As mentioned in an earlier post, the Freedom of Information and Privacy Act must be considered when we choose cloud based applications. We need to ensure that data that students may post is encrypted and that it resides on Canadian servers. Considering that many of our possible options sit on American servers, one must be careful when choosing sites to post student data, especially that which assesses or evaluates student performance.
Over the past few months we have had development in this area. Google, along with the proper encryption software, is now a good alternative. Microsoft, due to open it's Canadian data centres in due time, is also a good option. Google produces Google Classroom which I have been a user of since it was first released. Microsoft has it's own hidden gem in OneNote which is probably the best digital binder that one can find on the Internet. Both apps are free.
So what's the problem? Simple. Because both Google Drive/Apps/Classroom and Microsoft OneNote are so robust, I became caught up in choosing just ONE of the applications to do it all for me. I was finding that neither platform could necessarily do everything that I wanted to.
My unit and assessment workflow is as follows:
- Have discussion and present materials in class.
- Allow students to review materials, movies, and discussions at home.
- Give students and assignment and provide formative feedback along the way.
- Place final assessment data in a place for both students and their parents to access, but more data than simply a grade and summative comment.
At first I decided that Google Classroom and the Google Apps could handle all of this for me. And it did for about a year. The problem that I began to encounter was that I couldn't handle all feedback being written. I was writing all of the time and that was affecting my effectiveness as a teacher. Yes, I used add-ons for the Google Apps (such as Kazena or Screencastify). The problem was that I was being hung up on video render times which was slowing me down.
I then used OneNote to put all of my teaching data in. OneNote gave me a digital binder for students. I was able to push materials and assignments out to students. What I really appreciated was being able to attach video or audio directly into the app (I'm using a Windows 10 machine). I didn't need to wait for rendering because that was happening on my PC and would sync in the background. Just as I thought that I found "Nirvana", my students popped my bubble. OneNote was a pain to type in for students. Those who tried to open embedded Word documents couldn't use them on Chromebooks as a Chromebook will try to open Word documents in Google Docs.....which does not handle fancy Word formatting well.
What did I eventually do? I came up with a new workflow. I looks like this:
- We begin with a new unit. All materials are in OneNote as students can access these on all devices.
- Discussion boards are with cloud services like Padlet or even Google Classroom Questions.
- The assignment is placed on Google Classroom and completed there. Comments can be left for students in Docs or, better yet, I can have direct discussions with students.
- Final assignments are downloaded out of Google where I assess them. I have a Microsoft Surface that employs a digital pen. Work can be marked up with the pen. This can be done on an iPad with different apps. I also insert a rubric at this time for grading.
- The final product is moved to OneNote (a click of a button) in a special student section that only they see. I can then easily leave overall audio or video comments.
- Grades are placed into my online grading software. A link is then give to the feedback page in OneNote which students and parents can see more detail.
Although this has been the workflow for about two weeks, it feels like it's working! In the next post, we'll talk about how to set up OneNote for use with your classroom.
