Google Docs can also be used to implement direct teacher-to-student commentary and editing. Teachers can directly edit posts from students through Google Docs, and then student can make the changes immediately.
Using this feature effectively keeps students engaged and excited about their own work because they can receive input almost immediately, and projects are less likely to feel stale. In addition, the revision history option in Docs helps busy teachers hold every student accountable for their own work.
Perhaps one of the most engaging features in Google Docs is the publishing capability. Students are able to publish and share their own writing with a wide audience, so there is an added incentive for children to take pride in their work.
Google Docs can be used to contact parents as well. Keeping parents directly connected to their child’s school work is extremely important. When the parents are involved, children tend to succeed in the classroom. With Google Docs, parents can see comments from the teacher, and are also able to experience their child’s individual learning process as the post develops.
Teachers can also use Google Docs to compose letters to parents, mitigating the risk of something important getting misplaced between school and the home. The translate tool in Docs can even be used to compose letters or quick comments in different languages, assisting parents who may not speak English or may speak it as their second language, and allowing them to participate in their children’s education, which will benefit everyone involved.
Google Forms
Google Forms, which is a part of the Google Docs Suite, is another particularly effective classroom tool. Forms is a very efficient tool when teaching the scientific method. With Forms, children can create and send out a questionnaire or survey, and the data is collected into a Google Docs spreadsheet.
Have students prepare a survey question, and come up with a relevant hypothesis. Students then send out their surveys and Forms collects all the data. Students can then easily access and interpret the data, create related tables and graphs, and come to their conclusion. Although students should certainly be taught data collection methods, Google Forms allows teachers to expedites the data-collection process for later experiments and projects, giving students more time to actually analyze their data and come to logical conclusions about their question and hypothesis.
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