Thing 16

We use Google Docs extensively. We have had our domain hosted by Google for the last two years. I regularly share documents with my assistant principal and a half dozen faculty who feel comfortable with the tool. Every DC student has a gmail account through us and we encourage them to use Google Docs to collaborate on projects (particularly presentations) remotely and asynchronously. We have experimetend in a few classes with having students submit assignments through Google Docs. The Playwriting class this past spring submitted their projects this way and their teacher was able to comment on their work in progress and make suggestions to shape the final versions of their plays. One of the great benefits to using this tool is asynchronous collaboration: two out of every three of our students are athletes and often do not get home until 8 or 9pm. Google Docs allows them to catch up on work that peers have started. For faculty, Google Docs has helped us to think through curriculum maping and strategic planning for our accreditation visit. We have found it useful to have each contributor choose a color to make individual contributions jump off the page. We rarely have to revert to earlier versions of a document but has proved useful whe we share documents with students who are new to Google Docs and mistakenly overwrite someone else's contribution. We have had great success with Google presentations which our studets prefer to PowerPoint because they only need Internet access and do not have to bother with thumb drives and finicky format issues (Office 2007 vs 2003 suite loaded onto our school computers. We really enjoy the ease with which data can be migrated to Google Spreadsheets using CSV data.