G Gems 26: Back in the habit

Back in the habit (finally!)

Greetings all,

After a lengthy absence I'm back in the game at last. Since February I've been chocker block dealing with GCSE options, an Ofsted inspection, GDPR, curriculum, timetables and in my spare time I've completed my Google Certified Trainer programme. All this has taken me away from blogging for obvious of reasons.

The CET came as a result of a year of training (having completed my Level 1 and Level 2 Educator exams in October 2017) and supporting others both in my school and in other schools that we have contacts with. I could not have been more exited to be approved and got straight on to setting up my training domain. It was there the excitement was cut short! Let's just say that setting up your domain and getting verified isn't the easiest process. Somehow, I managed to lock myself out of my previous gmail account which allowed my access to blogger, my website and all my files. If I tried to access my new domain it just kept saying it has sent a verification email to the address that I didn't yet have access to. Let's just say there were toys everywhere and an empty pram!

But thanks the the CET group and some Youtube videos from @LouisShanafelt I am finally able to get started and I've got my access back. It all came down to a bit of editing of the CNAME host code that is not mentioned in the instructions. Thanks Louis!!.

So now I'm back and my domain is live and I'm spending the first few days of my summer holidays working on a couple of projects:

Teaching & Learning Dashboards

Example Dashboard using dummy data

Using google forms for lesson observations is a really easy way to a) collate information in one place b) secure that information under GDPR and c) evaluate all the information you've gathered. So at my schools I've been updating the T&L Dashboards to show triangulation. Let's be clear, I didn't create the original, I've been updating the existing due to changes to our processes but it's been good fun and it's great to see what you can do.  Essentially, we use Explore in google sheets to create charts from the data collected during observations including how well staff are meeting the Teacher Standards, book looks, student voice, assessment, behaviour for learning, planning and more. All this pulls into sheets and then we use formulas to create a 1 page A3 visual summary.

Initially this would have taken hours to set up but with Explore it's now much easier and you don't have to be a formula expert to pull it off.


Staff Training: Escape Rooms
I've now been asked to run some staff training in September for our Learning Support Assistants to show them how they can use G Suite to engage disaffected learners. I've only got an hour and I hate CPD when you are talked at so I've decided to make it as practical as possible. I'm designing a 30 minute online Escape Room using Google Forms and Drawings. If you've never tried this it's easy to set up: Just create your google form and have separate sections for each question. Use response validation to ensure an exact answer and then "continue to next section" on completion of a question.  I plan to share the form with the team captain using Google Classroom's differentiation option while the rest of the group have access to the clues. They'll get the first clue on the stream and then when the captain submits a correct answer I will share the next clue with them. If they get stuck I'll post further clues on the classroom stream. They'll only have 30 minutes to solve the clues and escape, but all the clues are curriculum based so that they can see how G Suite could be used in different areas. Then I'll be taking them through how it was all set up.

Here's an example of a clue.  Can you work out the answer? 

I'm looking for a 4 figure numerical code.