Thing #20: Google Docs

I attended a Google Docs workshop given by Shane Huff and Tonya Cox at Poteet last year, so I was at least excited about knowing what our assignment was all about. I have even shared some documents with my PIT Camp co-chair for our freshman orientation. I also want to point out that I forgot my password over the summer and couldn't get back into Google Docs until now. Completing this assignment has reminded me why I was excited about Google Docs in the first place.

I was even more excited about Google Docs when we can share documents and photos without having to kill a few trees. For a teacher, Google Docs is pure genius! If you are collaborating with all the 9th grade English teachers in the district or with other districts, each teacher would be able to upload their document and the other teachers could view the document and print it if they so desire. Of course, you could also attach a document to an email and send it that way. But to ensure that you don't leave someone off the email, it would be great to have one site that you all share and have access to. Because without fail, you will always have one teacher who did not get the email no matter how hard you try to make sure you don't leave anyone off.

When I was working on my principal certification, I had an instructor that emailed us all of the handouts for the next weeks class. It was our responsibility to print them out and bring to them class. I didn't know at the time that the instructors were responsible for bringing their own paper to copy handouts, tests, and etc. an instructor could upload everything needed for their class at one time and not have to worry about making sure everything was ready for the next week. It also puts responsibility on us as the student to check the site and come to class prepared. This would be a great idea for our students to use when they lose a handout or even miss a day or two of school. They would be able to go to the site, download the assignment, and not really have a reason to be late on the assignment or need a lot of extra time to complete it. This also allows the student to take some responsibility for their learning and keeping up with their assignments.

I think my favorite part of this assignment was having the opportunity to create my document and translate it into Spanish. Not knowing Spanish, I thought that this was so cool! This would be great for newsletters, letters, or even flyers that are inviting parents to attend a choir concert that do not speak any English. This would have been very handy to know when I had to write a letter to my neighbor who doesn't speak any English. I had to ask one of the assistant principals who does speak and write in Spanish to translate the letter for me. What was interesting is that there was an entire long list of different languages that were available for translation.