Improving Student Writing with Google Drive

This session from the VA GAFE Summit was presented by Melissa Powell, a 6th grade reading teacher and Katie Plunkett, an ITRT - both from Charlottesville City Schools (CCS). CCS began using Google in October of 2013, so this was still fairly new to the presenters. Students were given basic training, such as how to log in, creating documents and sharing (view, comment, edit rights). After a short period of time it was obvious the students needed more training, such as formatting and how to organize their Drive.
Melissa wanted to move student writing to Google Drive for a number of reasons - get rid of the stacks of paper journals, ease of drafting and rewriting, convenience of commenting; and most of all, to give students a wider audience for their work.
Students were taught  how to give quality feedback and to comment properly. This process was modeled using a fake document. The teachers used a simple technique called TAG:

• Tell something you liked
• Ask a question
• Give a compliment

As both teachers and students became comfortable with the process the projects grew in length and rigor. Some of the projects included:

• Spooky story starters - a way for students to begin collaborative writing (example - notice teacher comments for the students on the right side).
• Personal narratives (example)
• Using Google Draw to create simple layouts to demonstrate text features of non-fiction (example)
• Poetry writing

Looking back over the transition to use of Google Drive the teachers had the following reflections:

• Start at the beginning of the year
• Student writing increased because the students liked using Google Drive
• Composition and expression improved
• Mechanics are improving more slowly
• Drive allows for more efficient, quality feedback and comments
• The need for more structure in the form of checklists and notes sheets (hard copies)
• No carrying notebooks and papers home to grade
• The need for more front end organization - organizing teachers' Drives to handle all the student work being shared - set up folders, color code, mini-lessons to show the students computer skills needed.
• Use Google Sites to create student portfolios

The Ultimate Workflow

As most readers have gathered by now, Larry and I went to the Virginia Google Apps for Education Summit in Charlotttesville, VA in early March. Larry has been posting about some of the things he picked up and now it is my turn.
The first session I attended was The Ultimate Workflow presented by Ken Shelton, a Google Certified teacher and Apple Distinguished Educator from Los Angeles. The topic was using Google Docs to maximize productivity and he was full of tips and tricks. When we migrate to use of GAFE in the 2014-15 school year, these will come in handy! Remember, workflow = productivity.

• Color code your folders within your Drive to visually identify the content of the folder. Documents are automatically created in whatever folder you have open.
• Name your documents immediately!! (There is no "File - Save" option in Google as documents are automaticaly saved every 3-7 seconds depending on your network integrity.)
• When using Drive with your students have a naming convention and use it. "Section First Last Project" (or something similar) - such as "2 John Doe Recycling Project". The individual pieces of the name are searchable within your drive.
• Right click on any word in a document and select define for definition or research to automatically search Google for information The research pane allows you to preview the web page, insert a link and also cite the page without leaving the document. Can use arrow at top of research pane to change the style of citation between MLA, APA and Chicago. Can also use that arrow to change the license filter. Can toggle between definition and research pane. If you highlight footnote number along with anything you want to move it will automatically renumber footnotes. Under the research pane you can change the source of searching from everything (web), images, scholar, quotes, dictionary, personal, tables.
• Use of the comment feature in Docs allows for timely, meaningful feedback. They are dated and time stamped. Comments will automatically disappear when marked by a user as resolved - you can elect to receive an email when this occurs so you know when your students have resolved an issue.
• Notifications - set at “all” so you have a record of everything that went on in the document.
• Share documents from folders so anything in the folder defaults to the parent permission of the folder. You must manually change a document in the folder you do not want shared (or put it in a different folder.
• You can use Revision History to see who is doing the work in a collaborative document. The revision history shows who did what, such as deleting crucial parts of document. Once in revision history pane you can see detailed revisions.
• In your Drive, going back to “Recent” and “List view” shows the items that have been modified most recently - can see if a student is not working and should be.  Naming protocols are very useful here.
• When sharing documents keep in mind the various permission levels. "Can view" allows users to view the document but make no changes or comments. "Can comment" allows users to comment on the document. This is useful for peer review as well as teacher grading. "Can edit" gives users complete rights to make changes to the document, as well as comment. Students need to be very familiar with these levels.