Google Education

Initial situation

The MITIC workshop (Media, Images, Information and Communication Technologies) is part of the study plan of the Master in Secondary Education. Its objective is to raise awareness and to reflect on the pedagogical use of techno-pedagogical tools in secondary school.

The teacher noted that her students had a poor grasp of the institutional digital tools that they themselves would have to use as future teachers in Secondary I and II.

She wanted to make this experience in digital pedagogy as relevant as possible by offering her students an immersion in the different platforms and institutional tools of the Department of Public Instruction (DIP), which they will be called upon to use in their future professional lives. This allows them to deal with the didactic and theoretical aspects underlying the use of each tool in their course. A reflective approach is also expected.

Project implementation

The current hybrid teaching format has 5 sessions (2 face-to-face and 3 distance learning) of 4 hours each, spread over the year. This workshop gives rise to 4 ECTS credits and students are grouped by discipline (e.g., computer science, English/German, biology/physics, mathematics, etc.).

The workshop is organized using Google’s educational suite, via the DIP’s Online School (EEL) platform (access to these tools is offered to teachers).

The course focuses on two areas: the first allows students to discover a theoretical framework related to the use of digital technology in teaching; the second asks them to create and experiment with their own digital device in their classroom. At the end of the workshop, students are asked to submit a report on the device they created and how it was implemented. Throughout the course, they have activities to complete to refine their device. These activities are orchestrated thanks to the digital device, which allows them, throughout the course, to familiarize themselves with the entire Google suite and some additional tools. To prepare and empower students, the teacher uses the Google Classroom learning platform in the Google Education learning environment. It allows to centralize all the communications and resources related to the course and to organize its progress through :

the provision of documentation;

creation of a schedule of work to be rendered ;

handing over of the work ;

the creation and provision of evaluation grids, etc.

The Classroom is complete from the 1er course, all the resources are present as well as the dates and deadlines already planned with the help of the assignments as well as the events of meetings planned in the integrated Google Calendar. At the UNIGE, the same system could be implemented on Moodle.

In order to make students active, the Google suite also offers a communication tool (Meet) for half-days of remote meetings, the usual collaborative work tools (Docs, Sheets, Sildes, Forms, etc.) in a shared drive space. UNIGE teachers could use equivalent tools with the Microsoft suite offered within the institution (OneDrive and all its tools from the Office 365 suite) with a complement of communication via Zoom for the meeting moments. In addition to a simple communication tool, the teacher animates her course in such a way as to strongly encourage participation thanks to an interactive whiteboard-type tool called Miro that offers a wide range of possible activities and integrated tools. The teacher can create diagrams, prepare mini-games, integrate a stopwatch, comment, chat, take notes, and all this in a centralized and collaborative way. The activities are designed in a gamification approach to make the course more fun and accessible.

To empower students, the teacher introduced a portfolio approach to her course. In order not to burden her course with additional tools, the teacher chose a simple solution by creating an e-portfolio in Excel format (Google Sheets). This e-portfolio was used for formative purposes; the students had to write short and reflective paragraphs on each of the activities, and for evaluative purposes since the teacher commented and validated this process as a mandatory activity for the validation of the course. This approach allows the learner to see his or her progress in the activities to be handed in, but also to express himself or herself and to have personalized feedback on each activity.

Thoughts and advice

The teaching of ICTE is intimidating for learners who are not sufficiently at ease with digital tools. They are interested in training in the tool itself, more than in the didactic aspects of it, but their training does not include computer courses. They therefore have to find another way to learn about the tools. The mastery of digital tools has been necessary since the beginning of the health crisis in 2020. Students are directly impacted by the technological choices of their teachers. This is why future teachers, trained at the IUFE, have an essential role to play.

This project could be used as is for another course, whether or not it is on the theme of digital tools. The framework would remain the same, but the content would be different. The example of the reflective e-portfolio, created with an Excel file requiring the knowledge of some basic formulas, is totally transferable to other subjects. This e-portfolio can also be adapted for summative purposes by adding additional formulas and validation steps.

The teacher uses a series of activities in the structure of the course that allows her to get regular feedback from the students, which allows her to make significant improvements from one year to the next. She also recommends keeping an active techno-pedagogical watch on the evolution of tools.

The system was successful during the COVID-19 crisis and school closures; students were able to make the transition to online education effectively because of their knowledge of the institutional tools and were able to give spontaneous feedback on the ideas they gained from being immersed in the system. Some even became key resources in their respective institutions for the transition to online teaching for their colleagues who were not yet familiar with the institutional tools at the time.

Student feedback

“Sharing with other students and offering various activities” “Online portfolio with feedback and remediation” “All assignments defined at the beginning of the course (helps to get organized)” “Progress visible at a glance and clear terms and deadlines”. “You are very clear, flexible, very available, caring about your students. We get this sense that you are always very involved for us. You have always been very competent. ” “Being able to perform the test with the group.” “Modalities for synthesizing the article in pairs and cite expectations for the final work, if there are any particularly important criteria.” “Little interaction on the platform.” “The 2ᵉ year MITIC workshop made it easy for me to deploy distance learning courses. I plan to continue to use these means especially for student assignments so that I do not “waste” time at the beginning of a face-to-face class. Thank you very much :-) ! Your courses are a model to follow!!! ”