Conferencing with Students - Literacy and EdTech Collaborative

The Sarah Taylor and I recently held a session after school to demonstrate how to utilize web-based and application-based tools to improve data collection during student conferencing.  My "Tech Ideas" section was very basic, but provided ways to track information gleaned from student conferences.  Basically, I demonstrated how to use Evernote or Google to record anecdotal records from students.  If I was still in the classroom, I would most likely use my iPad or MacBook to track conference "noticings" using one of the Google apps.

With Google Forms, a basic conference form could be set up initially and your notes could be added for each student.  Then, when your notes are completed, the form can be submitted and the browser refreshed to fill out a blank form for the next student.  When the form is submitted, the data populates into a Google Sheet, which could then be accessed to search and sort through the data.    

Toward the end of the slideshow below, I included basic examples of what this could look like with Google products.  But, don't neglect to look through Sarah Taylor's slides on conferencing during Writer's Workshop.

Filtering Images by Usage Rights with Google

The following document demonstrates the steps needed to perform an Advanced Search with Google Images.  This might seem like more steps then you want to perform with your students, but setting up this expectation now will avoid future issues with stealing copyrighted images from a regular Google Images search.  These steps should provide you with the basic steps needed to perform an Advanced Search within Google Images.

Google Images - Advanced Search

Google Docs - Research Tool

Video Demonstration

The following video and animated GIF provide teachers with an overview of the Research Tool within Google Docs.  This isn't a new feature in Google Docs, but I wanted to share it because I noticed many classrooms have been collecting information from online sources.  It would definitely be easy for students to keep a notes page to collect information from the web and cite it with little effort using the Research Tool's cite button.  

Even if this tool isn't used to locate information, the Research Tool can be used to locate images for a class project.  For instance, because the Research Tool can also be accessed within Google Slides, students could locate images filtered by usage rights to be dragged into their presentations, while citing the online source simultaneously.  

The video below reviews some tips on using Google Docs during the information collection stage for any essay writing.  This tool makes a great argument for why your students should be using Google Docs on a more regular basis.  

  

Images to Demo the Google Research Tool