Hangout in a Haze

"...let us begin and create in idea a State; and yet a true creator is necessity, which is the mother of our invention." (Plato, in Johnston 2012, p285)

So Plato identifies a "need" to be the driving force behind the creation of new stuff! My need right now is to interact with my students despite the Haze in KL. I am being pressured into using strategies and technologies that I either don't normally get the opportunity to use, or haven't used before. As a biology teacher, I know pressure:

"Selective pressure is any phenomena which alters the behavior and fitness of living organisms within a given environment. It is the driving force of evolution and natural selection..." (Gale, 2005)

The Haze is the pressure and if I don't alter my behaviour, I become unfit and irrelevant as a teacher of my students; I'm not about to let myself become extinct!

Google Apps for Education and a number of my current favourite collaborative apps come into their own when working online. The whole class can be working on a particular doc at once or you could prep one per group ahead of time. 

Some ideas below along with links to good advice by other tech goorus on-the-line, but my top tips are these:

• Practice Hangouts and collaborative apps in normal lessons before the next Haze day! Let the students get used to them and so you can experience the management;
• Prepare your resources ahead of time;
• Train the students on using the mute function and turning the camera off,
• Get the students to respond with "thumbs up/down" while the mic is muted (very effective for 15 attendees!)
• Prepare for failure but be prepared to fail, it's a learning experience and I am constantly learning form the students! Hangouts and the Internet may slow down, but if your activities are ready, the students can be getting on with it; they will find a way to communicate with their classmates if they get stuck.

Gdocs: Take a register! Collaborative writing, Experiment planning, Comments for Peer assessment;

Gsheets: Take a register! Data gathering (Tine Willis used Hangouts and GSheets for her Y9 students to do a reaction timing investigation using caffeinated drinks and a reaction timer online...all from the kids homes!);

Gdrawing: Group poster drawing, Timeline construction, flowchart development, Cut up an image copy and paste style and have the students rebuild it in drawing, label diagrams or subject specific content
Gdrawing is functionally infinite so different groups can be working in different places on the same doc, Gdrawing activities are limited only by your imagination;

Gslides: Presentations! Flash card revision decks, Stop motion from screen captures (publish the slides and set the presentation to run automatically at a fast speed!), A-Z Wiki-cards, collaborative eBooks;

GForms: Students create quizzes that can be Flubaroo'd and shared with class mates to try! (Quizlet is cool too!) I had some students build their own Kahoot Quizzes on our Haze day-split your screen to see their screenshare of the questions and have the answers on another browser tab...what a laugh!)

Padlet and Realtimeboard: collaborative ideas boards and project design, work area with links to sites, pdfs and docs. Realtimeboard works on the iPad and you can write with your finger on it to make scribble notes.

More online advice...

5 top tools for Hangouts: http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/05/5-excellent-tools-for-teachers-to-use.html

Hangouts cheat-sheet for Teachers: http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2013/09/a-must-have-google-hangout-tip-sheet.html

Reference

Gale, T (2005). Selective Pressure. Thomson Gale. Retrieved from: http://www.bookrags.com/research/selective-pressure-wob/#gsc.tab=0

Johnston, B. W. (19 March 2012). As We Sow: Why the Great Divide. AuthorHouse. pp. 285. Retrieved 23 October 2015.