I have never used Google Docs before now. How could I have missed such a great tool?! I used it today when putting together our 1st grade homework calendar. I shared the doc with my fellow teachers and allowed them to edit as needed. I think this is a great way for our collaboration to reach the next level. Just a few weeks ago we were sitting in a teacher work session and one of the teachers had put together a field trip letter to go home. She sent it to us via e-mail and asked if there were any changes that needed to be made. I edited a few things and sent it back to her and the rest of our team. Then someone else found something that needed to be changed and the letter was edited again and sent back and out to everyone. I'm sure you get the picture. Crazy thing is.... I didn't know that there was an easier way to do that until now. With Google Docs we could have saved ourselves a lot of time by all looking at the document on our computer and making changes as needed without sending it back and forth to each other five and six times. I love when life is made simpler.
I did notice that not everything worked exactly as I would have hoped. There were some graphics that did not transfer from my original and a shape that did not transfer the way I wanted it to, but the main idea was there and available to others for editing and feedback. I also did not like that when my teammates clicked on the web address to get to the document they were then directed to sign in to Google and then sent to another page before getting to my document. I had not had the opportunity to explain to everyone yet what my plan was for the Google Doc, so some of them did got frustrated and did not go past the first page and another signed in using an account name that I was not familiar with causing me to allow her to "view" but not "edit" because I didn't know who she was.
I can see how Google Doc is useful for teachers in this kind of collaboration. I also like the idea of using it in the older grades to help with editing student work and provide teacher feedback. This is a great tool and I intent to use it again very soon.
It's great that you already used Google Docs at school. I was talking with a teacher about it today and we were discussing how we could share this great tool. I also like that it has a revision history so I can see what changes have already been made.
ReplyDeleteI understand that other users of Google Docs must sign into their account to view. I think once colleagues use the tool a few times, it will be use more and more as it is an easy tool to learn.
I think creating a grade level calendar is a great way to use Google Docs. I had not thought of the possibility of having trouble opening a doc, but I guess as we have all gotten used to using google, it comes naturally to us. I am still working with parents at my school and teaching them about computers. We set up many gmail accounts so next may be working through Google docs. We will see....
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