The Schoenblog

Teacher-Centered PD, Growing Your #PLN, and Making Communities Work For You

I've written a lot about how I use Google Communities in the classroom to build community and engage students. Find the relevant posts here. Now I want to shift the focus and write about how they can help you--the teacher.

Google Communities have the power to be important tools in professional development and growth for all teachers. I participate in a lot of Communities--see the screen shot below--both private and public. Some are created for closed purposes, like PD in my school and others are wide open to anyone and everyone.




Twitter is usually where I start when I have a question or need help. I send a Tweet with a relevant hashtag and hope that I have a follower who is knowledgeable, engaged, and interested enough to help out--and usually I find my answers. But because Communities offer focused and specific groups, filled with experts in our field, their power and potential shouldn't be left out of the conversation.

Public Communities

In my district, Communities were one of the first GAFE tools we used, so even before I was on Twitter, I was searching for Communities. I found help in ones like Google Classroom and Google Apps for Education. I love going back to these Communities every once in a while and scrolling through for updates, ideas, and resources.

These days, I'm much more likely to be participating--or lurking--in communities like Awesome Table or Apps Scripts for Education - Users and Builders. I've become obsessed with add-on smashing and combining so many of the great GAFE add-ons, scripts, and extensions to increase productivity and impact of edtech. But I can't code, barely understand java, and need help. These Communities are where I turn to. Not only can I read everyone's thoughts, posts, and resources, but I can ask them for help--and always get it. When I couldn't figure out Awesome Table, needed to find the old Form Mule, or wanted to learn Doctopus, the members and moderators here helped me quickly and happily. It's also cool to note that many of these moderators are creators of the scripts, too, so you really can turn to experts.

I asked a question and Andrew Stillman responded himself. I got to talk to the experts, learn from them, and do better next time.

I also love to keep an eye on local Communities, like Hudson Valley NY - Google Education Group and New Jersey Google Education Group. Wherever you are, I'm sure there's a GEG nearby. I love connecting around the world with technology, but sometimes it's nice to connect locally, too.

Private Communities

I think there's also a lot of value in a closed Community, too. I've seen Communities for professional development classes, topics, departments, or even the whole faculty. Many use Google Classroom for this now, but I still find Communities to be much more effective for discussion and sharing.

In my district, I taught a professional development class, Applying Google Tools in the Secondary Classroom. We shared everything we liked, learned, and practiced on the Community, and all participants still have access to it today. It also gave me a home to share a course evaluation, follow up with participants, and extend the learning.

We also have a Technology Community in my school. The Instructional Technology Specialist shared resources, apps, and articles regularly. Instead of them getting lost in e-mail, the Community became a hub to check at our leisure, and an important resource in professional growth and development.

Tip: Turn off Community notifications; otherwise, you will receive an e-mail for every post. I much prefer to check at my leisure. Simply click the "Notifications on" button on the top left of the Community, as shown in the screen shot below.






I know most schools have Communities closed in the Apps Console for students. What about for teachers? How have you used Communities for professional development?

Students can edit file. 

Great day at Google NY with #gegnj first lesson plan jam! #njed #edchat #edtech join us! https://t.co/nv7TVwbjTk pic.twitter.com/HgxIEe04bt

— Chris Aviles (@TechedUpTeacher) August 10, 2015

This post is just a test. If all works well, I'll write about all of the recipes I used to create it with If This Then That.

Welcome to take two. My first try was really good, I think, but as I wrapped up this post, Blogger didn't feel like saving it. Wish me better luck here.

Last weekend, I participated in #edcampGlobal, which despite technical difficulties--all on my end and my fault--I enjoyed it a lot. It was nice to talk about my work with Communities again, and to do so with an audience. It was also a good start to the transition back into the headspace of teaching and the school year.

While I love writing about Google Communities and how I use them in my classroom, I've decided to change it up. Instead of writing about the activities and examples that are already in my presentations, I want to bring something new to the conversation. If you're interested in the old stuff, check out my recent post Building and Extending Student Learning and Knowledge with Google Communities or my follow up to Google Education on Air, Teaching and Learning with Google Communities: A #GoogleOnAir Reflection and More. This post also has my GHO embedded if you're interested in more detail.

Students share their Published Google Slides presentations introducing aspects of Sophocles' Oedipus, and then I share my notes to compliment theirs. All students have created new resources and used the Community to share their notes and learning with each other.

Most of the work in my classroom is written for an audience outside of the student and teacher. I really focused on creating and responding to content this year, and using Google Communities to share student work is one of my favorite ways to do it. I’m a big believer in form following function; that is, all technology should have a clear purpose. For my students, Google Classroom is where students share work with the teacher; Google Communities are where they share work with each other; Twitter, Google Forms, and sharable links are where we share work with the world.

After researching 20% Time, students share their resources and summarize their learning. Note the way links and videos are automatically embedded so that all sources are cited.

Sharing and publishing student work on Google Communities is easy and effective. Communities automatically, authentically, and intuitively embed multimedia into the stream and make it engaging and clean. You can share links, files from Drive, or even videos from YouTube with just a click or two. This is all part of standard classroom practice for my students--anything we create goes on the Community.

Why You Should Share Student Work

1. Every student has a voice, an audience, and a platform.
2. All of us are smarter than one of us.
3. Every student has a copy of all resources.
4. When students write and publish for an authentic audience, the work is better.
5. Online sharing creates an artifact of your classroom learning. Share it with parents, colleagues, and admin. Reflect on it in a few weeks to begin your planning for the new year.

Students filmed argument videos on their smart phones, uploaded them to YouTube, and shared on the Community. Then, they used a Google Form to vote on a winner and evaluate each argument.

Sharing on Communities: Publish to the Web

The screenshots in this post hopefully show how clean and effective integrating links, multimedia, and other resources into Communities can be. My favorite feature Google offers, though, is the Publish to the Web option. I hate nothing more than when students turn in links to Google Slides presentations that let me view the editing pane. I love giving formative and in-progress feedback, but when a product is complete, I have no interest in seeing the editing pane any longer. When it’s time to turn in the product, I want a clean and effective file, complete with playback and animation when applicable. That’s where Publish to the web comes in.




On any Google Docs, Sheets, or Slides file, click File → Publish to the web and follow the directions. What this does is creates a new link to your work but converts it into a web site, so that it is now ready to be published and shared. This link is automatically public to anyone you share with; sharing rights of the individual file are superseded by the Published link, but the editing and sharing rights in Drive are unaffected. You can share editing rights with one person, give three people the right to view, and still have the public Published link. The Published version also automatically updates every few minutes to reflect changes to the edited docs. See these examples of a doc and sheet from my classroom.

See the difference with these links to my #edcampGlobal presentation. This one is shared in the Google Slides editor so that anyone with the link can view. This one is published--and looks so much better, right?

The Tricky Part on Communities

If you are Publishing files to share at presentations or online, my directions above will work out beautifully. This is how I do it for my own conference presentations and professional development. However, sharing on a Community can be slightly trickier. Here’s why:

This is the link to my published work: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1oHalzH-DJqoc8Et042UVHMZMpTK5ZQj-5QDhveUkN1w/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000

But when I open it in a new window, notice that the link changes to this. Notice the addition on the end of the URL:
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1oHalzH-DJqoc8Et042UVHMZMpTK5ZQj-5QDhveUkN1w/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000&slide=id.p

In Communities, if you share the first link, the sharing rights matter. If you share the second, they don’t and the work will be public in its published form. Still following me? Basically, the easiest solution is to change all sharing rights so that anyone with the link can view if you plan to have students share Published work on Communities. This is what I do in my classroom and it works out nicely.