Promoting Creativity and Collaboration in Your Classroom with Google Docs

Martha Abadie Petal High School mabadie@gmail.com Steve C. Yuen, Ph.D. The University of Southern Mississippi steve.yuen@usm.edu

 Free, easy-to-use online productivity suite  Remote, multi-user, interactive editing  Word processor, spreadsheet, presentation, and forms applications  Input and export using variety of file types  Upload from and save to your desktop  Edit anytime, from anywhere  Share, collaborate, and chat in real time  Store files securely online  No more misplaced files or papers  No software installation

 Access levels: • Viewers - view only • Collaborators - edit and view simultaneously  Simultaneous editing:  10 people can edit a Presentation at the same time.  50 people can edit a Spreadsheet simultaneously.  10 people can edit a Document at the same time.  A limit of 200 combined viewers/collaborators for all of the different document types.

 Teachers and students can • create or upload their own documents • invite others to share them by email address • edit documents online with anyone they choose • publish the documents online to the world or only to whom they choose • post their documents to a blog  Students no longer need to e-mail files to other group members and deal with the confusion that often occurs regarding software compatibility issues

 Promote group collaboration and creativity as students complete group projects together  Facilitate collaborative presentation skills as students work together on a shared presentation for a class project or assignment  Provide an easy way to assess collaborative effort, presentation skills, spreadsheet skills, as well as writing, editing, and revision skills  Promote group work and peer editing skills

 Publish school announcements or upcoming assignments  Monitor student progress via an interactive process  Create digital portfolios online allowing peers to evaluate and comment  Conduct online survey and analysis using Google Form and Google Spreadsheet  Provide feedback from teachers or parents on assignments, projects, and school activities

 Teacher as Owner or Collaborator • Can give feedback in progress • Can observe work in progress • Can track student participation  Teacher as Viewer only • Can track student participation • Cannot give feedback

 Teach students how to organize their work  Organization is easy with Google Docs -- color labels, folders, and stars add layers of customizability and individuality  Teach them how to customize  Show them there are other features they can upload  Above all, teach them to keep it all private  Give students plenty of time to play with the features  It's so easy to use that they will learn it quickly and some will surpass you in their Google Docs sophistication

 Start small and slow, feature by feature  How to upload files  Revision History: teachers’ dream  Renaming, Copying, Downloading  Using HTML, CSS  Inserting text, images, drawing, tables, shapes  Using the comment boxes, special characters  The Google definition of a page  Translating, Word Count, Thesaurus/Dictionary, Bookmarks  Google's Extensive Help Feature

 Make assignments that force students to use the features  For example: From an AP English IV class, Dissect Robert Frost's short poem "Dust of Snow.“ Let the students determine how they will attack this • Who will upload poem and invite group members? • Who will color code label the literary devices? • Who will begin the essay or presentation? • Who will be "Chief Editor“?

 Have the student groups plan the second phase of the assignment, enhancing the document when the essay is done:  Who will find images? • Students can search images together, commenting on the choices in the comment box  Will students add personal drawings? • Students can scan these in and upload them directly  What kind of table will students make? • Students can categorize literary elements • Students can color code inside the table  Let students determine how they plan to use the shapes

 Assess students’ work right on their document, using Revision History • Students can revise before your final grade • Teacher has online proof of who did what • It's done so quickly • You can add parents as collaborators

 Kick it up a notch or two:  Add research components to the assignments  Have the students compress their essays into cool presentations  Add a spreadsheet component • Students can plot the number of poems published by Frost in different years, for example • Allow students to insert whatever they want into a spreadsheet  Add a forms component • You will find uses for these quite easily • Hold a brainstorming session to let the students generate ideas for making forms and using them in their presentations

 Devise a whole-class project, and give everyone a task • For example: An English teacher whose students are studying poetry and writing-experimenting-illustrating their own may want to produce a class anthology.  For an assignment this big, allow plenty of time to plan  Hold a brainstorming session to list all the steps and tasks  Assign tasks and deadlines together  Hold a class-review day at agreed-upon intervals  Publish in a hard copy or to a website when it's finished  Invite your principal, parents (whoever) & hold a Viewing

 Really make the students work  Let the students decide in their groups how they want to conduct an online survey – • What do they want to know? • Whom do they want to query? • How will they tabulate their results? • How will they present their findings?  Review spreadsheet quickly with a simple, fun class survey

 Kansas State Professor created a Google Doc to facilitate a brainstorming session in ANTH 200: Introduction to Cultural Anthropology  367 edits made in one week.  "Students wrote the script, suggested survey questions to ask the entire class. The survey was administered the following week.” Source: A Vision of Students Today. http://mediatedcultures.net/ksudigg/?p=119

• Use a single shared spreadsheet for the whole class. • Add the children's names in the first few columns. • Add Pulse Rate 1, Pulse Rate 2 ...along the column headings. • When exploring resting pulse rate or pulse rate change ask the whole class to add their data at the same time. • Pooled data could then be analyzed, averaged, charted and explored. • The sharing of data from peers helps children to think about the accuracy and reliability of science data and to deal with a larger data set quickly. Source: Tom Barrett . Nineteen Interesting Ways to use Google Docs in the Classroom

 This is a good activity to model the use of a shared space and live editing, as well as learning about a new class.  It can be done in any of the Doc types.  Ask your class to individually work on a single shared Document and finish the sentence: "I am Unique because...“  They can add 3 different answers.  Not only will you learn about your children but as it is shared they will learn about each other. Source: Tom Barrett . Nineteen Interesting Ways to use Google Docs in the Classroom

 Student feedback survey  Data Collection • Poll • Survey  Registration  Resource collection and publishing Source: Lowentha and Thai. Creating & Using Google Form. University of Colorado Denver | CU Online

Source: Lowentha and Thai. Creating & Using Google Form. University of Colorado Denver | CU Online

Questions or Comments? Thank You for Attending Our session! This presentation is available on the Web at: http://www.slideshare.net/scyuen/

http://www.mediamakesus.com	511
http://world-shaker.tumblr.com	387
http://thebuzz.bradbury.edu.hk	267
http://www.scoop.it	224
http://flavors.me	116
http://herrn96.tumblr.com	86
http://scyuen.wordpress.com	72
http://wlfm54.wikispaces.com	38
http://safe.tumblr.com	33
http://thenewclassroom.com	30
http://muce307hess.tumblr.com	21
http://esf.lg.esf.edu.hk	16
http://dragon.ep.usm.edu	12
http://www.slideshare.net	8
http://steveyuen.org	8
http://us-w1.rockmelt.com	7
http://jeshuwantstobeateacher.tumblr.com	6
http://tweetedtimes.com	4
http://docpedropinas.tumblr.com	3
http://mediamakesus.tumblr.com	3
http://drheaonline.ie	3
http://a0.twimg.com	3
http://trunk.ly	3
http://twitter.com	3
http://moodlepro.ucps.k12.nc.us	3
https://twitter.com	2
http://www.thesearchengine.net	2
http://bs.lg.esf.edu.hk	1
http://translate.googleusercontent.com	1
http://www.netvibes.com	1
http://zumpanowednesdayweb.blogspot.com	1
http://yuen.us	1

Promoting Creativity and Collaboration in Your Classroom with Google Docs

by Steve Yuen on Feb 08, 2010

Accessibility

Categories

Tags

Upload Details

Usage Rights

32 Embeds 1,876

Statistics

Promoting Creativity and Collaboration in Your Classroom with Google Docs — Presentation Transcript