Have now had several different experiences with Google Docs, each with some merits and some drawbacks:
- Student work as they build an assessment submission
- Collaborative policy document creation with school exec.
- First forays into simplifying data collection and management for pastoral care.
Student work: A short while back, mainly due to the assistance of a colleague who had used them before, my year 10 RE class started a build up from a base assessment task question to their final submission. They shared a Google word-processing document with myself and the other teacher to outline their approach to the assessment task, then move onto their draft and final submission copy. We were able to collaborate along the way, which was of definite benefit to the kids, but as I personally have been using the markup features of .Pages to edit and make suggestions on student submissions for some time I found that messing about with the Google settings and tools slowed me down considerably. I know that's the argument of an old dinosaur (albeit a technologically aware one), but I like the format of the .Pages docs. I probably won't use the Google Docs for individual student tasks again int he near future, but I think I'll try for a collaborative task between a group of students, and I can see the potential for more benefits there...
Policy Document: This one was certainly the easiest and actually saved a lot of time and effort. Worked together with two colleagues on rewording a policy document, and the ability to edit and manipulate the document made the process much easier and turned out what I think was a very positive result from a very positive process. Thumbs up!
Data Collection: OK, now THIS is where I see a LOT of useful application for me in my role. As a Pastoral Care Coordinator, I want to look at what's going on with our kids as accurately as possible. To be fashioning the responses we need to the students' needs we can no longer afford to be just making educated guesses at what they need, it needs to be evidence based so that we don't miss the real mark. Was lucky enough to work with our ICT support staff (my ideas, definitely her knowledge! lol) to develop a very nice data collection process and summary sheet for suspension data using .Numbers, with which I'm VERY happy.
Currently looking at shifting this idea to a Google docs spreadsheet to enable multiple users to input data for detentions in a very simple front end spreadsheet or form, which will then be transferred to a much more complex back end to work with and process the data and output it for live or close to live access of year coordinators. Also seeing if this will work embedded in a locally hosted wiki (will physically work, I know, but will it work for the people doing the input...?)
Looking very promising so far, but again HUGE thanks to Mel for interpreting my thoughts (which were in the right direction, I think, but still a long way from practical) into a reality that is actually going to work.
Here's the starting image to give you an idea...
