Recently I read a post, one in a series, by Adam Schoenbart titled ‘The Coaching Chronicles: Small Victories, Big Impact‘. It reminded me of a “victory” I had the pleasure of hearing about this week.
A little back story, right around the time I posted ‘A Teacher Inquires…‘, a different teacher in my building, Kelly Lee, reached out to me about doing badging in her 6th grade Science class. She wanted to connect this to the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) where the students would answer open-ended questions around Disciplinary Core Ideas (DCIs). She organized all her materials through a ThingLink, the end step being a Google Form (only accessible to our domain) where the students would answer two questions:
In your own words, how would you describe what makes living things, living?
What evidence can you provide that you, yourself, meet the requirements of something that is living? Explain.
She would then go into the Google Sheet of responses each day, review the answers, and in a column enter a 1 or 0 to signify to FormMule (a Google Sheet add-on) which email template to send.
Earlier this week, she showed me the next badge the students could earn, “Cell Savant”. But she also changed the management side. On her own, Kelly explored how to have the process completely automated. Utilizing the Quiz feature in Google Forms, students answer a series of questions which get automatically graded. An additional column is added to the Google Sheet of responses which utilizes CopyDown (another Google Sheet add-on) to insert a formula [=if(C_=12, 1, 0)]. This 1 or 0 would again be the trigger for FormMule to either send an email with the badge or an email informing the student as to what their score was, resources to look at for a refresher, and the link to submit the Form again. Both email templates also include .gifs of encouragement or congratulations. Hearing this process, which was completely self-directed on Kelly’s part, made this tech coach beam with pride!
So to Kelly, I include your .gif here to show my congratulations to you:
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