Thing #20

Well, I was out of my comfort zone again with this task. I have just never been very good at using all the options available on these wordprocessing applications. I pretty much stick to the basics and haven't really spent very much time exploring the various capabilities even though I know they are very useful. For the assignment, I created an extremely simple form that I actually designed about 3 years ago that I use daily in my classroom to keep my guided reading groups organized. http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dgnrmc7n_1dbww6wc4&hl=en#Rename I'm not really sure that I did this correctly. I was trying to make a form that could be filled in online by me and other teachers working with the groups. I may have used the wrong type of document for that, but that was my idea, anyway.

One year, I had two title one teachers helping me with my reading groups and we rotated groups. Having this form on googledocs would have allowed each of us to easily add our comments/notes onto the form as we each worked with the groups.

I could see especially older students (like my own children) using this application to work on papers both at school and at home without having to save them to disks or use a flashdrive.

This would also be an excellent way to work on a group project with other teachers and students allowing their input. While I am very rusty at Power Point, I could see working together to make presentations because there could be lots of input from others (pictures that I might not have that others do have, etc.).

Again, this is another application that could be used in collaborative story writing. It would just entail a lot of time on the part of the teacher to show students how to use it correctly. I don't think I am at that point yet, personally.

For teachers like me who teach the younger grades, most of the group type work would create lots of extra work for me, not the students. I might think about using something like this to enhance the experience for gifted students. Because this is so time-consuming for someone like me with limited knowledge, it is something that I might only experiment with once or twice during the school year, but I am glad to know about it. I think for me this will prove more valuable in my private life than in my teaching.