Promoting Creativity and Collaboration in Your Classroom with Google Docs

Martha AbadiePetal High School

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Steve C. Yuen, Ph.D.The University of Southern Mississippi

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Free, easy-to-use online productivity suiteRemote, multi-user, interactive editingWord processor, spreadsheet, presentation,

and forms applications Input and export using variety of file typesUpload from and save to your desktopEdit anytime, from anywhereShare, collaborate, and chat in real timeStore files securely onlineNo more misplaced files or papersNo 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





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Promoting Creativity and Collaboration in Your Classroom with Google Docs