Confession: When I read that we had to create documents, spreadsheets, and presentations with Google Docs I felt overwhelmed. How could I learn all these new programs in less than a week?
Realization: Google Docs are truly user-friendly! AND they make A LOT of sense. I'll definitely use them now that I've located this free, on-line storage and collaboration space.
In terms of using Google Docs in school, the first thing I thought about was student writing. My kids write papers all the time. I'm constantly running into the same two problems when working with kids in the lab. 1)Students don't have flash drives and need me to log-on as an administrator, locate their file from thousands of others that they and their fellow peers have named as something as generic as "English paper", and then email it to their home address. 2)Students come in on day 2 or 3 of writing in the lab and say, "I can't work on it here. I added stuff at home and don't want to redo any of that.
If kids used Google Docs on a regular basis, this would NEVER be a problem.
What is a problem, though, is getting kids access to this. Gmail is blocked at my school. The school doesn't want kids to have access to any type of personal email account. How can we get around this? How can we let kids use various Google Apps like Reader and Docs while still keeping kids on task doing what we want them to do?
Here's the only solution I came up with:
Perhaps for each student I created a gmail account and password. They would be generic like "MrsSnydersClass001@gmail.com". I'd generate passwords and tell kids that I needed to be able to have access to their accounts. I could say that because I created the accounts and knew passwords, they were technically "my" accounts that they were "borrowing." Consequently, they shouldn't use them for personal issues. (Of course this lends itself to kids feeling like they're not trusted, and maybe authentic learning is diminished.)
Any other ideas on how to get this to work for the kids?
At our school, we changed to Gmail for our email service because it is free and provided an opportunity for the district to save money. I have enjoyed having it immensely. Perhaps it can be mentioned at your school.
ReplyDeleteI think I'll enjoy having it even more now that you brought up the FANTASTIC idea of how to make sure when a student is working on a document at home that they can still work on it at school too. Thanks, Emily.
One other thing, perhaps you could make a case for the program in your school. It could maybe then be unblocked. Or perhaps you could be given an access code to get to blocked sites, something our district is trying out this year also.
GoogleDocs is extremely user-friendly! It is such a great tool and I think it will be a useful tool to use with my research for my thesis!
ReplyDeleteGreat idea Emily! I've definitely experienced the scenario you referred to - having students update at home and not be able to transfer that work unless they miraculously remember a flash drive or having to create copies and copies of emails being sent with their additions. I also think that your district should be willing to make an allowance for gmail if you present this idea to them. You know, the email system that kids at our school use is really nice because it's automatically filtered. If they are sending inappropriate content via the account, we automatically recieve a copy of that email and are able to address the problem immediately. It's too bad google doesn't have some version of "kid gmail" that offered this feature. Or do they?
ReplyDeleteYou are exactly right about the whole "excuses" thing. I always have the problem where students say they have a different version at home so they can't open it here. I also love the idea that when students are working as a group they don't have to be working on it at the same time and that even though their partner is not there they can access the project.
ReplyDeleteLike Geri's district, there are lots of districts looking at the Google Apps for Education option (http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/edu/). I know Oregon and Sun Prairie have both done this recently and I think Madison is looking at it, too. It allows the district to create one or more of their own Google environments so they could actually have a different set of things available for elementary and secondary students.
ReplyDeleteI found lots of students love to use GoogleDocs for groupwork. You just have to assume it doesn't have all the bells and whistles of Word and other Office products. It's also best if you don't try to go back and forth between Word and GoogleDocs as your formatting can get messed up, particularly with tables. That being said, I'm using it for a number of committees I'm on as then there is no excuse that people can't access the things we've been working on.