Thing 16

I was lucky enough to be involved with the National Writing Project at Eastern Michigan last summer. One of the other teachers involved did a presentation on how she used Google Docs with her students. Our whole cohort went on to use it to compose our response letters for all the presentations. Since then, I've incorporated Google Docs in a few ways.

Aside from my teaching duties, I am also the Student Council adviser. In the past year, the Student Council Executive Board has started saving important documents and forms in Google Docs. This means that more eyes can proofread and fix right away (saving paper in these cash-strapped days) and eliminating the need for a floating flash drive.

On a personal level, I used it mainly for two reason. The first is for a novel that I wrote. I have the complete manuscript saved there until some publisher sees just how brilliant it is. The other reason occurred after my dad passed away in January. He had a gazillion recipes typed up and my mother wanted me to delete all of them. Before I did so, I saved many of them to Google Docs, I guess as a reminder of my dad.

The biggest issue is, as always, overcoming my school district's policies. Currently, students are prohibited from accessing their email at school. While part of me understands the policy, it is hopelessly out of touch with how students actually work. I can, however, urge them to use Google Docs when faced with a group assignment. Inevitably, someone is absent and THAT person has all of the work. If everything is save in Google Docs, no need to worry.

With colleagues, I can see working on common assessments or assignments using Google Docs. Again, it makes proofreading easier and it spreads the typing load around as everyone can alter the document and leave notes about about was done.