Week 2 Activity 4: Google Apps Reflections

TASK: Include three ideas for google apps in the classroom, one should be collaborative!

Throughout the google app scavenger hunt I discovered three uses of  google apps in my classroom. For example:

1. Forms
I've had a tradition of handing out a form to parents on curriculum night to be filled out during the 7 minute "class" or to be filled out at home and mailed to me here at DHS. Here is a partial snip of what I call the Parent Sharing Form
   

 I discovered through this process that I can create a google form and pick one of these questions to be completed by parents and submitted to me in class. These results would be arranged in a nice, concise spreadsheet to be easily accessed by  me throughout the school year. The challenge, as always, is the the time and classroom management. I wonder, should I set up a couple of computers to easily access as they walk in or will this result in a bottleneck and line out the door? Maureen had the following, very insightful, recommendations...
    

In case you can't read it all, she pointed out that the parents can scan (if they have a QR reader on their phone) the form which takes them to the survey. They can answer it from their phones either during class or anytime later! I am excited to play with the following online form and implement the google strategy on curriculum night 2014!

2.  Spreadsheet
The google spreadsheet was a big mystery to me and one that I spent the most time playing with this week. In the past I've had to create and manipulate excel spreadsheets but I did not know how aligned the skills would be with google. Working with the end in mind, I successfully created something that would be useful and practical for my students and fellow chemistry teachers. I am sure it is not perfect but I was able to create a working spreadsheet with formulas, protect the data cells with working formulas, color-code the columns using the conditional formatting tool, and set email notifications to let me know when somebody is using, editing, or updating the document.

I believe this google spreadsheet will improve a chemistry assignment in my class that requires the students to divide and conquer due to the time it takes to perform the calculations. By using the google spreadsheet the students can spend time applying the concept of bond energies instead of the time it takes to look up values and plug them into their calculators. In the end, the students use these values to solve the mystery code  ENTHALPY IS ENERGY!

Specifically, in the following google spreadsheet, the students will have to analyze a balanced chemistry equation to determine the total energy of a reaction. By doing so, they will have to apply previous knowledge specifically in regards to the balanced chemical equation and apply it by entering the relevant values into the blue and green columns within the spreadsheet.



 

 This is a collaborative tool because more than one student can access it at once while working together to solve the mystery chemistry message within this classroom activity!


3. Calendars and Docs
In the near future, I hope to go paperless in the classroom. To make this happen, I feel that I need to break this down into steps or categories to make it manageable. By further exploring the google calendar I hope to discover how to do the following to replace my paper homework calendars and handouts-

• assign daily homework
• attach the related documents to these assignments
• manage timelines for group projects
• use google docs for group submission

During this week 2 task, I only found the time to create an event called Trial Department Picnic and invited 2 guests. I was able to color code this event but I was not successful in attaching the related document which was a  invitation created in Microsoft Word. In addition I was able to explore the Holiday Calendar and it has prompted my to make a Birthday and Anniversary calendar for my personal use, although I have not found the time to update that information yet. This google calendar is also collaborative because it can be viewed by one to many persons and these people can accept invitation and also invite others if created selects that option.