Google Docs is an amazing resource for collaboratively developing documents. Although, it's a great site to use on your own as well. It used to be that if I wanted to open a document in more than one location, I needed to email it to myself. This isn't the worst approach, but you can't edit it without having to delete the old one and uploading the new one. You also get two versions of the document in your mailbox if you save all of your sent mail, which can eat away at your quote (which I suppose doesn't matter as much now that quotas are roughly the size of one cazillion times my the hard drive of my family's first computer). I did solve this my saving files to my drafts instead, but they make it really easy to accidentally delete drafts. Anyway, saving files to Google Docs allows me to open and edit one file in any location with an internet connection (which is very important at my work, in which computers are not networked, yet I work on about 3 every day).
Aside from selfish reasons, Google Docs is great to be used by collaboratively-working teachers. In my last school, all curricula, tests, and even many PowerPoints were collaboratively developed. We held several professional development meetings in which we worked on these documents together. During the first, we all simply shouted out changes we wanted done to each document as the designee with the mouse and keyboard scrambled to keep up. After that disaster, we all began to use Google Docs, which allowed us to all work on the same document at the same time. This sounds like it would be a disaster as well, but since we all worked in a different color (assigned by out Google Overlords) we were able to productive and work off of each other's contributions.
After seeing how effectively teachers could develop documents together, I began reading about suggestions for students to use Google Docs in the classroom. Google itself has many ideas about how this can be accomplished as well. For one, students can develop journals that include timestamped entries that can be seen by either the entire class or just the teacher. Teachers (and perhaps other students) can leave responses in the comments section. Developing this type of journal format may be easier than requiring students to develop blogs, depending on the specific type of assignment (some parents may find this more comforting too, as it has the "feel" of more security than a blog). Another suggestion is to have students work on documents together in class. Many times I have given 2-4 students a computer task but only one computer to get the job done (which means that one person ends up working while the others end up texting). However, given that there are enough laptops or classroom computers to go around, students can use Google Docs to develop assignments together at the same time. What I really like about this idea is that I am able to see what each student contributed to the document so I can make sure everyone is putting in their share of the work.
Please share if you have any other valuable uses for Google Docs!
Smart phones are becoming quite an issue in the classroom. But what is the issue? Is it that students are constantly using their phones in class, or is it that teachers aren't allowing students to constantly use their phones in class? Having the internet literally at your fingertips is an amazing resource that is underutilized every day in schools. The problem is that the "power" of the iPhone is too much for students to know how to wield without abusing (this is true for teachers as well, whom I've seen texting the entire length of their hall duty shifts as well as in classes that they're teaching[?] - I'm sure "students" is not the only reason facebook is blocked in many schools, but I digress...). Usage of phones in the classroom by students has prompted many schools to not allow cell phones in the schools at all, let alone in the classroom. It used to be that it was easy to catch students using their phones; it was very clear why girls chose to keep their purses on their desks, with one hand inside, with a blue glow on their faces. Now the problem is so widespread that it is almost impossible to combat; every student in every academic level, it seems, is not immune to falling prey to the poison apple phone. The games are a problem too, but it's really the texting that's the issue. Playing games has been easy to do in class since the TI-83 days (for some reason, not even my English teachers didn't stop me from being on my calculator throughout the entire class). "Texting" (which is ALWAYS from their mom or dad, which I didn't believe any would do in the middle of class until several students proved it to me) is just a phenomenon that cannot be stopped with any of our current technology or scientific knowledge, it's just seems too powerful.
However, getting rid of the phones is not the solution; they need to be utilized! In my biology classroom, phones are a great as stopwatches during labs and taking photos of experiments. The internet has unlimited uses, the best of which simply looking things up that fellow students ask during class discussions. Students can also pull up google images (my best friend in class) of organisms and molecules we discuss - a very common question in biology classrooms is, "What does that look like?" -- and unless it's an amoeba, I'm not going to do the picture justice with dry erase markers. Phones in the classroom allow students to set up synced calendars for groupwork, or to create digital memos for themselves on a calendar to keep track of homework and test dates. Still not a fan? Texting isn't all evil, check out polleverywhere.com; this site allows teachers to set up questions in a poll format that students can text their replies into. This is great if your classroom does not have access to student personal response devices.
iTechnology is wonderful; we just need to figure out how to stop people (not just students) from abusing it.
Wikipedia is a wonderful resource. It's also the death of student learning. I
teach my students that it's a wonderful site as a place to begin their
research, but to ALWAYS double-check their findings with another site.
Wikipedia is definitely a few steps above getting their answers from a forum (I
looked up "Does water have calories" and got back "NO! Water's
pure and natural!" ... that made me sad). But students still need to be
wary over what they read there because in the end, anyone can go edit pages;
yes, it's peer-reviewed, but what about before someone "fixes" it?
Also, I've read many "scientific" Wikipedia pages that were so
technical that only an expert realizes that it's all wrong. Even the person
writing it thought that everything they said was fact. So that's an example of
one that's difficult to peer-review, but what about a page I found that should
have been fixed quickly: "Rolly Polly" was written to be a blood
sucking demon which attacks children in their sleep and drags them off to a
land without sun (no joke, I printed it out and it's my example for high school
students as to why they can't use Wikipedia as their only resource).
Wikipedia
is truly a wonderful resource, and I encourage students to utilize its vast
wonders... but like I said, they need to always check their findings with a
credible source. This is why it should never be listed in their "works
cited" on a research paper. Instead, "real" peer-reviewed cites
should be listed. What's a shame is that students do not seem to be taught how to conduct research anymore (at least that's what I observed in my high school biology classroom). It's baffling because one (at least I) would think that in a world where the internet was literally at our fingertips and in our pockets, students would be researching all day. You'd better believe that every time I have a question about anything I immediately whip out the smart phone. Teachers should be encouraging this is class; "I don't know the answer to that. Extra credit to whoever finds the answer first: pull out your smart phones and GO!" Of course this means that schools will have to figure out what to do about this cell phone phenomenon instead of throwing their hands in the air and saying, "Uh... no phones in schools! That'll fix that."
So far in my high school life science classrooms I have not used blogs to enhance student course material. Instead, I have relied upon wikis exclusively. However, I am seeing now that blogs and wikis are both invaluable tools, but should be used for different purposes. In the past, I've assigned wikis to groups of students to post information and revise each other's work as part of research projects. An example of this is my first "wiki experience", a bioremediation project assigned to my 12th grade biotechnology students during my student-teaching (feel free to check it out).
While wikis are great for this type of group research assignment, blogs seem more suited for individual reflection of learning and for students to reflect and comment upon other students' thoughts and ideas. Honestly, I haven't even thought much about the value of "weblogs" until I read the information presented in the Richardson text, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. The first benefit that popped into my mind was that this could be very useful to incorporate literacy into my science classroom. This is something I focused on during a course I took on expanding students' literacy skills a few semesters ago.
The idea is to have students read non-fiction science novels (age-appropriate, of course, and hopefully not too dry as to not turn them off science) and complete reflections on their reading. However, it wasn't until I read Richardson that I realized the amazing benefits of having students post their reflections as blogs. First, now other students can read their reflections and post responses, not just me. Second, students can see all of their previous blogs (i.e. reflections) before they post their new ideas. And third, students are able to go back and comment on their own reflections as their ideas change as they move through the text.
Wikis are a great place for students to edit and expand upon each other's ideas and material, but blogs are useful for students to practice some reflection about the concepts they are learning. Using blogs, students can also post links to articles that relate to the concepts they are learning. They can also post reflections on how the content they are reading relates to content learned in class or from their own experiences.
