Teacher Dashboard gives teachers a bird’s-eye view of their classroom, across Google Docs, Google Sites, and Gmail.
Click next to learn more.
Dashboard View
The Dashboard screen shows the teacher the last few documents worked on by a each student, organized in tabs by subject.
The document list within each student panel indicates how long ago the document was updated, and by whom.
The Dashboard view makes it very easy to see the activity level in the class and quickly identify students who have done their work or are not keeping up.
Student Panel
Each student panel displays the student’s name, and if loaded, their year level, and current age. Panels can be re-organized to reflect student groupings.
Subject-specific assessment information (reading age for example) and a “deep” link to the student record inside your SIMS can also be shown.
Student Panel – Google Docs
The Google Docs panel displays the most recently updated documents in the selected subject folder (i.e. “Reading”, etc.)
Clicking on a document opens it directly in Google Docs, with no login prompts. Teacher Dashboard ensures that all students have their own subject folders, and that teachers have full rights to their students’ docs.
The last-modified timestamp is updated on every reload of the dashboard page.
The Docs view can be filtered by document title to simplify marking.
The “folder” panel icon provides a shortcut directly to the student’s subject folder.
Google Docs folder hierarchy
Teacher Dashboard creates and maintains a consistent, school level Google Docs folder structure.
This folder hierarchy is owned by a school account, and shared with teachers and students automatically and as needed. Historical content is moved to the Archive folder and preserved; each class starts the academic year with a fresh set of folders.
This approach ensures that school retains visibility to and access to student materials over time, and protects against content loss.
Student Panel – Google Sites
The Google Sites panel displays the most recent updates to a selected class or student Google Site (such as an e-Portfolio).
Clicking on the page link opens the page; for deleted pages, it offers the opportunity to restore the page.
Teacher Dashboard will automatically create the e-Portfolio site for students who don’t have one, based on the school-selected template. For shared resources (class or project sites), Teacher Dashboard will automatically adjust permissions to give each student and the teacher appropriate access rights.
Student Panel – Gmail
The Gmail panel provides teachers with read-only access to each student’s inbox and sent mail folders.
The panel displays a selected number of messages, and clicking on a message opens a window with message details.
The email view indicates the date, subject and to/from fields. As with Gmail, unread messages are displayed in bold, and opening a message in Teacher Dashboard does not change the “read” status.
Student Panel – Unfiled Docs
The Unfiled Docs view shows student Google Docs that have not been shared with their teacher. This provides an easy way to track
student work that simply hasn’t been placed in the right folder, and helps to develop the discipline around sharing.
Public Docs view displays student documents that are visible to (shared with) addresses outside of your school domain.
External Docs view displays documents that are owned by users outside of your domain (i.e. parents, students from other schools) and shared with your students.
Class admin functions
Teacher Dashboard also provides the ability to reset individual student passwords as well as all class passwords.
The data loader is also able to assign students personalized account names (email addresses) that protect student identity. Changes to the class enrollment are handled automatically through integration with the school SIMS or through a student spreadsheet.
Setup and data requirements
Requirements
Teacher Dashboard requires administrative access to your Google Apps Education Edition domain. There is no hardware or software to install or
manage; the Dashboard runs entirely on Google’s cloud data centers.
The Dashboard does not change your Google Apps environment other than to set up content and sharing rights. There are no changes to how teachers
or students interact with Docs, Sites or other Google Apps components.
Setup Process
The setup process takes 60-90 minutes and is done over a screen-share session. To ensure you become familiar with the Teacher Dashboard Console,
the management interface to Teacher Dashboard, you will get to do “the driving”. At the end of the setup session you will be able to create new classrooms, set up
their Google Docs folder structures or Sites, and load students.
The initial student data loads are performed using Google Docs spreadsheets; Teacher Dashboard can also load CSV-formatted data, and automate
the load process to ensure the Google Apps environment always reflects your student enrollment in SIMS.
Teacher Dashboard was developed in partnership with and based on the Google Apps experiences of teachers at the Pt. England school in Auckland. If you’re interested in how the tools fit into a broader pedagogy and a community-wide urban development programme please see www.manaiakalani.org and manaiakalani.blogspot.com.