Sometimes I’ve found it challenging to get students engaging in dialogue in class during these times of Covid.

Sometimes discussion works great and it’s as if we’re in the classroom. At other times, my Zoom room feels like the classroom scene in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.

Here’s a tip you may find helpful. I did this today and my students really liked it.

You’ve likely heard of the fishbowl technique.

Basic Structure of Fishbowl: 3-4 students sit facing each other in the center of the room; the remaining students sit in a circle around them. The central students have a conversation usually based on a pre-determined topic. Students on the outside observe, take notes, or perform some other discussion-related task. Student in the outside circle cannot speak. To speak, a student from the outside circle “tags out” a student in the inner circle and physically replaces them in the discussion.

I built a Google Slides version of the same activity. Students on the outside of the fishbowl watched and listened to the students on the inside. To replace them, a students hovered their name over the student they wished to replace. It worked really well.

This is a snippet of what it looked like.

Here’s a copy if you wish to make your own. ( I place the entire code here so you can see /copy in action. )

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1ZSkIh3BLfduMgEnASvN7dFe6ISWCjn8OdChVtgoTlvo/copy

How to Force a Copy of a Google Doc, Slide, Sheet, or Drawing

Recently, some have asked if there is an easy way in Canvas to give students a copy of a google doc so they can write on that instead of the original.

We certainly still recommend the Google Assignments Integration in Canvas.

But don’t forget this simple Google hack (or learn it for the first time and be amazed!) on how to make a copy.

The trick is to replace /edit with /copy

This simply step prompts users to make a copy!

You can find your “Personal Room” Zoom link by signing into your Zoom account. For Middle School teachers, this is what you will use for all of your classes. Please see the instructional video below for how to find that link.

For courses with multiple sections it can be quite useful to have just one Canvas course with multiple sections. With sections, teachers are able to pool course material and then use the material at their own discretion and at their own pace.

While it takes a lot of navigating, grading google assignments can be a smooth process once you get used to it. This looks very much like google classroom and is actually integrating with the same parts of google classroom.