Ok, so just to reiterate from yesterday, here was the plan for today: the students’ warm up was for them to use their Google Form that I made for them while they went on a gallery walk around the classroom, reviewing material from all four of their content area classes. I was really excited about it this morning. Here’s how it went down:

Issue #1: Fire Drill
As antsy I was to get started, we were e-mailed about the fire drill we were going to have at 0900. No worries. We went back inside fairly quickly. I explained to them that they were each going to go to each of the “stations” that coincided with the numbers on their Google Form. There were nine questions total. The rule was, there couldn’t be more than one person at each station. Finally, I said, “Go at it!”

Issue #2: They Didn’t Know How To Go At It
My bad. There I go assuming again. I thought I had explained the directions fairly clearly, but that’s subjective. They didn’t understand how to use the Google Form. I was almost instantly bombarded with, “Wait, Miss! I don’t get it. What are we supposed to do?” They didn’t realize all they had to do was tap on the box for each number and input their answer. If it was multiple choice, they simply had to tap their choice.

Issue #3: Twitchy Fingers
I keep forgetting that for most of my students, this is the first time they’ve ever used an iPad before. I had embedded the form onto Edmodo as a post, so when they clicked on the link, the form came up as a pop-up window. A lot of the students kept grazing their thumbs on the screen, bringing them back to Edmodo, which was greyed out in the background, and losing their work. A few of them had to upload the form again and couldn’t figure out why they were getting kicked off. I had to explain that the screen is very touch sensitive and to use the holding straps located on the underside of the iPad covers to hold their iPads.

Issue #4: Not Paying Attention In Class
Each station was in direct relation to the material they had already learned in their core classes. For example, I posted two stations where they had to figure out the slope of a line, which they’ve learned how to do in Math. The Science stations reviewed the different characteristics of volcanoes. The English stations reviewed punctuation and grammar, and the Social Studies asked them about the Stamp Act. Again, stuff they should already know. They didn’t remember most of it. But that’s why we’re reviewing in the first place, right?

Issue #5: Traffic Jams
Sooooo, I had mentioned to them that I didn’t want more than one student at each station, since there were more stations than students. That seemed to have slipped their minds a few times, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I had wanted them to think for themselves so I could see what they remembered without help, but whatever.

Conclusion:
1. This was a good practice for using Google Forms on the iPad for the first time. I will have to remind them to be aware of their fingers, since several of them had to start over a few times.
2. Next time I will change the form so that all the questions aren’t “required”. For those of you not familiar with Google Forms, you can make it so that your questions are required, meaning, your students HAVE to answer them and won’t let them submit the form until they all are. This prevented all of them from hitting “submit” at the end, because most of them didn’t know how to answer some of the questions and left them blank. Again, blank answers equals no submissions.
3. Regardless of all the issues mentioned above, I think it was a good exercise. The kids were up out of their seats and moving. They were using iPads. They were reviewing the material anyways, even if they couldn’t input their answers.

The rest of the hour was dedicated to studying for their Science quiz, finishing any homework they had missing from their classes, and working on their paper blog posts. They worked well for the rest of the hour, some with their headphones plugged in, listening to to the relaxing sounds of Pocket Pond. 🙂 So, in the end, everything was ok. This was a learning experience for me as much as it was for my students. It’s a journey we’re taking together, and as long as they can be patient with me as much as I am with them, we’ll be good to go.

Rivas, out……