Feedback – EdTech Awesomeness

Faster Feedback for Students with These Awesome EdTech Tools!

Posted on October 20, 2020 by edtechawesomeness

Every teacher knows that just in time feedback can really help a student master and understand a concept. Giving feedback to students as they are working on an activity, rather than after they have submitted the work for a final grade is a huge benefit to using technology in the classroom. Even if you have to wait until the student has submitted their work, the ability to get fast feedback into the hands of students increases their engagement and the likelihood that they will actually interact with and absorb the feedback you have given them.

Just as we know that giving feedback is an essential part of teaching and learning, we know that it can take hours and hours to hand write out that feedback. This is where tech can come in and help streamline the feedback process. Check out these different techniques and tools that are designed to help you quickly give meaningful feedback to your students.

Google Classroom App:

The Google Classroom App has some bells and whistles that the regular web version does not have. With the Classroom app, you can directly annotate and mark on student work. Classroom takes that annotated work and turns it into a PDF that is attached to the assignment for the student to review. In addition, you can use the microphone on your tablet or phone to dictate voice comments that will be transcribed into text. To learn more about how to use the Google Classroom App, check out this article.

Google Classroom Comment Bank:

Google Classroom has a built in comment bank that you can access to provide fast feedback to your students on assignments in Google Classroom. This feature is great for when you find yourself giving similar feedback to multiple students or on multiple assignments. To learn how to access the comment bank and ensure that your students are getting your feedback watch this video.

Mote Extension:

Mote is an extension that allows you to create voice comments and feedback on a Google Doc, Slide, Sheet or right within Classroom. Students do not need to have the Mote extension installed (in fact, they do not have access to it at this time) in order to hear your feedback. They can simply click on the link Mote will create after you have created the feedback. The free version of Mote allows you to create voice notes that are 30 seconds in length and creates a link for your students to be able to listen to your feedback. To install the extension, click here. To learn how to use Mote, click here.

Screencastify:

Screencastify is a great tool for making short videos of feedback for your students. Screencastify is a Chrome extension that saves all created videos in your Google Drive. Click here to install the extension. Watch this short video to see how to use Screencastify to give fast feedback.

Seesaw Audio Comments:

Teachers have always been able to leave typed comments on Seesaw posts. A rather recent update is the ability for teachers to now leave an audio comment as feedback. This feature allows you to give you more in depth feedback that students can listen to instead of read. This is especially fabulous for our younger learners that have not yet mastered reading! To see how to leave an audio comment (and quickly approve posts) watch this video.

Seesaw Private Video Messages:

You can record a private message of individualized feedback for students by using this technique. Not only can you build a great connection with a student this way, you can also include the family since they will be able to see the video as well. Watch this video to see how to send a private feedback message to a student.

Hopefully one of these awesome tools will help save a little time and allow you to give the feedback your students need to grow as learners!

Feedback, Google Classroom, Google Workspace for Education

Quick and Meaningful Feedback Using The Google Classroom App

Posted on January 16, 2019January 22, 2019 by edtechawesomeness

Giving feedback to students is an essential part of the teaching and learning process. Google Classroom has an APP that makes it easy to give your students fast feedback! Access student work, use the tools to give feedback and then save a PDF copy of the edits for your students to review. You can also use the microphone on your phone or tablet to dictate private comments!

To deliver feedback of awesomeness, especially while you are on the go, all you need to do is:

Open the app and navigate to the Classroom where the work is located:
Click on the “Classwork” tab

Click on the assignment and click on the individual student to open their content:

Click on the pencil at the top of the screen:

Use the pen, marker or text tools to give feedback

Click the Save button to turn the marked-up content into a PDF

Add a private comment to let the student know you have provided feedback (or to provide additional feedback not provided on the content). You can even use the microphone tool to dictate that feedback.

Use the microphone!

And just like that, you are done! That is it! Feedback delivered. Students taught. Life goes on. Everyone is happy. Remember though; The most effective way to have students respond to feedback is to not give them a final grade until they have looked at your feedback and made necessary changes to their work.

Creating Accessibility, Feedback, Google Classroom, Teacher Workflow

Feedback of Awesomeness in Google Classroom

Posted on April 18, 2018April 18, 2018 by edtechawesomeness

Giving feedback to students is an essential part of teaching. Back in the dark ages, before tools like Google Classroom had been invented, I taught language arts. I would collect assignments and then spend my entire weekend giving students meaningful and useful feedback on their writing. Oh, the suggestions I made! The wit with which I dispensed my wisdom in the margins of their papers! I was certain that this valuable feedback would change the course of their work and lead them to be the Pulitzer Prize winners of the future! Of course, when I handed it back to them, all of my meaningful and useful feedback would wind up in the recycling bin with no one ever looking at it, fueling my eternal rage. But, you know, bygones…

In the past, it seemed that most of my feedback was after-the-fact feedback. Students were already done with their work and the feedback I was giving was no longer meaningful. Since the students had already received a grade on their work they felt that they were done with the assignment and were not willing to dig back into it. The feedback would have been worthwhile if I could have offered it while the students were working, but short of cramming more writing conferences into my already packed class period, I struggled to give the feedback in a timely fashion. Fast forward to 2018 and a little tool (Google Classroom) and her useful friends (private comments, Screencastify and Google Keep). Feedback no longer has to be scribbled in the margins of student work with the hopes that students will read it and do something with it, I can now reach the students while they are working and guide them in their work even if I don’t have the opportunity to speak with them face to face. Providing students with digital feedback as they work creates more personalized learning for students.

Private Comments: Google Classroom has a neat little feature where you can send private comments to individual students. To do this, simply open up the view of student work and click on the individual student. A private comment box will be below their work attachments.

The student will get an email notifying them of the comment and when they click the blue reply button, they will be taken directly to the assignment. You can have an entire conversation with the student about their assignment via private comments.

The important thing to remember with this is to create comments while the student is still working and not after they have already turned in the assignment. Once that assignment is turned in, the student counts it as done and any feedback you give will be wasted. With this in mind, it is a good idea to not give students a grade on their work until after they have attended to any feedback.

Private Comments and Video Feedback: Sometimes you really want to dig into the work of a student and just leaving a few sentences is not enough. To do this, I like to use a program like Screencastify in conjunction with the private comment feature. When I want to give more detailed feedback, I open the student’s work, open Screencastify, record my screen and voice while I give feedback and then share the link to the video in the private comments. The student can then access the video and see/hear the feedback while they revisit their work.

Here is an example of how to create this type of feedback:

Once I have created the video, I simply grab the link to the video (which is now housed in my Drive in a folder called “Screencastify”) and place the link in the private comment section for the student.

Student View Screencastify Link in Comments

Google Keep, Screencastify and Private Comments: I am a huge fan of Google Keep and feel like it is the best-kept secret in the Googleverse. I have written a few blog posts about the awesomeness of Keep. Check them out here. If you find that you are giving the same feedback over and over, creating that feedback in Keep notes will help streamline your workflow. You can easily open up the Keep notepad in Docs, Slides and Drawings and copy and paste the feedback from the Keep note into a comment dialog to quickly give feedback. You can even include links to mini-lessons or videos to help the student understand the concept they are struggling with. An even fancier idea is to combine the Google Keep feedback with video feedback. By doing this, you are not only giving them solid and concrete visual feedback via Keep, you are also giving them verbal feedback. I don’t know about you, but it seems like students pay a lot more attention to what I say than to what I write.

No matter how you slice it, Classroom makes it easier for you to give meaningful feedback to your students before they finish an assignment. I’m not going to lie and say that it will save you a ton of time. In fact, once you start using private comments, your email is going to blow up. One of my favorite edtech gurus, Alice Keeler, has written an excellent post on how to manage the private comment workflow and email explosion. Rather than try to recreate her awesomeness, here is the link to her original post: My Respond to Private Comments in Google Classroom Workflow. Her suggestions will help save a lot of headaches and keep you from just deleting your email app and heading for the hills.

Inspire your students to revisit their work. Inspire your students to dig back in and make their work better. Do this by giving them meaningful feedback.