bottom and writing what the words means as well.

The One and Only Ivan extension activity that I discussed here. My students had to take a stance on animals being held in captivity. Their response was amazing.

I really enjoy when the students get into a book and start relating to the characters. This is our Character Trait Stick Quilt. The students were given eight craft sticks and had to use four sticks to write four quotes and/or character traits from the book, and then do three sticks with symbols or illustrations that would represent that character and then the last stick was for the character's name.

MinecraftEDU in the Classroom

Did you know that you can use Minecraft for educational purposes? I found this out last year at the CUE 2014 conference. I was so excited to use it.
This past year at the CUE 2015 conference I was fortunate enough to attend another session by John Miller (http://minecraft.edtecworks.com/). He shared a wonderful Japanese poetry project he did using Minecraft. The final product was the students created a Japanese tea garden set to music and lead you on this journey through their poem. There were different sound effects and actions that would happen when you would crossover the action blocks, the poem would even be read to you. I was blown away and that was when I got even more excited for using Minecraft with my kids.
We really used Minecraft this year by incorporating it with our Guardians of Time project. The students had to work with their teams and create a time period appropriate headquarters for their superheroes to live in. After that was completed, their next task was to reconstruct the first setting of their main event from their mission assignment. 
This proved a bit more challenging and I had to guide them a bit more than normal so they knew what I was expecting.  I gave them all Information blocks, which is special to the EDU version, and the students had to strategically place these blocks around their setting and explain what was so important about this piece. 
This was the part they struggled on because they were not sure why certain things were important to, let's say, the Gettysburg address. I spoke with the group about that and finally asked them specific questions like, "Why was it held in that cemetery? Why should we care it was held there? What was the big deal about his speech? How did this speech affect hisory?" After doing this with several groups they started to get the idea.
I was speechless at the outcome. You know, you always worry about the fun activities and that the kids aren't taking much away from it. I really expected the parents to come to Open House and question me on the kids JUST playing Minecraft... but I had a much different repsonse.
The parents were blown away at what their kids were learning with this and the details they were sharing about their specific events. When my principal came in with a board member, one of my students explained, in detail, about where Christopher Columbus set sail from, why it was important, the name of the dock and much more. I was blown out of the water!
I had my kids do screencasts of their projects and you can find them below. It was our first attempt at a screencast, so the volume is a bit low because the kids still felt the need to speak in a soft voice even though they were told to speak normally.
Enjoy!!

Student Tech Team

For the past several years, before 1:1, my school has had a student tech team. We have learned a lot about managing it throughout the years, although we still have a lot more to learn.  In my school, I am one of two tech teachers who helps the other teachers out before we have to call out IT. We do our best to take care of little problems, but were having troubles getting to everything so we call in the student Tech Team.
Every year I hold a meeting for those interested in Tech Team and a lot of kids sign up, but only a handful remain steady. We train these kids in phases.
**Note: Our school is now 1:1 with Acer laptops running the Ubermix. The students have their own WiFi network that is separate from the staff network.**
This year we started just going over the basics: how to connect to the internet, how to troubleshoot a connection or a basic computer error.  Once they conquered those we moved on to more difficult tasks such as reimaging a laptop (our student laptops run the Ubermix so reimaging restores original settings), troubleshooting printer errors, and even checking networking errors.  My students blow me away with how quickly they catch on and how they're always eager to learn more.
With the school year ending, now when I receive an email request for help I can quickly go over what I want my students to check and look for and they can troubleshoot it before I have to! This has made the turn around time on tech help requests so much faster!
Here are some of the crazy things my students have done this year with Tech Team:
1. At the beginning of the year, one of my 4th grade teachers was having networking issues and her student laptops would just not hold a connection. Two team members went to her room, troubleshooted all of the connections and then found the issue was with the router placement in the room (they knew this just from hearing me talk about it in class from a conference I went to). My girls then disconnected the router, placed it elsewhere in the room, reconnected all the laptops (including the teacher) and the network was up and running again!
2. I received an email about a teacher having an issue with the sound on the projector. I showed my Tech Team member what cords to look for, what buttons to check, and how to check the sound output and then I sent her to the other teacher. My student came back with notes to report what all she checked and the cords that were or were not connected. IT was contacted to check on it further for the missing cords, but the problem was solved within 10 minutes of my Tech Team member going over there.
Tech Team doesn't only troubleshoot and help with problems, they also teach classes!
Currently, two of my girls are working with a 2nd grade class and teaching them how to use their laptops. They have taken the kids through Google Docs, Slides, and Drawing as well as Edmodo and Moby Max. Those little 2nd graders are flying through their technology lessons!
Moral of this story: Do not be afraid to turn over power to your students! I have been amazed at the growth of my Tech Team members. They are starting to learn things on their own because they want to understand more of what is going on with the technology. Does your school have any type of technology team set up?

Guardians of Time Project Part 2

I started this project before Spring Break, so over Spring Break my students had the 'homework' to write their superhero origin stories and draw a picture of their superhero. I was shocked when 80% of them came back ready to go!
I wanted this project to be published somewhere and an easy place for my students to work collaboratively with each other. I decided to create a Google Site for the students to publish their work on.  My students were very excited about being published on a website.
Google Sites and Google Docs work VERY well together.
I started with a basic site. My students helped me brainstorm ideas for our agency name that all their heroes would work under and the name of the project itself. I told them that this was my first time doing this project and wanted it to be a collaborative effort amongst all of us.
Once we decided on the project name, Guardians of Time, and our agency name, H.E.R.O.E.S., my wonderfully talented brother-in-law created our graphic for our agency. I posted this to the site to make it feel 'professional' for the students. They got the biggest kick out of it. 

After creating a page for the superhero origin stories, I knew I would have difficulty keeping up with the site itself with adding links and documents. In their superhero teams, each team selected a leader and this leader was in charge of keeping their web page updated. Crowdsourcing at it's finest. :)

The team leader updated their team mission page, journal page, and their interactive story page (which I'll get to later).  Below are some screen shots to the webpage and a link. I am not sure how much you will be able to see at the link because my district has a closed server through Google. 

Link: Guardians of Time Homepage 

Here's the full site picture. 

Here's the menu side bar with the different parts of our site. 

If you have any questions feel free to comment or post on my Facebook page. 

Google Apps for Education

With the roll out of the 1:1 implementation, I was thrilled to find out we would be using Google Apps for Education (GAFE). I had been using Google Docs, personally, for several years now and had even used it for my school work as well. My students and I worked through GAFE together as we brainstormed ideas on how to use it in the classroom and how to increase collaboration.  The 'Share' button became my students best friend! For those of you unfamiliar with GAFE, the 'Share' button allows you to share that document with another person and they can work on the document at the same time as you. It's great for collaboration!
It was hysterical when I first started quick reading their essays during class. I would pop into one students writing while they were working on it (They were all required to share their work with me). The entire group that person was in would fall silent and stare at that one computer screen as I made a few quick comments on the paper. I would here "Miss Camp's posting on my document" in whispers across the room as I hopped from essay to essay. Here are a couple of things we did using GAFE:

Amazingly, my Special Angles Artwork project was featured over at Alice Keeler's blog here:
Math: Creating Angles in Google Drawing

1:1 Implementation - What I Learned From Piloting 1:1 Midyear

At first I was debating if I should do a series of post or one long post. I decided on the latter because I have so much to blog about with planning for the upcoming school year! So here we go!
This is a post that will show you how I implemented 1:1 laptops in my classroom beginning this past March and talk to you about what I learned. I will then post a series about different activities we used the laptops for and the successes and failures of the activities.
My district chose to go 1:1 using Acer laptops running the Ubermix 2.0 system. This was all new to me. The most I had were small group sets of iPads, Nook Tablets, and laptops. I had started a BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) program, so my classroom had been a almost 1:1.
My kids were ecstatic when I told them we had been selected to pilot the 1:1 program for the district. I explained how we would have to work together through this and keep notes of difficulties, successes, and failures. From Day 1 I heavily involved my students in this process.

Our awesome tech guy, Mr. Grumbles, came out and went over some guidelines for using the laptops and how to treat them. Then... the students had time on their own to check out the devices. This was fantastic because it gave them that Christmas morning feel and allowed them to explore and take some of the curiosity out of it so during class they weren't dying to play with it.

It took only one minute and word spread. With the students helping and teaching each other, soon the entire class had all changed the backgrounds on their laptops. They were beginning to customize their settings too. At one point a student asked us a question and we both froze. We were the teachers, shouldn't we know how to answer it? The truth was we were both unfamiliar with this system as well. Finally we told the student to look up their answer because we didn't know.

I posted 'Parking Lots' up around the room where the students could use post-its to post questions, problems, shortcuts, or great programs or websites they found.  We then worked together to come up with new procedures for our class. My students would ask me specific questions like, "What do we do with the laptops during Book Clubs?" I told them this was my first time with 1:1 so we were going to have to figure out together what to do during Book Clubs.

                     

 

We received a charging cart for the laptops and, being the organizational freak I am, numbered all of the cords and numbered all of the laptops. This way the laptop number corresponded with my students' class number. I could hold the students more accountable for their laptop. There were consequences for students not following directions or if their laptop battery died. If a students laptop battery died during use they then had to take out the paper copies of what we were working on and complete their assignment using pencil and paper. This really encouraged students to check their cord when it was plugged into the cart. The students were the ones who helped me come up with the consequences for misbehaving and not taking care of the laptops. I actually had to reign them back in and scale down their punishments. 

        

 

When I started this venture I had posted online that I was looking for free, web-based programs that would work well with 1:1. I was overwhelmed with the response I received. Looking at all the recommendations I knew there was no way I was going to be able to go through all the websites. I took the websites back to class and paired my students up. I assigned each pair a website to evaluate, which is a Common Core Standard, and it was up to them to present it to the class. The students had to answer questions I gave them that included what they thought about the website and how they saw us using the websites in class.

My students did a fantastic job and we started using many of the websites in class based on their recommendations! The journey did not end there as the students began to discover other sites and would present them to me as well.

I have always been the super structured teacher, with the students quiet when they worked unless I gave them permission to chat. Over the past couple of years I have changed drastically. Taking on the 1:1 flipped my classroom on it's head! My room was no longer quiet when the students were working, they were collaborating, sitting where ever they were comfortable, and working together! I was amazed at the work I was receiving.  

Here are some pictures of my NEW collaborative classroom: 

Overall here is what I learned from this experience: 
1. Involve your students! 2. Be honest with them if you don't know something. 3. It's okay not to know everything and to learn with your students. 4. Give your students some time on their own to explore the device. I hope this helps anyone who will be starting next school year with 1:1. Best wishes! :)