BP4_Google.docs_Web2.0Tool

I love Google.docs

        Getting students to collaborate instead of socialize has always been a bee in my bonnet—it was my tenet that of course they should have fun, but it should be the fun of creating together, by golly!  So when I read Brain-Based Learning and saw the connections between creating and having fun and productive thinking, it was enlightening.  But it wasn’t until my adventure into Google.docs that it became an epiphany!

        Google.docs creates a forum for developing all aspects of a project, from “Here’s our job,” through initial (and possibly confused or uninspired) musings, into generating possibilities, then shaping ideas and resources into a goal and eventual plan, forming it into a preliminary product, then negotiating the final result.  Its group-wide accessibility makes asynchronous collaborating a proverbial breeze, and its easy color-coding allows contributors to see instantly which input is coming from whom.

      But the real magic seems to happen working synchronously.  I’m a very verbal thinker—one of my mantras is “Think with your Ink”—so I’m used to processing and synthesizing info and ideas by writing.  One night another group member (three time zones away) came on while I was fiddling with content, and we began interacting—some-times on task, but sometimes going off into left field and kidding around—next thing we knew, we had the beginning of a truly wonderful project.

        And it’s not just verbal thinkers google.docs is good for.  It’s easy to import pictures and graphics; now we know (kind of—I still need practice) how to embed video; and the color option is fun AND visually stimulating.  And let us not forget that writing—typing—is a strongly kinesthetic experience.

        Another crucial element of google is that it’s actually accessible at my technological antique of a school.  I will be able to take the kids to the computer lab and get them started—once they create their own accounts at home.  (Or the public library or a friend’s house.)

        Next week, my regular senior English kids will jump into Canterbury Tales.  Previously, I had them start with a short pair research presentation on some aspect of life in the Middle Ages—which did require a visual, but I wouldn’t even let them use powerpoint (because I didn’t know how to use it).  This year, we’re going to make google.sites.  We’ll start on google.docs and do some research, and then construct sites with their research, probably an interview video, connections to a character in CT, maybe a storyboard of one of the “Tales,” and connections to their lives today.  Unfortunately, you’re not going to see a site more than barely started today, or the great screenflow I’m going to make for this project, because yesterday I spent six hours with help, tutorials, youtube (a great suggestion from my 13-year-old son), and even a bit of swearing (Forgive me, Lord), and I still couldn’t figure out how to make the darn site work.  I’m used to the user-friendliness of iWeb!  And apparently they change google.sites every two minutes, because none of the youtube videos I found had the same set up as the site before me!   Fortunately, I have a non-critical friend who’s a google.maven, and she’s going to come tutor me this weekend.

 

        Last week I happened to mention google.docs before a very tiny pair project, and the next day one of my special ed kids came in sparkling.  “We used google.docs to write our poem!” she laughed.  “I showed my dad; he couldn’t believe it!”  From writing poems to creating businesses, collaborative, media-based thinking is connec-ting people with their friends, their partners, their present, their past, their future.  Google.docs is an easy way to be a part of that.

Here's the link to Mrs. A's CT Google.doc (under construction!):

          https://docs.google.com/document/edit?id=19P6rFoBDLh0W16yLVsTj-

          Pl2Qh_9LGIjRnAu9dEExxI&hl=en&authkey=CPuJ_cIC