Thing 16: Google Docs

How might you use this tool in your personal and professional life? What issues come to mind about using this tool with students (ie, they need email addresses to log-in)?
This tool would be useful to me professionally when I am collaborating on projects with classroom teachers. We rarely have the opportunity to meet in person, so creating our teaching documents online together would be beneficial. Often we begin school improvement brainstorming during half day inservices and wait months to continue. Google docs would provide an opportunity to continue brainstorming. Our media specialist group will be working on updating curriculum based on new AASL standards. This would be a useful method to share lesson plans and update curriculum.

In my personal life, my son who is in graduate school has sent me papers to review and this seems a more efficient way to edit and share, rather than saving a word doc and then editing it in red and emailing it back.

Currently, our district does not allow email. However, if we at least teach students about this tool, they may collaborate on projects at home. As usual, students will need to respect others and follow district guidelines. Moodle e-classroom also has similar tools. The interface on Moodle is not as user friendly as google docs. The other problem with moodle is that students who are teaming on projects are at a disadvantage when work has been saved under one student's name and that student is absent. Google docs would have the document available to all users at any time.

This is an addendum: I just came across a new feature of google called google sites. With this feature, collaborative projects may be coordinated on one site using google docs, blogs, and other google features. Here is a video about it. If you cannot view this video, go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_KnC2EIS5w