Use Google Forms to Collect Your Students' Digital Work

Many teachers assign work to their students that results in some form of digital product.  The following tutorial is one method that could be used to help collect and organize all of this work.  The basic concept is to use a single Google Form that has enough questions to allow the teacher to filter the submissions and review the student work in any way the teacher prefers.  A significant feature of this method is the automatic time and date stamp added to each student entry so that assignments can have due dates and times outside of the traditional class period.  I'd be interested to hear what you think of this process, so please leave a comment.

Please note that if your students are in a different Google Apps domain than your teacher account, you will need to uncheck the box that requires the person submitting the form to be in your domain to make the form "public."

Chromebook Announcement at FETC 2012

Today I had the amazing opportunity to participate in the Eye Opener Keynote and a press luncheon at FETC 2012 where Rajen Sheth, Group Product Manager for Chromebooks, announced that three districts, including mine, will be going 1:1 with Chromebooks in the 2012-2013 school year.  Not only were these events a real honor to be a part of, they were a lot of fun.  It was the first time that I had been involved in something of this magnitude at a major conference and was made even more special by sharing it with Jason Markey (@jmarkeyAP), Mikkel Storaasli (@LeydenASCI), and our new #googleschool friends from Council Bluffs and Richland Two.  After the events, it was incredible to see things I had said being tweeted, blogged about, and quoted in various publications.  This was definitely an experience I'll never forget and cannot thank the Chromebook team enough for this opportunity and for all their support with Leyden Community High School District 212's digital evolution.  The following are some links to the video recap of the keynote and the articles that have been published so far:

• Keynote Video: http://youtu.be/duE2BM-5b_A (skip ahead to the 15:38 mark)
• Google Chrome Blog:  http://goo.gl/gClFc
• CNET:  http://goo.gl/l5PTs
• the Journal:  http://goo.gl/5kjqO
• TechCrunch:  http://goo.gl/YpkVi
• Huffington Post:  http://goo.gl/uHhcS
• 9To5Google:  http://goo.gl/xVxaN
• SiliconFilter:  http://goo.gl/GtnWl
• VR-Zone:  http://goo.gl/jtZWn
• The Guardian:  http://goo.gl/zbtQ1
• TG Daily:  http://goo.gl/x3wi5
• Engadget:  http://goo.gl/yTAFU
• Hack Education:  http://goo.gl/bqfgD
• ZDNet:  http://goo.gl/9Am4P

I'm Talking Chromebooks at FETC

I'm currently at FETC 2012 in Orlando with Jason Markey (East Leyden Assistant Principal - @jmarkeyAP) and Mikkel Storaasli (Asst. Superintendent for Curriculum and Instruction - @LeydenASCI) and will be participating in some presentations talking about Google Chromebooks.  Here's my schedule so far.  Please come hear more about how Leyden CHSD 212 is using Chromebooks, what are plans for the future are, and to just say hello.

Tuesday, January 24
1:00-3:00 p.m.   Chromebook Classroom -  a Technology Solution Seminar in room S230C
5:00-7:00 p.m.   Working at the Google booth

Wednesday, January 25
7:30-8:15 a.m.    Eye Opener Keynote-  Scaling Technology in Education:  Building on the Web in room SA1
                          (The URL for the keynote webstream is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmfe-HiTzpc)
12:00-1:30 p.m. Press Roundtable
2:30-3:30 p.m.   Working at the Google booth

Thursday, January 26
12:00-12:30 p.m. Working at the Google booth

Create Animated Movies With Xtranormal

I really got a kick out of this movie and it was a great reminder about the animated movie making tool available at http://www.xtranormal.com/.

Ode to #Pencilchat: Technology Integration in the Classroom
by: MiddleLevelEd

Updates to Flubaroo grading script for Google Apps

A few months ago I blogged about Flubaroo, a phenomenal FREE script that you can easily implement with your Google Forms and Spreadsheets to create automatically graded student assessments. I just learned that Flubaroo has recently released some new features.  Check out the Flubaroo blog post to learn about these new features and, if you haven't already started to use it, check out the following overview video:

New Features - http://goo.gl/aFGYT

Overview Video - http://youtu.be/QJ60szcUbBE

Global and Digital Citizenship

An important task I've been working on lately is the updating of our district's technology policies.  As we prepare to move to a 1:1 environment next year with every student receiving a Chromebook, there are surely a number of policies and procedures that will need to change.  During my efforts, I was re-examining a variety of the digital citizenship resources that I've been collecting and stumbled across a recent post on the Committed  Sardine blog from Andrew Churches about Global and Digital Citizenship.  I have long appreciated Andrew's "six tenets of citizenship":

1. Respect yourself
2. Protect yourself
3. Respect others
4. Protect others
5. Respect intellectual property
6. Protect intellectual property

You can read more of Andrew's work on digital citizenship on his Educational Origami wiki.  One of his latest projects is the side-by-side comparison of global and digital citizenship.  Click on the image below for the full pdf version.  Please note that this is only a draft and Andrew is seeking comments and feedback.

Our Students' Digital Footprints

As we prepare to go fully 1:1 next school year in our district, there is a lot of work to be done and logistics to hammer out.  The possibilities for change in our classrooms, our buildings, our students' homes, and our community are exciting.  While this won't happen overnight, the end results seem limitless.  One of the many things I've been thinking about is the concept of student digital footprints.  For many of our faculty and staff, myself included, we've only recently begun to leave our footprints on the World Wide Web.  Some of the items are professional while others are personal, but together they can tell a story about each of us.  Our students and our own children are growing up in a time when their entire lives may be, in one form or another, documented online.  The ramifications of this could be extremely positive for them but also potentially very negative.  The simple example of an employer "Googling" a potential new hire's name is just one of many scenarios where a digital footprint could come into play.  I'll be thinking about this topic a lot more in the upcoming semester and how it relates to what we do in education and how we do it.  If you're interested in this topic, I encourage you to watch the following TEDx talk by author Steve Johnson.  Please also consider leaving a comment with your thoughts or links to resources that I and others reading this post may benefit from.