Group size:
10 – 15 teachers, divided into groups of 2 (if there are 3 in the group it tends to take to long)
Time:
Approx 60 minutes. Depending on the teacher’s ability it might take up to 90 minutes.
Pre-knowledge:
Some familiarity with Classroom as well as Google Docs.
Equipment:
Each teacher must have their own laptop and be connected to the internet. It is possible to do all the activities on a tablet, but it increases the level of difficulty significantly.
Lesson:
Each person receive a printed instruction sheet to work through at their own pace. The facilitator move between the groups to point them in the right direction and help when they get stuck.
Encourage everyone to stay in their roles. Trying to be a teacher in one class and a learner in another at the same time gets confusing very quickly.
I put the example worksheet on the screen for them to recreate, instead of just copying a file. For some it was the first time they created a Google Doc.
Encourage teachers to use this session to try out things. If they are not sure how to set something up, they should try it and look over the student’s shoulder to see if it worked the way they wanted it.
As they walked out of my classroom (the physical one, not the virtual ;-), one of the teachers exclaimed, “I can’t remember the last time my brain was this exhausted.”
That’s what you want to hear after a class, is it not?
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