Restrict Answer Length in Google Forms

Many times educators need to encourage / remind students to type in complete sentences or to limit their response to certain word count. A recent update to Google forms makes this possible - and it's easy to do!

How to set a min / max response length in Google forms.

1. Create a short answer or paragraph type question. 
2. Turn on data validation (click the "snowman" dots)
3. Select min / max length (in characters)
4. Include an error message to remind students of the length requirement. 

Note: the length setting is a CHARACTER count, not a word count. The count includes punctuation and spaces (this sentence is 103 characters).

If students exceed or fail to meet the required character count they will see the custom error message that you have entered. If this is a required question, they will not be able to submit the form until their response meets the criteria.

OMG! Google Docs has Columns!

In what may be the biggest feature launch since Google Wave (RIP), you can now add columns to your Google Documents! No more use of tables to fake columns!

Simply go to Format > Columns to get started!

This feature currently supports 1-3 columns with custom margins and a dividing line (if desired).

That takes care of one of the most common complaints I hear about Google Docs. What's still on your list of missing features? 

The Two Commandments of Google Drive

Follow these two rules and you will have a much more effective, and pleasant experience as you collaborate with your students. 

Always DIVIDE your Document

You may have experienced the chaos of working on a shared Google Document with 15, 20, or 30 individuals - what a disaster! No one knows where to type and ends up writing on top of each other, deleting work, etc. When collaborating with more than 10 people, it is important that the workspace is structured in a way that clearly identifies where each person is assigned to edit.

• Google Docs - insert a table and add each students name in the first column. 
• Example: https://goo.gl/RLBXms
• Google Presentation - Assign each student to a slide
• Example: https://goo.gl/pHySMn
• Google Sheets - Assign each student to a row. 
• Example: https://goo.gl/U3sSNu

Always SHARE your Document

When documents are shared so that “anyone with the link can edit” you lose the ability to hold students accountable for their work. This leads to sloppy, lazy, and uninspired contributions. SHARE your document, presentation, or spreadsheet with your student using their email address (or assign it using Google Classroom). This will force students to sign into their Google Account and will record all of their contributions.

These are my 2 commandments - what are yours? 

Protecting Shared Documents in Google Drive

Sometimes important information and data needs extra protection. Google Drive allows you to set expiring (i.e. self-destruct mode) access and restrict re-shares, downloads, and copy of data from shared documents.

To access these settings, share a document and click “advanced”.

Important Notes: 

• Expiring access can only be configured for viewing and commenting (not editing).
• The document must be shared before you can set expiring access. 
• Restricting copying also disables the ability to copy / paste text from a document. 

3 Attributes of a Dynamic Classroom

1. The modern classroom is agile

Teaching is less like a marathon and more like an obstacle course. Each year, group of students and class presents new and unique challenges. One of the most important competencies you can develop is the ability to adjust and adapt to the unique needs and situations of your students.

The increased availability of technology in the classroom has made it easier for us to make quick adjustments to content, teaching methods and style with ease that has not previously been possible.
The typewriter, laserdisc, mimeograph, and scantron were not designed for agility. Google Drive, Pear Deck, Remind, and Google Classroom allow us to make agile adjustments.

A major detriment to agile teaching is over scheduling and planning. I am a type-a person who regularly plans twice as much content as I need for a lesson. Such planning limits the spontaneous discussion, questions, and think time that is needed for student engagement.

Don't plan out every minute of your lesson. Provide time for students to think, ponder, and explore on their own. "Boredom" is not a bad thing. In fact, many important observations and inferences are discovered when the mind wanders.

Learning is a process, not a destination. Like any good road trip, there are likely to be unplanned detours along the way. Structure your classroom to anticipate these detours and building on top of flexible tools allows a teacher to take the detour without derailing an entire semester of learning.

Here are some tips on making sure that your classroom is agile:

• Collect actionable data (formative assessment)
• Respond to the needs and interests of your students (i.e. PokemonGo, MineCraft, etc.)
• Build margin into your classroom

2. The modern classroom is individual

If you have read the history of the educational system of the United States, you may have come across the idea that it was designed on a factory model. While factories are great for building cars and iPhones, they aren't the best for educating students for the diverse needs of the 21st century. Students are not widgets and you are not a welding robot that slaps on the next component in a long assembly line of teachers, classes, grades, and courses.

Students have different learning styles, aptitudes, interests and motivational factors. Like a good coach, your job is to push the right buttons for each of your students in order to help them achieve their maximum potential. Technology, once again, provides us the ability to provide choice differentiation to students without going crazy.

Educational curriculum and standards can be good or bad, depending on how they are used.

If you use your curriculum and standards as a measuring stick to determine what your students know and need to know, you have adopted a factory model to education; "here's the standard, let's see how you measure up."

If you view curriculum and standards as the recipe within which there is room for adaptation and creativity, you have adopted a student-centered approach to instruction; "we know what dish we're making, but we can substitute this ingredient for a bit more of this and end up at the same place"

Here are some suggestions to help you individualize your instruction:

• Incorporate project based learning
• Ask BIG questions not standards-based questions
• Allow students to explore interests
• Build choice into your classroom
• Create a culture and have a personality

3. The modern classroom is a safe place

Sadly, too many students view school as a place of rules and punishment rather than a place of exploration and investigation. Students are naturally curious and interested in the world around them. Just look at the popularity of tools like Minecraft and Pokemon Go - both of which require a tremendous amount of exploration, creativity, and trial and error.

The modern classroom is a safe place that allows students to explore, investigate, and fail. Failure is looked upon in education as a negative result, however failure is frequently required before success can be discovered.

The modern classroom should emphasize iterative work where students are constantly striving to improve their work rather than expecting them to be perfect the first time. Rubric and standards-based grading are a great way to assess this style of learning.

The modern classroom should be free from judgement, criticism, and negativity. We must carefully build and monitor the culture of our classroom to ensure that it is inclusive, open, and free from judgement.

The safe classroom also reminds us that we need to make cheating and dishonest as difficult as possible. Such behaviour should not be tolerated. Sadly, there are always ways to cheat. We should never focus so much on the cheaters that we negatively impact the honest students by limiting their choice and freedom (see #2 above). Ultimately, cheaters hurt themselves. The culture that we cultivate should make that clear.

The easiest way to reduce cheating and academic dishonesty to is include a good mix of objective and subjective work and to ask Google Proof questions.

Here are some ideas for create a safe classroom environment:

• Make your students WANT to learn
• Explore rubric or standards-based grading
• Give students time to explore
• Include objective and subjective work
• Ask “google-proof” questions
• Make it hard to cheat
• Don’t focus your class on the students who want to cheat.

Is your classroom agile, individual, and safe? Are these values that you support? 

Skip Counting with Spreadsheets

I have 5 kids, three of which are in elementary school (kindergarten, first, and second grade). We are learning to skip count numbers 1-12. Each week we take two number sets and practice (this week we are practicing 5 & 6). Skip counting practice is a pretty rote and boring tasks, so we are always looking for new ways to practice the same thing:

• Count out-loud as a group
• Fill in a skip-counting worksheet (paper)
• Sing the skip counting song
• Use math manipulatives

I was recently inspired to create a skip counting spreadsheet as another way to practice and explore number patterns. Using a spreadsheet to practice skip-counting isn't all that different than filling out a paper worksheet, but it does have a few additional advantages: 

• Conditional formatting can be used to illustrate number sequence and scale
• The activity introduces young students (kindergarten, first, and second grade) to the concept of a spreadsheet. 
• Begins building spreadsheet vocabulary (cell, row, column)

Unfinished Skip Counting Sheet

Finished Skip Counting Sheet

We will pull out this spreadsheet periodically to mix things up and practice our skip counting skills. 

You are welcome to make a copy of my template to use in your own class. I know there are many additional elements that could be added into this sheet (self-grading formulas and formatting). If you make any improvements, let me know by leaving a comment.

Using Topics in Google Classroom

One of my biggest annoyances with Google Classroom has been the lack of search. Students and teachers were forced to scroll through the entire stream to find an old post.

This frustration has been [mostly] resolved through the addition of “topics” in Classroom.

Topics help group related classroom information. Announcements, questions, and assignments can all be tagged with a topic.

Key points:

• Only the teacher can create a topic
• Only one topic is allowed per post
• Topics are automatically listed on the left side of the stream for both teachers and students.
• Topics CAN be renamed and deleted by teachers

The topic feature can be very helpful and powerful if used wisely. Here are some key ideas to consider:

• Limit your topics - the more you have, the less useful they are.
• A topic should be broad enough to encompass a significant number of classroom announcements, assignments, etc. If there is only a couple of posts, it’s probably not a topic.
• Plan your topics at the beginning of the school year to prevent yourself from adding too many.

Setting up your topics:

1. Sign in to classroom
2. Open up a class
3. On the stream page, scroll down to the topic block on the left side of the screen. 
4. Click "add topic"
5. To edit a topic, click the "snowman" (three dots) to edit or delete an existing topic.
6. Repeat until all of your topics have been created.

Ideas for using topics in your classroom

Not sure how to use topics in your classroom? Here are some ideas to consider

• Create a topic for each subject area that you teach during the day. This is especially helpful for elementary teachers.
• Create a topic for each unit in your course (this is the most common way to use topics)
• Create a topic for major assignments that require multiple parts, steps, instructions, announcements, etc (e.g. a research project).
• Create generic topics: classwork, homework, announcements, resources

👉🏼 BONUS Tip 👈🏼

Spice up your topics by adding emoji icons! This helps break up all the text in Classroom. This tip is especially helpful for early elementary classrooms where students are still learning to read. 

To add emoji, you will need an emoji Chrome extension. There are lots available, but I use Emoji Keyboard 2016 which you can install here. 

To force-order my emoji I use this formula: number + emoji + title. 

How are you using the topic feature? Do you find that it is effective at organizing the classroom stream?