Google Docs Neophyte!!

I must admit that I’ve never been a big user of Google Docs in my classroom before because I don’t know that I always saw the point. I was always perfectly content with my MS Office products (which I still love by the way). But this summer has thrown me for a loop. We are using some of our districts older laptops for Summer School and the students cannot save directly to the hard drive. So to work around this problem my students and I have started using Google Docs. There are some great features to it such as the ease of sharing work with the students and them sending the work back to me. One problem I’ve had is that when I share a document with them that I want them to edit, they must be sure to save a new copy of it otherwise they are all editing the same document. And we all know how students are…they don’t listen to every word we as teachers have to say. So it means I’ve to repeat, show, re-repeat, and re-show them numerous times on how and why they must save a new copy of the document before the edit it. Now…if there is an easier way I am all ears!

In the end, I must say that I like Google Docs, but I’m sure that I’ll go back to my Office next school year, but I do think I can find ways to work in the Google Docs on some occasions.