At my school all staff and students have a Google Education account. This gives us access to Google Groups and Google Drive across our entire community. After taking the time to set up a Google Group for your class (approximately 10-15 minutes) any one of these activities takes 1 minute to set up and the students can do it for you. All students are signed into their Google Account and ready to go as part of their lesson set up.
Strategies for minimal teacher input (and planning) lessons:
- Explore and Share
- Answering the "Ungoogleable"
- Pay it Forward
- We all have a turn
- Not ready for Twitter yet
Strategy 1 - Explore and Share
Scenario
We were learning how to use a new software tool in class. In the past I may have demonstrated and explained different features and purposes and then let students play but that morning I had read an article on Twitter about how students retain more information if they are allowed to investigate by themselves first so I changed my strategy. The desired learning goal was for students to learn the basics about how to use a particular piece of software.
Teacher work before the lesson = decide on what software the students will be investigating
Methodology
A student again created and shared a Google Document with the class group. Instead of demonstrating how the software worked I decided to let the students do it so I broke them up into four groups and instructed each group to take notes about the functionality of a section of the software (in the same document). Only one person from each group was allowed to type in the Google Document to encourage collaboration. When all groups thought they had finished their note taking I gave them 2 minutes to prepare how they were going to present what they had learned to the class (possibly it could be better to warn them in advance that this is going to happen but in this case I wanted the focus on meaningful notes the student could refer back to as they were using the software). Each group stood up and demonstrated the functionality from their section (recall that all students had already had time to have a play). Other students could add additional notes to what the groups had recorded when discussion and questions identified areas that had been missed.
Result
Not only were all students invested in ensuring that the notes for their section were thorough, they were all jointly responsible for making sure that there were no gaps left by other groups. At the end of the lesson students felt confident that they had a strong foundational knowledge in the features of the software and could find any functionality they wanted to use in the next lesson.
Scenario 2 - Answering the Ungoogleable
Scenario
I want my students to collaborate on answering a difficult question (that is not googleable) but they need an understanding of domain specific vocabulary, key concepts and a range of information to be able to answer this question.
Teacher work before the lesson = think up an ungoogleable question (obviously related to one of their learning goals)
Methodology
Create a Google Document with a table with 3 columns and assign a student to each column. The first column is for vocabulary. The second column is for the researcher to post links to relevant websites and sources of information that the other students can use to inform their decision making. The third column is for key concepts. For this lesson, these three students sit together and they are the only ones to write in the document. As the researcher posts links, the summariser reads them and pulls out key concepts. The summariser and the researcher can offer suggestions of words for the first student to add (and define) in the vocabulary column. Although these students have specific jobs to perform, they help each other prepare the resource for the class. What's the rest of the class doing? Reading what these students add to the document, deciding in groups what their answer to the challenging question is going to be and preparing their response\justification\deliverable.
Result
All students learn quite deeply about the topic. You may think that the note taking students miss out on some learning but the level of reading, analysis and synthesis required to perform these roles can lead to quite deep thinking around the topic. Obviously you would change around the students who held these roles.
Scenario 3 - Pay it Forward
Scenario
Similar to the scenario above, sometimes you may just wish to have students take excellent notes from the lesson. Telling them to do so is going to result in mixed and inconsistent results. Or sometimes a new teacher or new to the subject teacher may want to learn from a more experienced teacher but it is just not possible for them to attend the other's class. Methodology
Similar to the methodology above, a shared document can be completed by three students for vocabulary, links and key concepts during a wide variety of classroom activities and shared with not only the students in the class but other teachers or students of the same subject in a different class.
Result
Teachers can learn from other teachers and all students have more detailed notes than they would have taken individually.
Strategy 4 - We all have a turn
Scenario
The other day we were watching a documentary which was rather content heavy. I wanted the students to have notes about the important aspects of the video but did not want them all to be focused on taking notes rather than watching the documentary. The learning goal was for them to be able to apply the knowledge they gained from watching the video in the evaluation of an existing product.
Methodology
A student created a Google Document and shared it with the group. All students had the document open and ready to go. Each student took notes for a couple of minutes before passing on the job to the next student. Students were encouraged to add to the notes others had taken if they felt that important information had been neglected but this was not their primary role - their primary role was to be an observer of the video.
Result
A far more comprehensive set of notes than if one student had taken them alone. The students' subsequent blog posts demonstrating the application of their learning were quite sophisticated and of a higher level than I had initially anticipated.
Scenario 5 - Not Ready for Twitter Yet
Scenario
You want the students to have a place in which to post notes and comments and to be able to ask questions but you are not quite ready for Twitter or Today's Meet.
Methodology
You can use your three column Google Doc for any combination of data collection and feedback. Some options include:
- Comments
- Questions
- Vocabulary
- Key Points
- Links
- How do I...
- I don't understand.....
Another option would be to use your Google group to create a post for the days lesson and have the students post their comments and questions in reply.
Result
Students have an opportunity for their voice to be heard, to ask questions and to receive immediate feedback within the safety of a closed environment.
Tips for Success
- All of these suggestions require a Google Group to be set up.
- Swap the roles around so that all students have a chance to try out the different roles - either within a lesson or for different lessons.
- Be clear in your expectations from the notetakers and be prepared to redirect them if they are not meeting these expectations
- Prepare engaging activities for the rest of the class to be doing that require them to draw upon the knowledge in the collaborative notes, thus providing an audience and purpose.
- Don't expect your students to be perfect the first time - they'll probably muck around and write some silly things the first few times but will become much more proficient the more they are exposed to this type of activity.
Attributions
Sharpemptbr, Boy, Girl, Children, Computer Learning Education, CC0 1.0
Ron Mader, there's too much to do and not enough time, response = collaborate, CC BY 2.0
Wiredforlego, Stop, Collaborate and Listen, CC BY-SA 2.0
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