Improving Feedback and Student Self-Analysis

With thanks to Colleen Lee-Hayes and her blog, I discovered the Google Docs Add-On "TextHelp Study Skills" and thought it could be useful in a lot of subject areas.

TextHelp Study Skills

Use this add-on to Google Docs to highlight key information that can then be grouped, sorted, and exported into a new Google Doc for later use. 

Ideas for Student Use in the Classroom:

• In Language classes, students could use the different colour to identify required language components in assignments.

• In Geography, History, Civics, Social Science classes, students could use a colour to identify the facts that they've included in their assignment.

• In English, students could identify quotations used in their essays.  (Use a different colour for each book if doing a comparative essay or, one colour for quotations from the novel and another colour for quotations from secondary sources.)

• Students could use the "Collect Highlights" feature to collate the highlighted information into an overview document that they could then share with their teacher.  

• For study purposes, students could highlight their notes and then export their highlights to create a page of key facts / ideas / etc to study.

Ideas for Teacher Use in the Classroom

• Teachers could also use the tool to provide visual feedback --> highlight the error and provide students with a legend identifying what each colour means.  Students can quickly see where, what type, and how many errors they are making.

• If teachers are the ones using the tool, we could use the "Collect" option and then go over some sample errors with the class quickly and easily.

Setting It Up:

• Link to the add-on:  https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/texthelp-study-skills/fjgimeiehjeaammngbkmpmjikfpknmpf?hl=en

• The first time, students add this "add-on" to Google Docs by opening a Google Doc, clicking on "Add-Ons" (in the File / Edit / View / etc menu of the Document) and then "Get Add-Ons" and then searching for "TextHelp Study Skills."

• Alternatively, you could provide the above link to students to authorize.

• Once they've added the program, for future documents, they simply need to click on "Add-Ons" and then click on TextHelp Study Skills --> Show Highlighting Tools.

I'd love to hear your ideas of how you see this tool being used effectively in your classroom!