Reaching out. . . touching me . . .touching yooooouuuuu. . . .

Swwwwweeeet Caaroliiiine . . . bah, baaah, daaaah.

Ahem, yes. Sorry. This weeks blog post is about Global Connectivity. So, one of the things I'm contemplating for my current class and something I've been contemplating for a while now before this class is connecting my students to resources all over the globe.  I find myself with a number of connections in academia (one of them's name is Caroline, thus the cheesy intro) and I'm setting out to investigate the possibility of connecting my classroom to research labs in far away places. Sounds snazzy right?

The world is not such a big place any more.

Well, where to begin? First, I'm reaching out (bah, bah, daaaah) to my contacts to see if they're willing to jump on this bandwagon. While I wait for the dozens of positive response I'm going to get, I've begun researching. Shelley Terrell does a blog and has posted 28 resources for connecting students. Its a good start, but I'm a doer. I'm hoping that I can get connected with colleagues that I already know and that will get the ball rolling with colleagues I don't know. Since migrating my classroom to Google Classroom, I am looking at giving my students a more rounded education, allowing them to reach out to the Internet and delve into the subjects. If I can set up partners in advance, it would give them a head start.

Thomas Friedman does a talk about his book The World is Flat, the first three chapters anyway. His basic idea is that the world is no longer a disconnected series of countries. We are globalizing. We are communicating in ways that we can't possibly imagine. He brings up one example of McDonald's having a call center that takes your order and sends it along with your picture to the restaurant where you've pulled up to the drive through. Say what?!? Yes, you might speak to someone in Colorado Springs to order your 20 piece nugget no matter where you might be. It's a pilot program to be sure, but hey.

Are we sailing off a cliff?

This is what I want my students to become a part of. I want them to realize how to make these connections to further their learning and open up all kinds of possibilities. We'll see what happens as this develops. I'll keep you up to date.

Until next time. . . . here's a video to get that song out of your head.

Real vs fake

Originally this blog was a series of posts from a couple of classes I have been taking for my masters degree. Today, I decided that I would make regular posts outside of my classes required work. So, if you're following this, congratulations! You should see my opinion flash across your feed fairly regularly.

Today I would like to talk about Google Classroom. What is it? Well, it's a platform attached to the Google suite of products (free for educational use) that allows you to organize your classroom, make assignments, announcements, and coordinate with your google drive. To be very up front - as a tool, I would rate it 5 out of 10. Does that mean you should avoid it? Absolutely not.

So, as a technology-oriented teacher, I can be a harsh critic. Google Classroom has some really great functionality. But it's also lacking a tremendous amount. I have set up two classes so far. It's an excellent way to communicate with your students. You can make announcements, send private comments, start discussions, etc. You can also set up assignments with due dates. I have created several, attached rubrics and instructions, graded, and commented on work all through Google Classroom. That stuff works great. You can even export grades into an excel spreadsheet!! Lovely.

Now the bad stuff (sorry, Google). You can't copy assignments from one year to the next. You have to basically recreate everything year after year. When you are in the class, you can't easily sort through the things you have listed. Everything is listed in a 'stream' of posts (like a blog). And (strangely for Google) you can't search the stream. You can pull up a list of assignments through the main menu, but it's not intuitive. You also can't mark assignments as done if the student decides to hand you a paper version. Unless they log in and mark it as done, it will forever be marked as "Late". So, in a nutshell, the teacher has little ability to manipulate their classroom. 

Sure you can change the theme. I like having a big frog eye at the top of the page, but that's decorative. If Google wants to make Classroom competitive, they need to start thinking like a teacher. Or hire one. . . I may be available to consult. . . just sayin'.