Week 12: Some Technological Mishaps with Google Forms and Peardeck

So far with this blog, I've mostly written about things that have gone well, but now I think it is time to share some of the things that have caused me and my students problems, especially since I ran into a couple of them this past week.

Mistakes with Google Forms

As you know, I am pretty much in love with Google Forms because you can just do so much with it! However, as I am only human, our relationship has not been without some road bumps. At the end of last week, I had my students complete a form telling me who they wanted to work with for our new independent reading program. I had linked the form to the end of another form, and I made sure that I copied the correct link for each period since I had made the mistake of copying the wrong link in the past. When my students completed both forms in class on Friday, they were able to do so without any problems. After class, I patted myself on the back for not making any stupid mistakes with the forms.

And then, that afternoon, I opened up the students' responses to try to put them in groups...

That's when I realized my rather glaring mistake - in the original version of the form, I had the students tell me who they wanted to work with, but I forgot to include a box for them to write their names and check the box to have the form automatically collect their username. If I had done at least one of these two things, then I would've been okay, but as it was, I could see the students' answers for who they wanted to work with, but I had no idea who wrote down whose name. So much for being able to put them in groups over the weekend. 

"Not a problem," I thought. "I will just fix the form and have them fill it out again." So that's just what I did. I put the link back up on Google Classroom, and since I had to be out on Tuesday and Wednesday because I had to have a minor surgery on Tuesday morning, I emailed my substitute instructions on what I needed the kids to do. I made it clear that I wanted them to get this done in class, because I wanted to look at the form on Wednesday afternoon, so I would have the groups ready to go when I came back to school on Thursday. 

And then, that afternoon, I opened up the students' responses to try to put them in groups...

And this time it was even worse than before! The spreadsheet with the responses was blank! The kids hadn't completed the form. I was confused. I went back to Google Classroom to double-check I had in fact posted the link, and I discovered, of course, that I had posted the link to the first "Independent Reading" form instead of the second "Partners" form. Sigh... But then I realized that that shouldn't have mattered, because if the students had filled out the first form, they would have been given the link to the second form. I couldn't figure it out. I decided I would just try it a third time when I was back on Thursday.

On Thursday, I made double-triple-checked that I posted the correct link. I had the students in first period complete the form. Then second period rolled around, and I had those kids fill out the form as well. Since there were some issues with Google Drive and logging into the Chromebooks during second period, I decided to check the responses to make sure that everything was working.

I opened up the spreadsheet with the responses, and it was still blank! Or so I thought... At first, I was extremely confused. Google Forms had never failed me like this before. What was going on? How could this be happening when I needed it most? (Okay... in all honesty, I could have given the kids pieces of paper to write names down on, but I had to figure this out and make it work! I'd already invested too much time into this relationship to just throw in the towel when things got tough...) 

And then I happened to scroll down... and there they were! All of my students' responses - not just from Thursday, but from Wednesday as well! I realized that I had deleted the contents of the earlier rows when I forgot to have the students include their names; however, I didn't delete the rows themselves. Therefore, when my students filled in the form again on Wednesday, Google (correctly) recognized that this was the 30-something-ith person to fill out the form, and therefore, put their response in the corresponding row. Did I admit this to my students! No. I just told them it was working now. What they didn't know wouldn't hurt them. 

Moral of the story: make sure you always copy and paste the correct link for the form you want to send, and make sure that, if you need to delete information from the responses, that you delete the actual rows themselves instead of just the contents of the cells. 

Waste of Time with Peardeck

When I first tried Peardeck way back in Week 1 of this blog, I loved everything about it - the fact that it could take over students' screens, so they could follow along with a presentation; the fact that it was like an interactive Google Slides; the fact that I could use it to ask questions on the spot. And when I first used it with my students, they thought it was just as cool as I did. Honestly, though, I hadn't used it since, so I decided it was time to try it out again. 

As I mentioned, I was out this week until Thursday, so, once again, I was unable to make any copies. (I know... I don't know what it is with me and my inability to plan enough ahead to get my copies made...) We are just starting a new unit on The Awakening. In the past, I have just made the kids take notes on some background information on Kate Chopin and the novel before launching into the text itself. As you can imagine, this method is not the best for "hooking" the students into the text before we start reading. I knew I needed to do something differently this time, but, since I hadn't been able to plan it out in advance and make any copies, my options were somewhat limited. 

I decided to make an anticipation guide. (If you are unfamiliar with what an anticipation guide is, you can find some pretty good explanations here and here.) Usually, when I do an anticipation guide, I like to pair it with the activity "Take Sides," in which I actually have the students get up and move to one side of the classroom or the other depending on their stance on the statements on the guide. This time, I decided to use Peardeck to present the statements and have the students do a virtual "Take Sides" through the use of Peardeck's "Ask a Quick Question" capability. 

In creating the Peardeck, I looked up quotes on gender roles and chose ten that I liked. I put one quote on each slide. That was it, since the rest would be done "in the moment" with my classes. 

In first period, I began as I had planned. I had each student get a Chromebook and join the Peardeck presentation. I pulled up the first quote by Oscar Wilde: “Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.” I read the quote out loud to the students, clicked on "Ask a Quick Question," and selected "Agree / Disagree." 

On the students screens, they were asked to drag a dot to one side of the screen if they agreed and to the other side of the screen if they disagreed. Then, I pulled up the students' responses. They quickly realized that we could see their dots move on the projector, so they had some fun moving their dots around before I locked their responses. The problem was that everybody's dot was just that - a dot; they were completely anonymous, and it was difficult to tell exactly how many were on each side. I called on a few people to share how they felt about the quote, but the majority of the class stayed quiet and hid in the anonymity of the dots up on the screen. In the remaining 10 minutes of class, we only got through half of the quotes. 

When second period rolled around, I knew I didn't want to do the activity the same way I had done it with first period. For the sake of time, I just had the students log in (since they were already on the Chromebooks anyway), and I clicked through the quotes and had them write down whether they agreed or disagreed. We did not discuss any of them, because I told the students we would do that the next day. We got through all ten quotes, and the kids had time to put their Chromebooks away before the bell rang. 

On Friday, I decided to finish up the quotes with first period the same way I had started with second period. Instead of having the students get their Chromebooks to follow along with the presentation, I just clicked through and had them write down whether they agreed or disagreed. Then, I went back to my old method of "Take Sides." I went to quote #5 where we had left off, and I asked the students to get up and move to the left side of the classroom if they agreed and the right side of the classroom if they disagreed. Then, we talked. This worked a million times better than using Peardeck for the same activity because we could actually see which students agreed and disagreed, which facilitated more of a discussion, because we didn't just have the same kids sharing their opinions on each quote. Plus, it got the students up and moving around, which is always a good thing. I did the activity the same way with second period, and it went extremely well. After the kids sat down, I asked them why they thought I had them do the activity, and they eventually came up with, "Because that's what the book's going to be about." Yep. They got it, and they were already engaged with the content. 

Courtesy of goodreads, the quotes I chose to use for the anticipation guide were:

1. “Women have a much better time than men in this world; there are far more things forbidden to them.” ― Oscar Wilde
2. “We've begun to raise daughters more like sons... but few have the courage to raise our sons more like our daughters.” ― Gloria Steinem
3. “A man is lucky if he is the first love of a woman. A woman is lucky if she is the last love of a man.” ― Charles Dickens
4. “The woman was made of a rib out of the side of Adam; not made out of his head to rule over him, nor out of his feet to be trampled upon by him, but out of his side to be equal with him, under his arm to be protected, and near his heart to be beloved.” ― Matthew Henry, Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume
5. “My dear boy, no woman is a genius. Women are a decorative sex. They never have anything to say, but they say it charmingly. Women represent the triumph of matter over mind, just as men represent the triumph of mind over morals.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
6. “When you grow up as a girl, it is like there are faint chalk lines traced approximately three inches around your entire body at all times, drawn by society and often religion and family and particularly other women, who somehow feel invested in how you behave, as if your actions reflect directly on all womanhood.” ― M.E. Thomas, Confessions of a Sociopath: A Life Spent Hiding in Plain Sight
7. “I’m tough, I’m ambitious, and I know exactly what I want. If that makes me a bitch, okay.” ― Madonna
8. “A wife should always be few feet behind her husband. If he is an MA you should be a BA.If he is 5'4'tall you shouldn't be more than 5'3'tall. If he is earning five hundred rupees you should never earn more than four hundred and ninety nine rupees.That's the only rule to follow if you want a happy marriage...No partnership can ever be equal.It will always be unequal, but take care it is unequal in favor of the husband. If the scales tilt in your favor, God help you, both of you.” ― Shashi Deshpande
9. “A part of a healthy conscience is being able to confront consciencelessness. When you teach your daughter, explicitly or by passive rejection, that she must ignore her outrage, that she must be kind and accepting to the point of not defending herself or other people, that she must not rock the boat for any reason, you are NOT strengthening her posocial sense, you are damaging it-and the first person she will stop protecting is herself.” ― Martha Stout, The Sociopath Next Door: The Ruthless Versus the Rest of Us
10. “Playing roles in any relationship is false and will inevitably lead to the relationship's collapse. Noone can be any one thing all the time.” ― Portia de Rossi, Unbearable Lightness: A Story of Loss and Gain

Moral of the story: Sometimes, the old way is the best way. The activity took way longer than I wanted it to when I tried to do it through Peardeck, and, to top it off, it didn't engage the students. I could see using Peardeck for an activity like this if you teach an online class; in that scenario, it would work really well. However, in a face-to-face class, I much prefer the traditional "Take Sides" activity because it gets the kids up, out of their seats, and situates them in the classroom in a way which facilitates discussion and debate.