Wednesday, January 11, 2017

My Future Class

During the past 2.5 years as a Digital Learning Coach in my district, I've had the great fortune to work with some amazing teachers doing great things. I've tried my best to share their ideas, activities, lessons, and experiences with each other and other teachers throughout our district. However, if/when I return to the classroom, I really need to help future Andrew by capturing and sharing with him all the awesome things he'll need for his future class. I mean my future class. Here's what I've started to do:

Create a Google Form:

Question 1: Multiple Choice 
List your classroom categories. Be sure to include "Other" for any categories you can't think of ahead of time.


Question 2: Paragraph
Tell your future self everything about the activity you saw, the classroom routines you witnessed, etc. Be as detailed as possible. Describe what you'd like your future self to do and use.


Question 3: Short Answer
Provide the teacher name(s) of this great idea. Chances are future Andrew will want to contact that teacher and ask questions about it. Chances are also good the teacher has made some refinements or found something better.


Question 4: Short Answer
Paste a URL to anything related to this idea, activity, etc. When editing the form, click on the three dots to tell the Google Form the text must be a URL.



Question 5: Add a File
*This feature exists for Google Education and not personal accounts, yet.
I will take pictures of the activity, handout, student work, whiteboard, etc. and upload it here. This way I can capture evidence of what I like and share it with the future Andrew. This is money!



All of these beautiful entries flow into a spreadsheet I can organize by category and/or create individual sheets for each category using the Add-On rowCall.


[UPDATE]:
I forgot to mention I have a shortcut to this form on my phone so I can submit these ideas as soon as possible, not having to wait to sit down at a computer. There's no excuse for me missing an idea.

Connections to #ObserveMe
If you're doing #observeme at your site, use this Google Form to track ideas you get from other teachers when visiting their classrooms. Not familiar with #observeme, check out Robert's post.

Connections for current classroom teachers:
Capture amazing things you and your colleagues are doing this year. Capture things you'd like to refine for next year and add them to Your Future Class form.

Hope this inspires you to do something similar. I'm curious what ideas you might have or any suggestions you might have to improve my Google Form.

Future,
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