Every new year brings a season of contemplation about last year's successes and failures.  While it is easy to zero in on our faults, we should always spend time reflecting on all of the positive impacts we have made as teachers.  With the new year upon us, goal setting is in full swing throughout our society.  Whether you are focused on personal goals or career goals, there are a number of ways to put your goals into action.

One of the more common strategies for student goals is the SMART goals process.  This method has caught traction in schools all over the country and a number of our programs use the SMART framework to set achievement goals with students.  I have found a couple different formats for SMART, but they all follow a similar line of thinking.

Implementing learning goals has shown to increase student achievement by an average of 75%.  When students set relevant and achievable goals for themselves, opportunities are created to increase buy-in and participation.  Goals set a destination for students to work towards and our teacher-created learning tasks will be the guide. 

The following document is one template you could use to set a SMART goal in your classroom.  The pdf version is printable, but not editable.  If you would like to create your own prompts or edit the file, you will need to make a copy of this Google Doc.

Google Docs, Sheets, and Drive all provide unique collaborative tools, but sometimes sharing and editing the permissions of documents can be confusing.  When it comes to sharing documents securely, it is important to understand the different permissions you are granting to others.

It is important to be sure that you are only providing editing rights when necessary.  When you share a document and hand editing rights to another user, you are handing over a large share of rights for someone to make use of the information contained in the document.  In addition to editing the document, editors can also add other users and share/print the document.  In many classroom settings this is not a problem, but if you are handling sensitive information or only seeking input on a file, I would share a file with View or Comment rights instead of full editing rights.  

The PDF below provides detailed instructions for maintaining and securing digital rights within the Google Education Suite.  Please feel free to reach out to icoachmk@mhrd.org if you have any questions!  

Google Drive provides a substantial amount of organizational power and storage capability, but it can also become a black hole of hard work.  It is important to choose an organizational strategy for your files and sort your new files with regularity.  This will help you avoid an accumulation of unnamed and/or unsorted documents in the main drive.

We currently have a few videos under our Resources tab that can help you navigate your drive and other Google Apps for Education.  If you are new to Google Drive or you learning more about how to organize within the Drive, the attached Cheat Sheet can help acquaint you with the button locations and actions at your disposal.

Be sure to stop down this week as we are discussing all things Docs and Slides.  Whether you are collecting and grading student essays or offering a collaborative presentation opportunity, Docs and Slides are powerful tools that can provide unique opportunities for consistent Formative feedback throughout the learning process.

Google Docs and Classroom:
The video below highlights how the new grading and commenting features in Google Classroom can improve the formative feedback process for digital work in your classroom.