My experience on Google Sites

https://sites.google.com/site/introductiontoeducationalmedia/

I can’t believe I have created a Website for my first time! It was definitely a fun experience.I’d like to share about how I made it as follows.

To get started, go to sites.google.com and click on the Create button to create my first website. Give my site a name and then customize the end of the URL if I like. By default, it’ll just be sites/google.com/site/sitename. If I chose a blank template, I can select a theme also. Click the “I’m not a robot” button and then click Create at the top.I’ll now be brought to the homepage for my new site.

The important section is at the top where I can edit the current page. To adjust the settings for the page and the site, click on the gear icon and then click on the Manage site. Then I can configure a bunch of options like the site name, site description, the landing page, etc.The last section of sidebar in Manage site let me add a header image and change the font, color and size for the text in various sections of the site like content area, sidebar, navigation, etc.

When I start editing and creating new pages, I can choose to create four types of pages: Web Page, Announcements, File Cabinet and List. Then choose the location of my page. I can create a top level page or put it under a different page. An Announcements page is a blog page with posts listed in chronological order. A File Cabinet page lets me upload files and will list them on the page. A List page allows me to create a list of items and displays them in table format. I can change the template for a page anytime by clicking on the gear icon while on the page and choose Change page template.

If I want to add something on the page, for example, to add a table, click on the Table menu item and choose the size of my table in terms of rows and columns. To insert anything else, click on the Insert menu option.I can insert all kinds of items like images links, text boxes, HTML boxes, calendars, charts, maps, YouTube videos, etc. When working with text, I can click on the Format tab to pick different heading styles, etc.

I can see recent site activity, all my pages, attachments that I upload, page templates I can use, apps scripts, sharing and permissions and themes/colors/fonts. I can also choose to insert recent site activity on the sidebar so that I can keep track of changes. I can even revert to an older version by using 'Revision history.' From my site, click More actions in the top right of any page and select Revision history.If I change my mind about the most recent edits I or my collaborators made to the site, simply revert to an older version by clicking any version from the list. After returning to the 'Version history' view, click the Revert to this version link next to the version I'd like to revert to. Then my document will be reset to the version I selected.

Comment on Google Forms and CCSS

Google Forms is a tool that can be used for teachers gathering data from students and the community as well as delivering online assessments to students. The data collected from Google Forms can directly go into a Google Spreadsheet, where it can be analyzed, organized, and displayed in Gadgets and charts.

There are many ways for teachers to use it in the classroom, the following are some examples:

1. Teachers can create questionnaires and surveys to obtain information about students.
2. Teachers can manage parent contact logs out of it
3. Teachers can design self-grading student quiz with it
4. Teachers can create discipline forms to track students’ attendance or behavior.

All data and information can be e-mailed directly to the parents and shared with other school faculties.

For a math teacher, he/she can ask students to create questions for other classes to answer - they collaborated on the same Google Form. After the other classes took the survey, they graphed the results as part of their math unit on graphing. As what is required in Common Core State Standard, students make “strategic use of digital media and visual displays of data.”

For a language teacher, he/she can ask students to use Google Forms to create their own questionnaires about a unit of work. Students will have the opportunities to extend and/or strengthen their understanding in creating effective questions. Students can then complete other students' quizzes to boost their understanding again. It could be created and/or completed during lesson time or as a homework activity. According to Common Core State Standard, students will be able to “conduct short as well as more sustained research projects to answer a question or solve a problem; narrow or broaden the inquiry when appropriate; synthesize multiple sources on the subject, demonstrating understanding of the subject under investigation.”

Comment on Spreadsheets and CCSS

The Common Core State Standard requires students to use appropriate tools when thinking mathematically. Google Spreadsheets can meet this requirement by allowing students to collect, analyze, and report findings with data, which enables students to become better decision makers and problem solvers.

For example, the teacher can ask students to collect data of how many hours they spend on doing homework everyday and find out the average study hours per week or month for the class. The teacher just needs to create a Google Spreads and share it with the class; then assign the students a cell number to enter their data. For elementary level, students can experience elementary algebra in action as they create and use formulas and function tables. For secondary level, patterns, probability experiments and other data can be instantly analyzed with dynamic graphs that adjust automatically as new data is entered. Then students can make predictions and formulate conjectures as they compare theoretical data with real-life data. According to the Common Core State Standards,”Technology plays an important role in statistics and probability by making it possible to generate plots, regression functions, and correlation coefficient, and to simulate many possible outcomes in a short amount of time”. Google Spreadsheets allow students to analyze, predict, and share data that can help mold the understanding of the subject.

When language teachers teach reading scientific and technical texts, they can encourage students to draw or create graphical representations of the data that help students to understand the concepts and context. Students can benefit from expressing the data in their own creative ways. According to the CCSS, “When reading scientific and technical texts, students need to be able to gain knowledge from challenging texts that often make extensive use of elaborate diagrams and data to convey information and illustrate concepts.”

My experience on Spreadsheet

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1AnUynI1n4JlK8E10Myp7DjvFXLUY49dnfVQoHDFNgpg/edit 

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1szuIMSxwPIdzOcSRyN8exx6HQSY6Ifez7ZkHHMEwN_4/edit?usp=sharing

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/10budeyNtsNJZisKxS-C8US6t22Q1ynV7TQvhdbKzqjU/edit?usp=sharing

It is my first time to experience working on a spreadsheet. I was very excited when my grade sheet was created. It seemed easy to create a new sheet and put data in each cell. Formatting text in the cell is similar to it on Google Doc and slides. We can choose to change font size, make words or data bold, italic, or underlined. We can change the text color and fill the cell with colors. There are some more similarities like inserting chart, images or links on it… However, Google Sheets has its own features since people use it mostly to deal with data. For example, when copy and paste, we have options to choose from paste values, format or formula, each leads to paste only a particular attribute of cells. When we delete, we can choose either to delete a data in the cell or a whole row or column. We can also choose to freeze rows and columns to protect ranges. Functions allow us to perform specific calculations of the data in a selected block of cells, such as sum, average and maximum etc. It is also a challenging part for me to be careful with putting in a particular formula for each calculation.

Since I had only experienced it by creating a self-grading quiz and a grade sheet in this couple of days. I believe there are many functions on it waiting for me to explore further. For example, what I can do with filter view, what changes on borders will happen… But I know I can learn more from Google Docs Editors Help.

Comment on the Lesson plan

It is a good idea to ask students to explore and design Tangram Square with Google Drawing. The lesson plan just showed us how the lesson with Google app meets the Common Core State Standards. As a language teacher I will have the CCSS on all listening, speaking, reading and writing aspects. I can definitely come up with lessons with Google Drawing to ask student to sort out their ideas by creating collaborative drawings and have my class free of paper. 

Comment on Google Drawing and CCSS

Google Drawing can be used in a classroom to create collaborative graphics that express meanings. It can be used to create flow charts, custom graphs, informational posters and graphic designs.

For example, when a language teacher asks students to write a resource-based essay, he can create the graphic organizer displaying the structure of the reading material, making a template for the essay and share it with class. The class will make a copy of it and use it to prepare for the writing. Students can be asked to show how they understand the material by creating a chart on Google Drawing to analyze it and organize their thoughts and ideas on outlines. It will help to meet the requirement of CCSS for reading “Read closely to determine what the text says explicitly and to make logical inferences from it; cite specific textual evidence when writing or speaking to support conclusions drawn from the text.” (Table 8.1 Anchor Standard 1 for Reading, Graham’s book chapter 8, P129)

When a math teacher wants his students to explore geometry, he can ask students to use Google Drawings to draw shapes and manipulate them under instructions. Shapes can be edited by clicking and dragging, increasing and decreasing in size, rotating 90 degrees, and flipping…, which will meet the requirement of CCSS to draw, construct and describe geometrical figures in Seventh grade. 

Comment on Google presentation and CCSS

Google presentations contribute a lot to the assessment of communication skills in the Common Core State Standards. When students use this collaborative tool to present information to classmates and teachers, they are presenting an extensive set of skills such as listening carefully to ideas; integrating information from visual, oral or media sources; evaluating information; express themselves explicitly to others，and adapting speech to context and task etc.

Google presentations meet the requirement of CCSS by allowing collaborative work. Collaboration is the distinct feature of Google Slides. The ability to easily share and simultaneously edit a Google Drive document is the platform's biggest selling point. The fact that everyone will always be on the same version of Slides, and that all the collaborators will have a consistent experience while editing and commenting, is a huge positive for Google’s apps.

Presenting about knowledge and concepts learned is one of the best learning strategies. Google presentations provide opportunities for students to research content, summarize the information, display data in visual forms and create presentations with images and video. Students will be able to learn how to organize information effectively and conduct a speech seamlessly. From the tables listed on Graham’s book chapter 5, we can see that Google presentations can meet the speaking, listening, reading and writing standards in CCSS for various k-12 subjects.

Google Drawing

Google Drawing is a drawing tool to make graphics. It includes shapes, lines, colors and can also include words.

First, we go to Google Docs, create a new document, then choose to insert a drawing. When a new window for drawing is open, we can design any shapes we want. On the toolbar, we can choose to draw a line, arrow, curve or other many kinds of shapes. For example, I choose to insert a line, then I can format it by changing its color and style. We can also choose to insert word art, text box and even insert an image by uploading it from my computer or online. After drawing, we can name it and save it, then share it with people to allow them view, comment or edit on it.

Google Presentations vs PowerPoint

 PowerPoint is a familiar Microsoft Application for us to put together our presentations, talks, and classes. Now compared with Google Drive Slides, Power Point seems inferior to it in some ways:

First, all the changes can be automatically saved on Google Drive while we have to care to save every change we make on Power Point.

Second, Google Slides would be good for collaboration. The ability to easily share and simultaneously edit a Google Drive document is its most distinct feature. Google Slides enables a couple of people to easily make changes and to comment back and forth. While with Power Point, we need to deal with multiple files with different versions.

Third, Google Presentation provides users with the tools that are necessary to organize information in an artful manner. In comparison, Power Point seems antiquated and overly simplistic. 

Link of Google Presentations

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1IEbwSy5Z9_vDj0GoghFExchr2330PsDda0J1Np65baM/edit#slide=id.p3