Wednesday, June 27, 2012

Collaborating with Google Docs

Google Docs is gaining wider acceptance as a tool that students can use, but managing the work that students create still has a way to go for many teachers.  One of the biggest strengths of Google Docs is that it is a fantastic collaboration tool for the classroom.

In the video below, I quickly show how students can take any document and share it with other students.  Students can edit the same document simultaneously from anywhere.  Students can see previous revisions of the work and restore an old version if something went terribly wrong during a late night editing session.

Teachers can share with any student by using their studentlogin@stu.austinisd.org account.  Because the district connects the class roster system to Google Groups, the teacher can also share a document with the entire class by using just one class account.  Class account ID's start with the campus number, the teacher's E#, and the class period, followed by the special @crs.austinisd.org subdomain.

Sharing documents is easy and can allow for much less paper flowing across the classroom.

How would you use the Share button with your students? How do you have student collaborate on documents?