Easy as Pie: Thing 20

How nice that the week I get way too many essays to grade, the Thing involved is one I am already a big fan of and use quite often. What I learned to love most about Google docs is the instant accessability. No more lost thumb drives, no more just saving the short cut and not the document--the kids who utilize this tool find that the worst thing that happens sometimes is the font they picked ends up not being readable by the laptop used to present. With the overhead projector finally installed, the teacher computer will become the route they use, so hopefully that problem will disappear. No, I won't hold my breath, but I will cross my fingers.

Thinking back to when I first started using this and first introduced it to my students, I remember that the toughest thing, as always, was getting everyone logged into the server and then creating a google account. Some kids' emails were filtered, so I had to open them up, and some kids' passwords didn't work, etc. The usual garbage that one deals with when dealing with the school network and the school laptops. I also remember the painful amount of time it took to type in all the invitation emails, and then checking to see which invites went through and which didn't. I learned at some point that those with invites should just forward them to those who didn't receive them. The new gaggle email makes this process a little easier, but there is always at least one chucklehead who can't log in--and inevitably it is because they didn't type in their email properly.

What I learned from these exercises was to just be ready for chaos. The more prepared I am mentally for a disaster, the smaller said disaster appears when it occurs--and it will occur, trust me.

Last year during the American Literature strand, we studied the archetype of the cowboy and how that archetype changed through the decades. Kids were 1) invited to collaborate on a spread sheet to put all their knowledge about the cowboy in one place. Then they set off researching their assigned decades to see how film portrayed their cowboy. After all that, they 2) put together a powerpoint on their decade, working on the same project from different computers and at different times. Some of these students went on to 3) type the inevitable essay that goes with these projects on Google's word processor, and then their essays magically showed up at the exact time they needed them in class.

I didn't need to be sold on this feature of Google; once again, it is a tool that makes life easier for my students and myself; it also does away with many of the cyber excuses that come attached to any project.