In any school setting, some kind of collaboration is required and expected from the students. Distance education may have excused collaboration in the past, but with technology advancements nowadays, that is no longer necessary. Google Docs can help students and all other people collaborate and provide peers, group members, colleagues, and any other people with instant feedback on different types of documents. They will be able to work together to create and edit documents. By focusing on middle school students, teachers can review student work to provide guidance before assignments are due. Students can also work together to develop real-time documents without the hassle of having to meet or send the documents as attachments back-and-forth to one another.
It seems that the features of Google Docs are endless. Just like any word processing software installed on hard drives, students can create documents, spreadsheets, booking forms, and presentations all formatted the same as the software. You can upload previously created documents to share (and edit if necessary) and then turn around and change them back into the Word document, PDF document, or the other form it was prior to the initial change. Participants can edit and leave comments that others can read. If group members are working on the document at the same time, they see instant changes and added comments. The documents save automatically which helps any unforeseen circumstances of losing information. More features of Google Docs include inserting pictures, and forming equations and having the ability to utilize other mathematical symbols. You can also embed videos and provide links to websites. Another great feature of Google Docs is that it can be accessed anywhere Internet is provided. You can even utilize the tool from a smartphone! Best of all, this educational tool is free!
On another note, as with many things in education, the privacy of each student is very important. Google Docs has the option to share with certain people. There are three different groups of people to share with: public, those with the document link, and certain people by request of the document creator (this requires a log-in). You also have the option to allow people to edit, comment, or only view your document. Depending on the assignment you will need to determine how your document will be shared.
Google Docs is a great way to have students submit work. It eliminates the use of paper in a face-to-face class. For a distance education course, it allows the teacher to insert comments rather than downloading a document, inserting comments, uploading, and e-mailing the document back to the student.
Younger students as well as adults can use the video. It gives a little more detail and more information than what I would expect from my students in middle school. They are completely capable of utilizing all of the aspects of Google Docs, however, I feel they should slowly be introduced to the tool.
Please visit the link below to view an example of a document created on Google Docs. You are able to edit if you wish.
