Google Docs for Educators

Mr. "Education Virtually Anywhere" has been giving me a hard time because it has been so long since I made a post on this blog. I admit, I've been busy with other things...

At the ICCP Board meeting this past weekend I had a great conversation with Jim Bell, a fellow community college IT instructor and ICCP board member. We were chatting over dinner about all of the useful tools for students that are now available "in the cloud." With these free and accessible tools on the web, students don't need to download or purchase expensive software to complete their assignments, and online or group collaboration becomes much easier. Just about every day I learn about something new. Since I usually learn about them on other blogs and Twitter posts, I decided that I need to get back to tracking and sharing these on my blog.

One of my all-time favorite tools is Google Docs. I keep finding new and innovative ways to use it, in all aspects of my life. It revolutionalizes collaborative writing. In its most basic function, it's a suite of productivity applications - a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation builder. The applications are free and completely online - no software to download - so you can access them from any computer with a web browser (and some cell phones!).

Although useful as a suite of free applications, the real power of web-based tools becomes evident when you begin sharing. It completely changes the way you think and work with documents because you no longer save and email them around for people to make comments or updates. You "share" the document for other people to read and modify - giving specific permissions depending on what you want them to do with it. When multiple people share a document, you're all working on the same thing (not copies of the thing), sometimes even at the same time, with real-time updates. It's much like a "wiki." You can upload documents, store them online, export into a variety of popular formats and even publish them as web pages.

Google Presentations allows you to create or upload powerpoint-like documents that can be shared by publishing and sending a link to the URL to anyone you want to participate in the presentation. Set up a time, launch a Skype conference call, send out the link to participants and voila! you have a free video conference. Pulling together that group presentation assignment at the last minute becomes a breeze when you are all working on the same presentation, at the same time!

Google Spreadsheets allows you to share a spreadsheet and also lets you "chat" with others who are online editing the spreadsheet at the same time. It has the ability to create forms for gathering data and then compiles the data into a joint worksheet.

When you put these tools in the hands of students and give them problems to solve, the learning opportunities are endless. Click the link from the title of this post (or here) to see videos and testimonials on Google Docs in Education.