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!
