Today I used ‘Google Drawings’ to create online post-it notes for a tuning in / predicting activity: it was quick and effective.
- Create a Google Drawings canvas. Open the share settings and make sure everyone can edit.
- Adjust the size of the canvas. I made mine the size of an A3 sheet of paper.
- Create one textbox with the desired text, then duplicate that textbox for the amount of students in your class.
- Go to Bitly.com and create an easy to share shortlink. Mine was: “bit.ly/godsavethetsar”
It did not take long to set up and it took the students about 10 minutes to complete. It was an effective and short activity to get them started and tune them into a new unit or topic. It extracted prior knowledge and gave them chance to predict some of the content.
This activity could also work for a sorting activity into concepts, categories, events and timelines etc.
I do think it is important to have a good ‘Google Drive Culture’ in your class, one in which students respect the learning space and use it for collaboration and sharing. I did this activity with Year 12s, but have not tried it with Year 7s.
