I clearly remember my first year of teaching when I assigned my classes our first essay. It was the classic narrative essay. I didn't really have a plan or anything, but I had a cool prompt.
"Write about a time when you did something that changed your life."
I was a new teacher; I didn't know any better. Since then, though, I've come a long with how I teach writing. One major influence (in fact, the KEY influence) is a wonderful lady and dear friend, Gretchen Bernabei. (find her stuff here and here). Her ideas of developing kernel essays, flipbooks, ba-da-bing sentences, truisms, and a myriad of other writing tools are amazing. It saved writing instruction for me. Prior to that, with prompts like the one above, I'd get bed-to-bed essay.
"First I got up. Then I went here. Then I went here. Oh, and then I went here. Then I went to bed."
BORING, SNOOZE-FEST!
But Gretchen's ideas, and my desire for something new, changed all that. My students' essays instantly became more authentic with her methods. My wife, who is also a teacher, and I would sit around the dinner table reading our class essays laughing out loud. And not because of how bad they were either! We were laughing at how engaging, authentic, and frankly, beautiful, they writing had become.
But it still didn't change the fact that I still had to grade these piles of essays...
This year, I've been on a personal mission to use less paper in my classroom. I thought, "How could I combine this idea of using less paper with how I grade?" With each essay turned in, I was printing an equal amount of rubrics. The comments I'd write on papers would go unnoticed and if they were noticed, they'd become forgotten. The whole process seemed cold and distant. An exercise in futility, really. I wanted to make the feedback process more collaborative and one that created an environment that fostered thoughtful, reflective writers.
Enter two magic pieces of technology: Google Docs/Drive and Screencast-o-Matic.
"Write about a time when you did something that changed your life."
I was a new teacher; I didn't know any better. Since then, though, I've come a long with how I teach writing. One major influence (in fact, the KEY influence) is a wonderful lady and dear friend, Gretchen Bernabei. (find her stuff here and here). Her ideas of developing kernel essays, flipbooks, ba-da-bing sentences, truisms, and a myriad of other writing tools are amazing. It saved writing instruction for me. Prior to that, with prompts like the one above, I'd get bed-to-bed essay.
"First I got up. Then I went here. Then I went here. Oh, and then I went here. Then I went to bed."
BORING, SNOOZE-FEST!
But Gretchen's ideas, and my desire for something new, changed all that. My students' essays instantly became more authentic with her methods. My wife, who is also a teacher, and I would sit around the dinner table reading our class essays laughing out loud. And not because of how bad they were either! We were laughing at how engaging, authentic, and frankly, beautiful, they writing had become.
But it still didn't change the fact that I still had to grade these piles of essays...
This year, I've been on a personal mission to use less paper in my classroom. I thought, "How could I combine this idea of using less paper with how I grade?" With each essay turned in, I was printing an equal amount of rubrics. The comments I'd write on papers would go unnoticed and if they were noticed, they'd become forgotten. The whole process seemed cold and distant. An exercise in futility, really. I wanted to make the feedback process more collaborative and one that created an environment that fostered thoughtful, reflective writers.
Enter two magic pieces of technology: Google Docs/Drive and Screencast-o-Matic.
Google Drive is Google's suite of Office-style applications. There's a word processor, powerpoint style presentation, and excel style spreadsheets. It's cloud-based, which means you can edit, store it, and access it from virtually any platform or device with a web connection. It's completely free (unless you want more storage, but even then, it's a very reasonable price compared to other cloud-storage services) as well as iOS and Android apps, making it even easier to access and create.
Screencast-o-Matic is a simple and free way of capturing video of your computer screen. You can change the shape of the area of your screen you want recorded. Additionally, you can add voice over from your laptop's microphone as well as video of your face from your laptop's webcam. Many educators have been using SC-o-M as a way to record videos to flip their classroom. It's super easy to use and very effective.
So how do I use the two, you ask.
1. When it's time for Final Drafts of whatever essay we're working on, I have my students email me their document. If they use Google Docs (not all of my students use it yet), then they share their Google Doc of their essay via email. Google Drive/Docs is awesome in that when you receive an email with a word doc, you can add it to "Your Drive" and edit it online.
2. When you edit it online, it gives you the option to add comments to areas of the essay that you select. When you click on the highlighted area of the paper, it brings up the comment along the right side. It looks something like this:
So how do I use the two, you ask.
1. When it's time for Final Drafts of whatever essay we're working on, I have my students email me their document. If they use Google Docs (not all of my students use it yet), then they share their Google Doc of their essay via email. Google Drive/Docs is awesome in that when you receive an email with a word doc, you can add it to "Your Drive" and edit it online.
2. When you edit it online, it gives you the option to add comments to areas of the essay that you select. When you click on the highlighted area of the paper, it brings up the comment along the right side. It looks something like this:
3. After I review a paper and write my comments, then I'm ready for the cool part. Screencasting it! Here is what it looks like once you start the Screencast app:
You determine the size of the frame for the recording. Again, here's where the magic kicks in.
I set my frame around the Google Doc and the comments section. Simple enough.
I press RECORD and start addressing the student. I tell them what I saw in their essay, areas of their essay that I loved, areas where they're falling short, and do a quick little mini-lesson that is specific to their needs. It could be grammar, content, a specific writing craft that we're learning in class--whatever!
Here's an example video of one of my old students. She needed help with her IB Literature paper and this is how I critiqued her.
I set my frame around the Google Doc and the comments section. Simple enough.
I press RECORD and start addressing the student. I tell them what I saw in their essay, areas of their essay that I loved, areas where they're falling short, and do a quick little mini-lesson that is specific to their needs. It could be grammar, content, a specific writing craft that we're learning in class--whatever!
Here's an example video of one of my old students. She needed help with her IB Literature paper and this is how I critiqued her.
I have been doing this method of critique and grading with my classes' last paper of descriptive writing. The response has been overwhelmingly positive. The students each get their own video link that they can watch over and over. For those students wanting to revise for a better grade, they can reference my comments in both the Doc and the video. Screencast-O-Matic uploads the video to their site, and you can control the settings of who sees it, if it's searchable, etc. There's also options to post to Youtube, upload to Dropbox or other cloud service, or download just a plain MP4 video file.
It's truly a differentiated, student-specific, memorable, and quick way of critiquing and grading.
Once I write the comments, it takes me no more than 10 minutes to capture the video, load it onto Screencast's website, and share the video link and commented Google Doc to my students.
There's no red pen, no looming stacks of paper--just some typing, my voice, and some mouse clicks.
It's truly a differentiated, student-specific, memorable, and quick way of critiquing and grading.
Once I write the comments, it takes me no more than 10 minutes to capture the video, load it onto Screencast's website, and share the video link and commented Google Doc to my students.
There's no red pen, no looming stacks of paper--just some typing, my voice, and some mouse clicks.
Eventually, I want to get to the point where this is how my students do peer reviewing! How cool would that be?!?
What do you think? See another way of using Google Docs and Screencast-O-Matic in your classroom? Let me know in the comment section below!
For the kids,
Stephen
What do you think? See another way of using Google Docs and Screencast-O-Matic in your classroom? Let me know in the comment section below!
For the kids,
Stephen