Google Forms does it again!

We recently had our Middle School Olympics; a whole day event for all 450 of our middle school students which started with an Olympic ceremony first thing in the morning followed by the three rotations (track and field, team sports & team challenges) and culminated in a tug of war competition. Although I wondered if it was worth the enormous amount of time in terms of organization, the response from the students at the end of the day makes me firmly believe it was worth every second of time we put in.

In the past we have always kept team scores (all the students are placed in four even teams) during the day by having a number of runners bringing the scores from all the events to three staff members collating scores, adding with calculators, entering into sheets, adding, counting, adding counting... until finally we managed to come up with a final sum for the day and let everyone know which team won.

This year we wanted to streamline the points gathering process and turn it into a real-time event, so again I used a Google form to achieve this. We realized we didn't care about keeping clear records of what event scored what with regards to the amounts of points (although there were clear guidelines for each person at each event so the points were even). The main aim was to get a running total during the day and have kids seeing it, instead of having them all wait till the end of the day for when we produced this ridiculously detailed document about all the scores for every event... basically we were turning the points into a formative assessment of their teams efforts instead of a summative assessment!

Here's how we achieved it:

1. I created a Google Form for gathering the four colors scores at each event.
2. I entered some fake scores into the sheet and submitted it to test it. I then entered an extra line above the fake scores and put in the 'sum formula' for each column (e.g. =SUM(B3:B9999) to sum column B)
3. I then created a second sheet on the form. In this sheet I created a table which collates the sum from each color's column from sheet one (e.g. the formula for column B is: =Sheet1!B2), this provided us with a running score.
4. We used an LCD projector and a mac laptop to project this. We also ensured the laptop was hidden from the students.
5. We zoomed in on the table so that the LCD projector only displayed the table (use two fingers and control on a mac to zoom in on your screen). Final product and final score...
6. Enter data into the Google form and you have an instant live score.

The really groovy thing about this was that we used a variety of ways to enter the scores. One group of teachers at the track were entering the scores on a laptop which was picking up the wireless signal. Another teacher was using her iphone, I was using my Nokia phone using my web browser and I also used a desktop when I dropped into the office. What happened is that students could always see the scores, always see them changing and hence there was huge excitement and motivation to go harder during the day.

It was so simple, so efficient and so effective. A great example of Technology really being useful within a sports day.

7 ways I integrate IT...

Our COETAIL course has started again and I am going to be posting blogs a little more regularly over the next few months. Since starting the course last year I can see quite an impact in how I integrate IT into my everyday teaching.

So here's my top seven ways that I have used IT...

1. Google Forms: These have played such an important role in how I collect data. I use the forms in such a varied way and the fact that they are so easy to custom fit, has meant I have found many uses for them: collecting registrations for a monthly run that I organise in our local school community, collecting students choices for units, gathering sports team personal data and to gather parent feedback. Google forms have saved me enormous amounts of time and allowed me to focus on more important things.
   
2. Wetpaint Thai-ing in Wiki: As part of the role I shared with my wife as the new staff coordinators for our school we created this wiki to help people assimilate smoothly into Bangkok and our school. The wiki proved to be a collaborative space in which nearly 100 members came together to ask and answer questions, share knowledge and most importantly, connect. Although highly time-consuming in setting up the wiki the site answered numerous questions and the collaborative nature of the site meant that we weren't the only one's answering these questions! I used Google Analytics to track how much the site was being used and was surprised to see an average of 9 visits a day with over 12,000 page views in the past 5 months! Definitely worth it!
   
3. Google Docs: In our PE department we used a Google Doc as the 'virtual white board' to review our PE curriculum. It began with us all entering our thoughts about our current PE curriculum using 6 questions guided by De Bono's 6 thinking hats (we eached typed in a different font so we knew who wrote what). This rich document was then refined to create a list of things we liked and disliked about our current PE curriculum and gave us direction for curriculum changes. From here we created a new Google Doc which became the sketchboard for our new scope and sequence. The fact the document was shared, available for all to input, change, rearrange etc... allowed for much greater collaboration than would a static file.
   
4. Panthernet (Moodle): We are now using this school managed site in our PE department for information delivery, quizzes, and enrichment work. It isn't always the most simple to use, however once you know the ropes you can create a rich online support site for your classroom.
5. iWeb: From fooling around with iweb on my mac I created a static web-page which houses all our PE department's important documents on once site (Scope & Sequence, Standards, benchmarks, philosophy) and hyperlinks to all our units on our school shared server (which can be accessed from home). I then was able to email this to all our department (we all use mac's), and they were able to save this on their laptops. The idea is that this has the most up-to-date resources we are using and is user-friendly so that our fellow PE teachers who aren't so tech-savy can access the information they need swiftly and simply, saving time in the long run! They bookmark this static page and can access it directly through firefox.
   
6. My Google Reader: This has been a simple and effective way to receive relevant professional reading. I love the fact that I can get a quick summary of others blogs, read deeper if I wish, or mark as read as needed! My favorite two blogs include 'Mr Robbo -The PE Geek', a great blog from an Aussie PE teacher who has IT ideas oozing from his pores and 'Leadertalk', which sometimes provides some inspiration for aspiring leaders!
   
7. My Blog: This has given me a chance to be reflective to a wider audience. It has provided a reason to write and to share and it is creating a professional learning focus for me.
   

At the start of the course I set a goal in my first blog post: "My goal is to use technology so that I can do the things I REALLY want to do, it has to free up my time, not suck up my time." The reality is that technology has freed up much of my time, with the above examples really making life easier. The problem is that staying up with the technology has filed some of the time that has been freed up. The more I learn, the more realise how much more I could learn. The reality is that somewhere we have to draw a line... I'm learning this and drawing some clear lines with permanent marker... so don't worry, I'll never be tweeting you, I'll be out for a run.

Google Forms take the pain out of fitness testing... well at least for the teachers!

Ok, so we all know that PE teachers hate paperwork (well most of them), but there is one thing that seems to frustrate us all... when paper work takes away from activity time and our own time.

In my current school we have been using the FitnessGram tests to complete our triannual fitness testing. In the past all the results were taken manually and entered into either excel, the FitnessGram software or onto PowerSchool (our online reporting software). We thought we were pretty good at keeping the kids 'connected' by getting them to log onto PowerSchool to check there results and then use these in moodle via an online worksheet which allowed them to reflect on their results and where they were positioned with the different fitness zones. This proved to be a effective way for the students to reflect on their fitness levels out of class time, while also increasing activity time and integrating IT into our subject.

What was a hassle was the process of transferring the data from the little sheets the kids recorded their results on, into our online reporting system (PowerSchool). What should be an easy task tended to take a few hours going through each child's fitness result form, collating the results and then manually entering them onto PowerSchool... not any more.


All we did was create a GoogleDoc form, which allowed the kids to input their data, which was automatically collated, and then exported, sorted using excel, and finally uploaded into PowerSchool.

Very sweet, very smooth.



To ensure the kids didn't loose activity time we built the input session into a fitness circuit around the gymnasium. At one station we had 12 laptops ready to go with the GoogleForm bookmarked for each child to input their data into. Students referred to charts to work out their fitness zones and in a short time got a clear picture of their fitness level. This station served as a rest and drink station as well, which all combined to create a meaningful learning experience, while saving us time. Good times! We had class sizes from 30 to a combined block of four classes with 110 students in the gym entering data within the lesson. Never again will I manually enter this kind of data again!


If you haven't tried GoogleDocs check them out. They are very easy to use and effective in the classroom.