Module 3

Wow! Some great possibilities have been opened with Google docs.

The videos were both insightful. I really liked the first one with the illustrations moving around the page and the arrows being drawn as you watched to see how everything linked up. I hope I can use that idea with a class some day.

I've had discussions in the past with my principal about having the documents on our server available to teachers outside the school so that they could be edited/viewed on holidays/weekends. Google docs is one possible solution. It would make it so much easier to program when on holidays and liaise with a grade partner from a distance. Also if you forget something, there's no need to drive back to school- just log on and access all of your documents!

It was pretty straightforward to both create and upload an existing document. Sharing is just a matter of entering the email address of the person you want to view it.

There were a couple of drawbacks. One was that you have to have a Google account to edit the documents (which can make it hard with primary children as parents may not be happy with them having one of these accounts). Secondly, there is the chance that someone you share your documents with could accidentally delete something you have put a lot of work in to. Obviously backups can be kept- but, the idea of the Google docs was to eliminate the need for numerous copies of the same work...

Working collaboratively with students is fantastic. Surveys, petitions, brainstorming ideas, multi-authored texts and group assignments/projects are tasks that could be made a lot easier and a lot more fun- once the hurdle of having every child have their own Google account is gotten over.