Using Google docs for collaboration and learning!

A New Way For You and Your Students to Collaborate

 



This summer has been filled with time spent with family, more pleasant than average weather, and of course diving into that never ending pursuit of being better in all facets of life. This week I learned how to use a most amazing tool for collaborating. It has potential to not only accelerate planning with your colleagues, but even creating collaboration with your students. It is Google Docs.

Many of you may be familiar with this platform, or heard about it but do not see the relevance to you. Did you know that you can invite specific folks to join you on Google Docs and everyone can work together to write one document all at the same time?

While you may want to write a heading a descriptive paragraph, the rest of the group could be typing out other paragraphs and be uploading photographs at the same time, in real time! Each team member's first letter of their last name is posted in a colored square at the top right of the page. Every time the member writes the contribution is marked on the right side of the page "listing" their work.

Think of the implications in Writing Workshop. In real time, teams can work together to revise one another's work all the while you as their guide/coach can see on your tablet or desktop on what each student is working and what other students have done to contribute. It not only holds everyone accountable, but it fosters the opportunity for everyone to share and hardly get in one another's way (as long as your cursor is not directly in front of your partner's).

Hope this tool can be useful in your next school year.