What can I say—I LOVE GOOGLEDOCS!!! I wish I could go to the top of the mountain (the nearest being Cascade) and tell everyone that I now have a new technology love, sorry Smart Notebook. Maybe it is because it is February and everywhere I look I see hearts and flowers, but I am hopelessy smitten with GoogleDocs. I am actually already starting to think of how I can get my Algebra II students doing a project. It is absolutely perfect because we just converted to using google for our email for our entire district and is available to EVERYONE. There are so many cool features that I don’t even know where to start. I love that it is accessible to every student (and tied to their email account which they use every day). I love that students can work on it together either at the same time (in real time) or when it is convenient to them. I love that students don’t have to worry about compatibility issues. I love that students don’t have to worry about relying on the other group member being present (as long as it is properly shared) to work on it. I love that it has programs that students are already familiar with using (word, excel, powerpoint) but in a REALLY user friendly version. I love that it is storing this stuff outside of our network which frees up space on our network. I love that with igoogle it is like facebook in which everything is in one spot and easily accessible. I love that it has info on when things were worked on last. I love that there are “live” presentations and surveys. I can’t believe I had access to all of this this whole time and had no idea it was there. It is like putting on your winter coat for the first time in the season and finding a ten dollar bill that was there from last year! For this alone I am thankful that I have taken this class and think that my money was well spent.
The other things you might want to look at is GoogleSites. It has a really easy way for students to create websites, either with templates or not. There are constantly new things being created by Google, so it is worth getting on one of their RSS feeds to keep up with new development.
ReplyDeleteIf a districts wants to, there is also Google for Education which gives the district more control over student access but many of the same resources.