My 1st Year as a 1-to-1 Teacher

June 22, 2015:

First, a disclaimer. I am certain that there are other teachers out there who have used their laptops more effectively than I have this year. You should find those teachers, talk to them, and pay attention to what they have to say.

Also, I'm intentionally not going to talk about the fancier stuff like Nearpod and Socrative and Blendspace that Chris covers in his trainings. Those are all excellent and you should definitely check them out. My focus is going to be on more of the nitty gritty tools that I've found myself using this year.

What I have to offer is a reflection on what tools I used this year and practical thoughts on how to use them. I don't know about other teachers, but it took me a little while to figure out the ramifications and effects of using laptops in the classroom on a regular basis. I still haven't figured it out, but I will share what I can, with the caveat that there is almost certainly a better way to do it that I haven't figured out yet and if you have, I'd appreciate you sharing.

The web tools and how I used them in year one of 1-to-1:

The primary tools I used this year were:

• Google Classroom
• Remind
• Evernote
• Google Forms (h/t Mr. Barry & Mr. Simkins)
• Flubaroo (h/t Mr. Barry & Mr. Simkins)

Because things are getting a little tl:dr here, I'll start with Google Classroom and make later posts for the others.

Google Classroom:

I decided to go with Classroom over Edmodo because of its integration with Google Drive, which is undoubtedly part of their master plan. It lacks the fancy apps that Edmodo has, but what it does, it does well. And with the use of add ons like "Flubaroo" it can be made to do some powerful things . . . 

For the most part, I used Classroom as the central location for my class materials and announcements. It largely replaces the Google site that I previously built for each class. It also replaces the kind of ugly "file cabinet" approach that Sites uses or the even more elegant technique of attaching pdf's to the bottom of a web page to share materials.

The Google Classroom help page has detailed instructions on how to setup classes and how to communicate with students. When you post an announcement, it gives you the option of attaching a file, connecting to a document on Drive, post a YouTube video, or linking to a file or web page.

When I wasn't using it just for announcements of due dates, I was posting links to shared folders. For major projects, I made a shared folder on Drive of the necessary documents (that I would normally have to photocopy and hand out), and then linked directly to that folder on Classroom.

For long term assignments, the downside to this technique is that later announcements gradually push the major project announcement down the stream. Hopefully, they will provide a "pin post" feature like Facebook does. 

For now, Google's intention is that we use the "About" tab as a class resource page. As the year went on, I started posting shared folders to the "about" tab (and telling the students about it) so that the project folder stayed in one place and was easy to find.

Side note: If they can't find something, students can also use "CTRL-F" while on the class feed to pop up the "find on page" box. They could then type in a key word like "essay" and Chrome will find it in the feed. Also, always use Chrome when using Google stuff.

The Classroom "Assignments" function, in this author's opinion, is just ok. Specifics are here. Assignments is essentially the teacher making a Google Doc and then sharing a copy with students, who then fill it out. I may be wrong and there may be a way to leverage it better, but it turns into a digital version of a worksheet. If you decide to go the digital route with an assignment, it has its advantages, though. It's neater and more organized than having students just share documents with you on Drive. 

Students can also comment on your posts. I did have one student post something mildly inappropriate to the class feed. It was easy enough to delete. In addition to addressing discipline the next day, I was able to "mute" that student. It prevented him/her from posting comments but s/he could still see all announcements and participate in assignments. Plus, the social effect of being temporarily muted was probably the most effective discipline of all.