Helping Teachers Research Using Google

When asked to present a session to high school ELA teachers about research, I was inspired by a post on Ditch That Textbook called "Writing Papers and Research Reports the Google Way." 
I incorporated some of these ideas and requests from principals to create a session about tech research tools.
Before we meet, each teacher is asked to complete this pre-assessment in Google Forms.



Each teacher will also be asked to download the following Chrome extensions: Google Keep, Tab Scissors, Tab Glue, Easy Bib, Kami, Grammarly, Destiny Discover.

The teachers will be asked to join a Google Classroom class and will proceed through the rest of the session as if they were students completing the research process. Here are the tasks:

1. Complete the pre-assessment above and download extensions.

2. Let's daydream about summer vacation. Open the attached Google Sheet and add your name and location you plan to research. (We shared this one so that everyone can edit, in order to show how Classroom can be used to collaborate on one document.)

3. Open the research paper template. (I created a template shared so each student will get a copy. Then I can show the teachers how they can share on Classroom in order to have easy edit/view access as students work. You can also use a template so that the documents are in the format you require.)

4. Finding and Citing Resources. Teachers will use the state database to find a few articles related to their vacation location then save the articles and citation information in Google Drive. I created short video instructions for this.

5. Taking Notes in Google Keep. Teachers will use the Keep extension and/or app to paraphrase notes from their saved articles, insert parenthetical documentation, and use tabs in Keep to organize notes. They will use the following three tabs: Land & Climate, History, Tourism.

6. Writing the Paper in Docs. Teachers will open the template, go to Tools>Keep Notepad, then use the labels to copy and paste their notes into the appropriate parts of their paper. Then they only need to fill in connecting sentences to finish the short paper.

7. Peer Editing in Docs. Teachers will choose a partner to share using the Can Comment option. They will add a few suggestions for their partner then go back to address suggestions in their own paper.

8. Self-Graded Rubric and Turning in Completed Paper. Teachers will complete a short self-assessment on Google forms and turn in their paper through Classroom. (Then I can show them how I see it as a teacher and can edit, grade and return in Classroom.)

There will be some teachers who are challenged (hopefully not overwhelmed) by this plan. Others will finish this quickly and find themselves bored. For those teachers, I created a hyperdoc of additional activities to explore. I loved this post from Joyce Valenza and was eager to give it a try.

This will be my first official session with the ELA teachers from my new high school so I am hoping that this goes well and that they will want to collaborate with me to use these tools with the students.