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Less Physics Mo Problems

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Why am I writing this personal entry? Well, it is not an attempt to gain any sympathy. It attempts to show what is possible if a clear intention and goal serve the learner's needs.  In May of 2022 just near the end of another fantastic school year, I do not remember what happened. But, I was unable to finish the school year and was unable to teach the following year.  Why? On May 21st, 2022, I fell down a flight of 16 stairs (luckily carpeted) from the 2nd to 1st story of our home.  I was found at the bottom of the stairs. I was found foaming at the mouth. This would lead to a 2-month hospital stay which included an induced coma because my seizures would not stop, several rounds of lumbar punctures, and relearning basic physical movements like something as simple as being able to roll in the hospital bed. Simply put, when I was admitted to the hospital, I was diagnosed as being “critically ill.” Please take a moment and read those words: critically ill. They are not terms...
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Google Keep On Task

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As we embark on our passion projects, I wanted to find a way to keep up to date on what my students were up to.  Last year, I had students create task boards using Trello.  While it was helpful in 1:1 conversations, the downfall for me as an educator was the amount of time it took to go into each board to see where students were at efficiently.  Now that Google Keep is a part of G Suite, I've decided to leverage it as a tool.

I use Keep everyday in my life as a task list an note taking tool, but I never used it in my classroom with my students.  The ability to share and label notes makes it quite powerful.  So how am I using it?

Today, I had students create a task list in their Google Keep and share it with me.




I then added a label to all task lists from the same class and archived the list so they wouldn't be in my home Keep page.



During class, I had students begin adding projects tasks to their lists.  Now when I go to that label page in Keep, I can keep up with all of my students in that block.



I like that this is a quick one page look at what students have done and have yet to do.  Items can be rearranged in lists. So, I'll be making sure my students keep them in order with the current task at the top of the list.  I realize it does not provide as much depth as a Trello board would, but I'll see how this tradeoff of detail for timeliness works in the long run.

I look forward to seeing how this works for keeping up with classes of 30 students with 30 different projects. Of course it will only be useful if the students use it.  So, I hope to make it part of our project routine.



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