Week 10: Google Classroom, Turnitin, and Creating a Democracy by Relinquishing Control (Well... Kind of...)

When I headed into our two-week winter vacation, I had all kinds of noble ideas about quickly finishing all of my grading for the previous semester and solidifying my plans for the new semester. However, since "the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry," I spent quite a few days napping on my couch when I should have been grading, which meant I did not finish grading until grades were due this past Tuesday, and I barely had time to plan for this week, much less the entire semester.

As the start of the semester approached, and I realized it was inevitable that I would have to go back to work, I decided I should probably figure out what my students would be doing once we got back. I already had some ideas floating around in my head - I wanted to switch us over from Edmodo to Google Classroom; I wanted to figure out how to implement an independent reading program; I wanted to start with a project because I knew I couldn't count on my kids bringing their literature books with them on the first day back, but I also didn't want to do something that would take too long because I want to get into our unit on The Awakening...

Google Classroom

To be perfectly honest, I was ambivalent about Google Classroom when it was first launched. I've been using Edmodo for the past few years, and I've been pretty happy with it. However, our school has jumped on the GAFE bandwagon, and many of the other teachers who used Edmodo switched to Google Classroom as soon as it came out; I felt as thought I was keeping myself behind by not making the switch with my classes. Since I hate to make big changes in the middle of a semester, I decided to make the change at the start of second semester. I'm sure my students would have actually been perfectly fine if we switched sooner, but it just made more sense in my mind to switch now instead of earlier in the year. 

Back in October or November, I attended a strategy session at my school where I learned the ins and outs of Classroom. Usually, I prefer to figure things out on my own, but since the session was being offered, I figured, "Why not?" 

During the session, I had the opportunity to set up Classroom for one of my classes and practice assigning an assignment through Classroom. I was pleasantly surprised when I found that the entire process only took a few minutes. I also really like that Classroom is completely integrated with the rest of Google Drive - it creates a folder for you right in your drive, and it gives you the option of creating a new copy of an assignment for each student who opens it. Both of those components are a step up from Edmodo - no longer would I have to juggle two websites to keep track of student work nor would my students have to remember to make a copy of an assignment if they wanted to type straight into it. 

When I launched Classroom with my students, it only took a matter of 5 or 10 minutes to get all students signed up. I also realized that my one student who always had trouble logging into Edmodo (despite the fact that I would reset his password and watch him log in with the new password) would not have to remember a second username or password because, since we are working on Chromebooks, he log into his GAFE account when he logs into the Chromebook. 

I have only used Classroom to a limited extent this week, so I'm sure as time goes on, I will find more that I like and don't like about the system. But, for now, I'm happy.

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Ease of use: If you and your students already have Google accounts, then setting up and using Google Classroom is extremely easy. If you don't have Google accounts, you will need to create them in order to be able to use Classroom, but you should do that anyway because then you will be able to use all of Google Drive.
Would I use this again: Yes.
Downsides: One of the aspects I liked about Edmodo was that I could put students in small groups within my class, and then I could assign different assignments to the different groups. As far as I know, this isn't possible right now with Google Classroom; however, knowing Google, it is quite possible that this will be something we see in Classroom in the not-too-distant future.
Applications: Classroom is a great tool to manage your class website. It is easy to assign and organize work, and you don't have to worry about doing any of the formatting in order to make it look "nice." I could see it used in every subject area in just about every grade.
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Turnitin

Recently (after years of trying to make it happen), our school purchased www.turnitin.com, a plagiarism checking website. As I've mentioned in previous posts, I am big on trying to prevent plagiarism in my classes, so I was thrilled when I found out we (finally) got Turnitin. I really like the fact that students get to see the report right after they turn in an assignment, because, if they plagiarized, they know immediately that they will get caught, which means I have less of a confrontation on my hands later on down the road. Also, I think the fact that they get the reports will help to deter them from plagiarizing in the first place because they know that I am going to see those reports as well, and they want to make sure they don't come back indicating that the assignment was plagiarized. 

I am planning on using Turnitin with all of my classes, but I started by setting it up for my online classes since I want them to submit all of their written assignments through Turnitin. Creating a class was relatively easy, as was loading in an assignment. However, since I was setting up my online classes, I had to load in all of the written assignments for the entire semester, which wound up taking close to an hour for each of the four classes. But... now that's done, and I won't have to create a single assignment for any of those classes for the rest of the semester. 

Adding students to the class proved a little more difficult because I couldn't remember what I had set the class passwords as. (I didn't write the passwords down because I thought that Turnitin would let me see that information later, but it didn't; it only shows you the class code.) However, it allows you to manually enter students, and since I only had to put a few students in each class at a time, this wasn't a big deal. (I later remembered the passwords.) Most of my students had no problem logging in whatsoever, so I think that the few students who did have problems just didn't read through the directions in the confirmation email they received and missed a step in trying to create an account. 

I had my students submit a practice assignment first, in which I just had them introduce themselves and explain why they are taking the class. I had them do this in class, because I wanted to make sure that they knew how to submit through Turnitin. They were all able to do so without any problems. 

I assumed that when they turned in an assignment, I would receive an email notification. Unfortunately, after some digging and submitting a help request to Turnitin, it turns out that this isn't a capability of the site. While this wouldn't be an issue for a normal class because all of your students would turn in an assignment at the same time, this is a huge issue for an online class in which the students are allowed to work at their own pace. For these classes, the assignments have recommended due dates, but the students do not have to turn them in at this time; they just have to finish all the coursework by the end of the semester. Therefore, I wind up getting assignments at random times. Also, I have the course set up so that the students cannot progress to the next activity until they have turned in their writing assignment because, in the past, students would try to skip the writing assignments. Due to this, I need to know when a student has submitted something, so I can go into Apex and unlock the next assignment. What this all means is that my students now have to turn in an assignment with Turnitin and email me to let me know that they've turned in the assignment. Is this a huge inconvenience? No, but it seems like a basic function that Turnitin should have.

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Ease of use: As I mentioned, setting up a class and loading an assignment was extremely easy. I haven't yet tried to load a rubric into Turnitin, but I will try that sometime in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully that will be easy as well, because I look forward to the fact that I won't have to make copies of my rubrics for all of my students.
Would I use this again: Yes. We are just getting going.
Downsides: The biggest downside (and the reason we didn't have it until now) is that you have to pay for it. I don't really know what our wonderful department chair said this year that finally tipped the scales and convinced our principal to spend the money and purchase the program. If you don't have Turnitin at your school, Google is just as effective at catching plagiarism; it is just more time consuming on the teacher's part because you have to copy and paste and look through the matches yourself.
Applications: I really think that all of the departments on our campus should use Turnitin for any written assignment they assign. This would help reinforce the idea that plagiarism, in any form, is unacceptable and will not be tolerated. It also looks like you can use Turnitin for collaborative activities, which seems cool, but I haven't looked into that very much yet (especially since you can collaborate so easily in Google Drive).
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Creating a Democracy by Relinquishing Control

About a month ago, I came across an article from the Washington Post titled, "Seven ways schools kill the love of reading in kids - and 4 principles to help restore it," by Valerie Strauss, which is actually a re-printing of an article by Alfie Kohn from the Fall 2010 issue of the English Journal. I must have read the article when it was originally published in the English Journal, but, for some reason, when I re-read it now - now that we are entrenched in the Common Core, now that I am a participant in professional development with the CSUSM Writing Project, now that I have been teaching for 4 more years than I had been when I first read it - it struck a deeper chord. 

Oddly enough, the part the stuck with me the most wasn't about reading; it was about creating a democracy in the classroom. Unfortunately, I didn't bookmark the article after I first read it, but this idea resonated in my mind: If you want to create a true democracy, you can't simply have students vote and go with "majority rules"; you need the students to discuss and compromise and come to a consensus together.

As luck would have it, this weekend I happened across the same article (which is why I was able to give you the title and the link above). Here is the way Kohn originally put this idea: "Remember that group decision making doesn't require voting, which is basically just adversarial majoritarianism. Help them to acquire the skills and disposition to reach for a deeper kind of democracy, one in which compromises are generated and consensus is reached."

Well... I decided to start small and to try it out with the first project I was assigning my English 11 classes. Instead of setting a due date for the project, when I introduced the project to my students, I told them that the due date was flexible and that we would determine an appropriate due date together. I told them I wanted to see them working in class and making use of their time wisely. What I didn't want to have happen was for me to set a due date, for them to think they had plenty of time, and for them to then waste a lot of time in class, only to have to cram at the end to get everything done. I told them that if I saw them not working, I would assume they were almost done, in which case the project could be due the next day.

I let them work for two days before bringing up the discussion about the due date again. At this point, the groups were working really well, but I could see they still had quite a bit of information to gather. It was a Wednesday, and I didn't think they could have the project done before the following week. One of the students first suggested having it due on Tuesday, an idea which I liked because it gave them one more day in class the following week to finalize everything. However, then another student suggested Wednesday, which everyone in the class seemed to like and go along with.

What I should have done, now that I'm thinking about it, was made the students engage in a short discussion about which day was better - Tuesday or Wednesday. As it was, Wednesday was mentioned, nobody said they were opposed to Wednesday, and so we went with Wednesday.

However, by Friday of last week, it was clear that my students didn't need all the time they had, and they were starting to slack off in class. After looking through their projects Friday, I told them that I thought we could move the date up to Tuesday since most groups were almost done. Again, nobody disagreed, so that is what wound up happening.

Have I created a true democracy in my classroom? Absolutely not. Far from it. I still wound up using my executive authority to state that I thought we needed to move the due date up a day. But what we did do was lay a foundation upon which to build throughout the rest of the semester. I would like to continue to give my students choice in due dates, in assignments, and, perhaps, even in curriculum (although, I don't know if we'll get there this year... it's hard to give up on somethings...).
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Ease of use: Starting out on such a small scale was actually really easy, and it was actually in my benefit that I hadn't already planned out the rest of the semester. If I had, I might have had a heart attack thinking, "But we can't make it due then because we need to do X, Y, and Z!" As the semester progresses, I hope it will continue to be this easy. As Elsa says, I just need to "let it go!" (Yes. I did just quote Frozen. Sorry. I just couldn't help it.)
Would I use this again: Yes. I really like the possibilities that this could bring. As Kohn explains in the article, the teacher that he observed doing this felt his students were more engaged in what they did in the class because they took the time to make decisions together.
Downsides: You have to be open to the possibility that things might not go the way you want them to. If you are a control-freak, then this is not the path for you. However, if you really want to encourage your students to become active members of society, this is a step in the right direction.
Applications: You could use this for small things, like due dates, to large things, like what curriculum to study; it really depends upon your comfort level in your classroom. I started small, which is what Kohn recommends if you are just starting out.
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