Project 24: Google came to visit

Google: “Can we come in and see how you’re getting on with all the Chromebooks?”
Mr Reddy: “Sure, when would you like to come?”
Google: “How about Wednesday 14th November?”
Mr Reddy: “OK but we’ll have only been using them for 2 days. We won’t be doing anything fancy.”
Google: “That’s fine.”
Mr Reddy: “The pupils will have had about 50 minutes on them by the time you visit and it will be my third day managing the devices and the user accounts. Would you like to wait a month until I know what I’m doing?”
Google: “The thing is we’ve got the guy who is responsible for getting Google Apps and Chromebooks into schools around the world coming over and he has a tight schedule. It has to be the 14th.”

Lesson Plan

Lesson Outcome: Pupils collobratievly develop a Chrome Code – a way of working with the Chromebooks that we will hold ourselves to.

Activity	Notes	How’d it go?
Play video montage of students using computers	Plan is to use video to inspire discussion. What did we see in the video? How were students using the computers? What were they doing well? Not so well?Thought Google might be impressed by the techie introduction and the use of YouTube. [embedplusvideo height=”118″ width=”180″ standard=”http://www.youtube.com/v/AE1BzvVFJiU?fs=1″ vars=”ytid=AE1BzvVFJiU&width=180&height=118&start=&stop=&rs=w&hd=0&autoplay=0&react=1&chapters=&notes=” id=”ep5167″ /]	Playing the video didn’t go so well – I tried full-screen playback to start with but the screen went black. I tried playing it normal size in YouTube and Internet Explorer froze. So I tried playing it from the computer’s hard drive – the whole thing crashed. Started sweating.Back-up plan #4… “Class, flip open your Chromebooks and check your emails. I’ve sent you a link to the video I was trying to play for you.” Chromebooks just work. Worked perfectly. No delay in getting to their emails, no delay playing the video on YouTube. 22 Chromebooks simultaneously working well. Sweat starts to dry up, Google man chuckling at the back. For him this was a perfect demonstration of the fact that Chromebooks just work. Internet explorer had crashed. Windows could’t handle it. And the Mac Mini that we had Windows running on also found it too much. He said I couldn’t have orchestrated it better for him to watch Microsoft and Apple products letting me down with Google coming to the rescue. When you put it like that, I guess I did pretty well.
Use the responses to last night’s flipped homework that came in via Google Forms	I turned their responses into 4 gorgeous Wordles to prompt conversation around some computer time rules.	The visuals worked well for the class to expand on what they’d said in the homework. Should link nicely into the next part of the lesson…
Pupils create a Chrome Code together	Leveraging the collaborative power of Google Docs, pupils get in groups of 4 and work on the same document simultaneously. One pupil in each group is nominated Document Controller and is responsible for sharing it with the other 3. They have 15 minutes to compile a Chrome Code – a set of rules for computer time.	The way they worked collaboratively blew me away. I’ve never seen groupwork like this where every student was able to truly contribute. With a computer each, every student has the tools at their fingertips to take part in the creation of the Code. Typically in groupwork, there’s one person who’s got the pen and controls who contributes when. Not so when you put a keyboard and Google Docs in front of them.The best of the Codes are showcased below.
Say thank you to Google using Wallwisher	Thought Google might like to see the nice things my pupils wrote to show their gratitude for the Chromebooks.	Had the desired effect. Check out the sweet (and sometimes hilarious) things they said below. Tahmid’s is a good one.