Google Classroom is a great tool for teachers, students, and parents. However, there are some great collaboration tools that can help enhance the experience in Google Classroom that you may not be aware of. I’ll cover some of my favorite collaboration tools using Google Classroom.
No man is an island. At some point in our lives, we have to ask people for help or work with others to accomplish a task. This is why in K-12 and higher education, educators love to create activities to help students learn to collaborate. In this digital age, there are a lot of tools that can be used to facilitate collaboration, but few can beat Google Classroom’s “free” price tag. In this tip, I will discuss how students and teachers can use Google Classroom to facilitate collaboration.
- Text Analysis Collaboration – English Language Arts students, can easily collaborate on text analysis through Google Docs or by using a PDF annotation tool.
- Grammar Lessons with Collaborative Corrections – Use Google Docs to create grammar lessons and have students collaborate on corrections.
- Essay Collaboration – Have students collaborate on essays through Google Docs.
- Collaborative Stories – Students can use Google Docs or Slides to collaborate on original stories.
- Collaborate with Non-Google Users – Collaborate with non-google users by changing the sharing settings to anyone who has the link can access.
- Lesson Plan Collaboration – Create a Classroom for specific content areas to collaborate on lesson plans.
- Graphic Organizers – Upload graphic organizers for students to collaborate on assignments and projects.
- Group Collaboration – Assign multiple students to an assignment to create a collaborative group. Give students editing rights to allow them access to the same document.
- Group Communication – Teachers can use Classroom to communicate with groups of students, parents, or colleagues. Students can use Classroom to interact with groups of peers or teachers. When making an announcement, choose the classes and students you want to receive the communication.
- Group Project Reflections – Have students submit reflections on group projects through Classroom. This can be done through email or by creating a document for students to utilize.
- Group Projects – Assign group projects and have students upload artifacts and documents to the Classroom.
- Study Groups – Create study groups for students or teachers.
- Chat with Collaborators – Collaborators within a document can have back-channeled chats while collaborating, eliminating the need to email or use alternate methods of communications.
GOOGLE DOCS
1. Shared notes
Students often have lots of information to share with each other when they work together as a group. By sharing a document with group members, they can all add ideas and resources — and see everyone’s changes in real time.
A table of contents can make a large document more manageable. It can also help collaborators find their area on the page quickly and easily.
Admin application: A document like this can let everyone on staff share info/notes/etc. without having everyone digitally step on each other’s toes as they modify the document. Teachers can use this in committee work and at staff meetings.
2. Rethinking rough drafts
With the comments feature in Documents (and other Google Apps), rough drafts aren’t a paper students submit to a teacher. They’re a process. Teachers can guide students throughout the entire writing assignment so there are no surprises when it’s time to turn work in.
3. “Add and pass” activity in docs
Have you ever played a game where someone begins a story then the next person adds to it, the next adds a little more and so on? This is a digital version of that. Begin with an image at the top of a blank document (perhaps a picture of a spooky house, a historical figure, a scene from a story or anything you want!). Share the document with a group of students. Number students off. Student 1 writes the first part of the story. Student 2 begins where they left off adding to the story but giving it their own spin. This continues until you have a completed story. You can give students a certain number of words or sentences they need to add or just let them go. Want some more guidance? Check out my post Add and pass: A fun activity to get them moving AND creating for step-by-step instructions and ideas for using them in class!
GOOGLE SLIDES
4. Shared presentations
Create a presentation with one slide per student and give students permission to edit it. Then assign an activity — some quick Internet research, a writing prompt, an image search to find an example, etc. When they’re done, show the presentation on a projector. It’s student work instantly on display. Want some more guidance? Check out my post on student collaboration in shared Google Slides for step-by-step instructions and ideas for using them in class!
5. Virtual art gallery
This goes for any creative student work — poetry, video, visual art, etc. Display the work in a presentation via text, image or video. Share the presentation with permission for anyone to add comments, or embed a live version of the presentation in a website for others to see.
Kick this assignment up a notch with a Google Earth and Slides appsmash! Google Earth is a visually stunning experience, giving users a first-person view of life from places around the globe. Google Earth is great for giving virtual tours, but there’s a simpler and faster version of it. Take screenshots of scenes from Google Earth and paste them in a Google Slides presentation. Add a title and/or some text description. With lots of slides, a virtual tour can happen quickly and meaningfully.
6. Collaborative “Caption This” activity
When you add a speech bubble or thought bubble to an image, you let students speak or think for the subject of the photo. Understanding different viewpoints is also a great way to delve deeply into a topic. When students can take the place of the person in the image, it helps them see what’s happening in a whole new light. When students work together in groups, the conversations around what the characters should be saying brings the “Caption This” activity to a whole new level.
- Select a set of pictures that either introduces your current lesson focus or is key to your subject for the lesson and let students caption them as a group. You can add the images to a Google Slides presentation and share the same set of images with each group of students through Google Classroom. OR, you can have students create a new Google Slides presentation share it one another and add the images themselves.
- Add a thought bubble or speech bubble to each of the pictures. Give students a prompt for filling in the bubble, or give them freedom!
- When they’re done, have students turn the image into you via Google Classroom (or however you collect digital work) and share each group’s presentations with the class. Have groups share why they chose their captions, how it differs from other groups, and how they came up with it as a group.
7. Create a class yearbook
This idea comes from Jennifer Scott, an English teacher, and technology leader in California. Rather than pay companies for high-priced software, students use Google Slides to create their own Basic Yearbook. Think of Google Slides as a blank canvas waiting for student graphic designers.
To create a unified look, students create Layouts with Image templates. These layouts can be duplicated and their images replaced with images shared either with Google Drive or Google Photos via Google Classroom. In the example below, the image templates in the Word Art Yearbook layout are replaced with photos from the #Mex16 Google Innovator Academy. Captions are written to preserve memories.
A layout like this…
Layout from Jennifer Scott shared in her guest blog post “Create a low-cost, printed school yearbook in Google Slides.”
…becomes this.
Example from Jennifer Scott shared in her guest blog post “Create a low-cost, printed school yearbook in Google Slides.”
SlidesYearbook.com was born in December 2016 and continues to grow. Easy-to-use directions are available on the website in both English and Spanish. If creating a yearbook from scratch is not an option this year, feel free to use already created templates. Start with a class yearbook and move to a schoolwide yearbook next year.
8. Digital brain dumps
Use a more brain-friendly way to study! Retrieval is the practice of studying by pulling information from the brain. That’s different from traditional studying methods, like re-reading chapters and reviewing notes. Retrieval can be done with a brain dump, where students write down everything they remember about a topic. A collaborative brain dump lets students do that writing on their own slides within the same slide presentation. Each student gets a slide for his/her own brain dump. Then, as a group, the class can identify what the class knows well and what each student left off of his/her own slide.
Coclusion
It’s no secret that more and more of today’s students are using Google Classroom to collaborate more effectively on schoolwork. A lot of these tools can be difficult to find if you don’t know what you’re looking for. Below you will find a list of helpful collaboration tools that will help your students organize their work and collaborate with others (and you) during the school year and beyond.