Like I had said last week, I have been trying to let people know in the 3 different schools I visit to contact me if there are learning opportunities or help I can provide. This week I was contacted by an Instructional Specialist (IS) at the middle school. She wanted to know if I had any experience with Google Apps. I told her that I did and use them with my own students in the classroom as well as other things. She went on to explain that she had been working with it to collaborate with students as well but she had now discovered a way to use it to test students who had accommodations such as having the tests read to them. I made plans to go talk with her about this.
When I met with the IS, she asked me a few questions about how to share items with students using Google Drive. She had been trying to share with students but they were not able to get to the items she was trying to share. I found the problem to be that she was using the wrong accounts for sharing the files. In my county they first had OneDrive for students and faculty. The accounts were set up for students with [email protected]. This year, the county decided they wanted students to also have access to Google accounts. They set those accounts up for students with [email protected]. The IS didn't realize this but it was a quick fix and she was able to now share with students using the correct account.
She then began showing me how an IS at another middle school had been making screencasts of the Quarterly Progress Achievement tests they take in middle school. This is used to track student learning data over each of the 9 weeks. They had many students who have accommodations specifically that the test has to be read to them. She said that if you have one or two students then this is easy but when you have a group of 4 or more it becomes troublesome. Not all students work at the same pace so you have some students ready to move on to the next question but others stuck on one. They decided that if they could make a screencast of the the test, then the students could pause the video to work and progress at their own pace.
After spending a couple of hours with her looking over the material and having a few students come in and take the tests I went back to my elementary school with some new information. I called a meeting with the SPED teacher and EIP teacher who co-teach with me. I described what I had been working on and was curious what they thought about us doing the same with unit post-tests. They agreed we should at least give it a try. We spent the next several days putting a test into Google Slides as well as making a screencast of the slides with a voice-over. We will be using this next week. We will share the Slides with students who do not have accommodations to save paper by not running off the tests. The students with accommodations will get a shared file of the screencast. I will be able to report the success or failure of this next week or any modifications we might need to make.
When I met with the IS, she asked me a few questions about how to share items with students using Google Drive. She had been trying to share with students but they were not able to get to the items she was trying to share. I found the problem to be that she was using the wrong accounts for sharing the files. In my county they first had OneDrive for students and faculty. The accounts were set up for students with [email protected]. This year, the county decided they wanted students to also have access to Google accounts. They set those accounts up for students with [email protected]. The IS didn't realize this but it was a quick fix and she was able to now share with students using the correct account.
She then began showing me how an IS at another middle school had been making screencasts of the Quarterly Progress Achievement tests they take in middle school. This is used to track student learning data over each of the 9 weeks. They had many students who have accommodations specifically that the test has to be read to them. She said that if you have one or two students then this is easy but when you have a group of 4 or more it becomes troublesome. Not all students work at the same pace so you have some students ready to move on to the next question but others stuck on one. They decided that if they could make a screencast of the the test, then the students could pause the video to work and progress at their own pace.
After spending a couple of hours with her looking over the material and having a few students come in and take the tests I went back to my elementary school with some new information. I called a meeting with the SPED teacher and EIP teacher who co-teach with me. I described what I had been working on and was curious what they thought about us doing the same with unit post-tests. They agreed we should at least give it a try. We spent the next several days putting a test into Google Slides as well as making a screencast of the slides with a voice-over. We will be using this next week. We will share the Slides with students who do not have accommodations to save paper by not running off the tests. The students with accommodations will get a shared file of the screencast. I will be able to report the success or failure of this next week or any modifications we might need to make.
Weekly Hours: 6
Total Hours: 80
Total Hours: 80