I am lucky, we already use google docs at my school. It is great for tracking student performance such as MEAP scores. I like that I can save my document and use it on any computer. I move around the building all day and use several computers for the same document. My sister uses a spreadsheet for her checking register, I suggested she use google docs so that she can see it from anywhere, not just on the computer at home. Also, she and her husband can both update it and noone will have to guess if it is accurate. As for my classroom, I know at least one teacher who assigns email addresses to all his students, so I guess I could set up a classroom account. I like getting feedback from my students in a way that is easily tracked and google docs has nice looking graphs.
There are a few concerns. I saved my logins on an excel doc so I could just cut and paste into the browser and it didn't always paste correctly. Also, my husband brought up the concern of the enormous amount of documents that are stored on this website. Could the docs get lost? How secure are the docs from hackers? With anything new technology it is going to take sometime for google to prove itself secure and reliable. So, I will use it, but will probably still keep a copy on my hard drive for now.
Check out (and complete) my survey at the bottom of my blog. With a little frustration, I managed to create it in a google doc and embed it onto my blog. That was pretty neat.
Abbot and Costello do Math
Youtube Vidoe: Solving Linear Systems by Graphing (thing 21)
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- A. Crosby
- I am a Computer Applications teacher at Ida High School. I am also currently completing my Masters Degree at BGSU. This blog discusses some of the Professional development I have already experienced.
I think security is a legitimate concern, and there have been some instances of Google Docs finding and fixing those places that could be or were hacked. I don't put anything out there that would be of a very personal nature, like my credit card account numbers, so I'm not too concerned. As far as reliability, I'm going to guess Google Docs would be as safe or safer than your school's network. Our servers are backed up daily. I'm sure Google also has some redundancy built in.
ReplyDeleteI have used Google Docs for about year now, I've never lost anything. I lost jumpdrives though!
ReplyDeleteI like the fact that a teacher assigns all of his students, or at least makes them create, an email. With as integrated as technology can be there's no reason a teacher and student cannot communicate more through these means.