Doctopus: Making Google Doc Management a Breeze

Google Docs are a great way to share work with students, and for students to work on group projects. But sometimes managing docs can be a real pain.  Doctopus is an amazing tool created by Andrew Stillman (a former teacher) using Google Apps Scripts.

Using a spreadsheet that contains a class roster teachers can easily distribute and manage shared google documents. Google docs/sheets/presentations that the teacher creates are copied and shared with the correct students with easy.  If you have already created contact groups for your classes here is an easy way to create the spreadsheet, thanks to one of the great teachers at my school for this tip!

1) export each group as a csv file

2) open the csv file (defaults to Excel)

3) re-save as an Excel sheet (important step)

4) import and convert the excel sheet in Google docs

The scrip even allows for recording grades, and comments that can be emailed to students with one click. If that weren't great enough, Doctopus now allows you to use Rubrics for grading (Goobrics)!

The following video provides a great walkthrough of how to use Doctopus in the classroom.  Below is a video on how to use the new addition to Docotopus, Goobric.





Goobric tutorial

Digital Research Help: Bamboo Dirt

Once in a while I come across a great site that organizes lots of other great sites in a way that is incredibly useful for students and teachers. BambooDiRT is just such a site.

Bamboo DiRT is "a tool, service, and collection registry of digital research tools for scholarly use." It was created as a partnership between several major Universities.  BambooDiRT easily helps students find the perfect digital research tool for there needs.  

The site simple states "I need a digital research tool to...." and then lists several possibilities including mangage tasks, share bookmarks, visualize data, write a paper, analyze data, etc.  Follow the links to a  list of annotated web tools that will help you accomplish your desired task.  These tools can then be sorted bu platform, cost, etc.

Go ahead, check it out....

Using Google Calendar to Distribute Student Assignments

All teachers know that communication between students, teachers, and parents is invaluable.  With Google Calendars you can easily keep everyone informed about what's going on in your class as well as have a simple way to distribute documents.

Google Calendars can be made public and then embedded (see below) or linked to (click here for example).  With the "Add an Attachment" feature in Google Calendar events teachers can easily share assignments with students.  For an example of how this works click on the March 5, 2013 entry entitled Webquest. Simply click on the entry and then "more details" you will see the document entitled "executive branch webquest.doc"  clicking on that link will download the document.

Particularly in the K-6 environment there may be no need for using a full featured learning management system such as Moodle, and often school websites are cumbersome for uploading documents. Google calendars provide a simple, free alternative for teachers who just want to allow students to get copies of missed or lost assignments.

To use a calendar as a communication and document distribution system follow these steps:

1. Create a new calendar, then need to set the calendar view to Public under the system settings.
2. Under calendar settings/labs make sure to enable the add attachments lab 
3. Create a new event like you normally would, then click on the add attachments link. (Make sure to set the permissions of the document in your Google Drive so that those who you want to access will be able to do so) 

Knowmia - The solution for the flipped classroom?

Lately teachers have been very interested in using video to supplement learning in the classroom. Some use video in the "flipped classroom" model where students learn the material via assignments (including video) before class and others find that video can be a great reinforcement after class for students to review.

Some teachers create their own videos and others use the plethora of online resources that can be found on YouTube, PBS, TED, Kahn Academy, Discovery Ed, etc.  Some send students to the websites directly, and others use Wikis, Moodles, Google Sites, etc. to post their own content or links to outside content.

All of this can be time consuming and difficult for students and teachers to navigate. That is where Knowmia comes in. Knowmia is a free service that allows teachers to create lessons centered around videos that they find anywhere on the web, within Knowmia's own growing selection of teacher created videos, created on their computer, or that they created using Knowmia's feature rich iPad app.

The iPad app allows for teachers to create lessons by annotating slides and recording their voice. There is even the option to include a face recording in the corner.  The app allows you to import images and video to use as props, draw directly on the canvas, set different backgrounds including graph paper, among other features. Included in the app is an easy to learn from tutorial for getting started. Once complete Lessons can be uploaded directly to Knowmia or exported in editable format for other teachers to work on.

Since the App is free, students can use it to create their own lessons to share with the teacher that can be played in the App. The teacher could then share select lessons to their own Knowmia account.

What's great about Knowmia is that in addition to the video, teachers can add relevant links, Textbook references, and documents. Students do not need an account to view Knowmia lessons. In the future they are planning to allow tracking of when students complete lessons, which would be a great addition to the site.

UPDATE: Knowmia has introduced the new assignment wizard in Beta. Learn all about it here. 

At that point students would have to create accounts. This would require email to sign up, which can be an issue for some districts.  Hopefully they will create another option for those districts that do not have email.

Presently to share your lessons with students you need to provide them with the link to the lesson. Like this (Click here for an example lesson). You can also embed lessons directly on your website.  If students do have an account they can favorite them and they will be stored in the "My Knowmia" section of the website.  Once students are on one of your videos, they can access all your other videos by clicking on your name. It would be nice if it were easier to search for videos by teacher.

Knowmania videos are on hosted YouTube, which means that many students, including ours at Saucon will not be able to see them in school. Hopefully we can find a way around this soon. In the meantime it is still a great website, and companion app.