I’m a Virtual School teacher, and I’m also a f2f (tech-speak for face-to-face, or ‘regular’ teacher). For both, I use blackboard. I like blackboard for the most part, but it hasn’t changed much from its original version, published at the conclusion of WWII. It holds assignments well, but the gradebook is largely responsible for my lack of hair.

The good thing about blackboard’s gradebook is that students can access their grades, and they are thereby responsible for keeping up with their grades. Unfortunately, that’s the only good thing about blackboard’s gradebook. So I don’t lose myself in disparaging comments about blackboard though, I’m going to instead focus on the merits of my newly found friend, Google Docs.

First, get a Google account. You don’t have to get a google email address to do this. But for Pete’s sake, get a google account. There is much, much more to google than searching. I could spend a series of blogs explaining how educators can use google features… hmmm, good idea! But don’t wait for me to get to it! Check it out yourself.

With your Google account ready, check out my gradebook. It’s ok. I promise. It’s all confidential, because there are no names available. Instead, I ‘hide’ the names column unless someone else logs on, and I can see when someone else logs on.

I can make changes. Students can’t change anything or see hidden columns.
I can add comments that pop up when the mouse scrolls over their cells explaining assignments.
I can add different pages for different classes.
I can access the spreadsheet from my cell phone!
And I can create formulas that do all the calculations for me.

Students, administrators, teachers, parents… anyone can see the grades. But only people who actually have the students’ ID numbers know which grades belong to whom. This makes students’ grades, students’ responsibility. However, I edit the grades directly on the page, which makes this feature waaay faster than blackboard, Wise, or other cumbersome, expensive, outdated, central-office-mandated programs.

Check out google docs, and create your spreadsheet. If you’re learning how to replicate your courses consistently, then you should be able to recycle the Google Docs Spreadsheet year after year. Doing this gives me more time to contact students and parents, improve future instructions and assignments, and be a better teacher.

-Shu

With this tool, teachers have very pretty data that tells them what kids do and don’t know. As the first part of the KWL, (what we do know, want to know, and what we learned) this has been proven valuable data. The kids love the remotes, the planning is easy, and the tool helps teachers focus their lesson plans on where the students need the most assistance.

I’m a wine salesman as well as a teacher, and I often find myself talking shop while ‘at work’ in the wine world. Recently, at a wine tasting, I was talking about the remotes, my new toys in my arcenal. The woman I was talking to asked me how much my new toy cost the school. When I told her, she snorted wine, shocked. She asked me why I haddn’t bought 25 small dry-erase boards, put them under my kids’ seats, and used the PowerPoint slides to the same ends. The data wouldn’t be as pretty, but it would be pretty clear when the kids wrote a letter and held up the boards simultaneously whether they knew their stuff or not. Seriously, I told her that she should quit what she was doing and become an educational consultant. It was brilliant, and it would save thousands. I asked, what did she do, anyway? She told me she was teaching in a school in Raleigh, where she had been teaching for fifteen years. And that’s the value of experience, I reckon.

-Shu