902 CUE Workshop - Google Drive & Google Docs what's it all about...

Post date: Dec 8, 2014 8:24:45 AM

Once again we had Lucie deLaBruere guiding us through the web of Google Drive and Docs.

First thing out of the shoot had use learning about Google's URL shortener https://goo.gl/ :

I've used both bit.ly and goo.gl to shorten web addresses for my classes. If the website is a Google Site then I tend to use goo.gl but for most other sites I tend to go with bit.ly. The shortened addresses help the students and when putting together presentations for the staff I do like that goo.gl gives you a QR code for presentations and handouts. Our school has a no cell phone or BYOD policy for students, but the QR codes do come in handy for staff and parents. Yes I have used OR codes for parent flyers in the last year with positive response.

Next up we took some time to talk about the visibility of your document. This seemed to be confusing to some folks during the session and in working with teachers at my site I know that some of them struggle with changing the visibility as well. So I thought this would be a good time to stop and make a short video on how to change the visibility settings so anyone can edit to share with the teachers at my site.

Then a second video on adding comments to a Google Doc

While both of these video's are short, for the visual learner or the teacher that only uses Google Docs occasionally these will come in handy. As I have said in other blog posts my District is not a GAFE District and only about half the teachers have a gmail account and use Google Docs. However when I lead Teaching and Learning sessions for my site I often use a Google Presentation so I can easily send teachers and administrators links to presentations I use.

Here is a screenshot from the workshop as we made comments on Lucie's presentation:

We practiced adding text to a shared document (see picture below). It has been a while since I have done this with more than one or two other people. While I think this could be a valuable tool for students one of the things I did find frustrating with so many people editing at once was having a hard time adding what I wanted to say without someone else jumping into the middle. With Middle School students I would limit the number of students involved in a shared document like this so that it did not get out of hand.

Next up was a group Presentation or Google Slide project. I love Google Slides and use it in my teaching a lot. I have not purchased a new version of PowerPoint since I found out about Google's Presentation. It is for this app more than any other I wish my District would become a GAFE District or at least my school would. I would love for students to be able to build Presentations together as easily as we did this past week. To give a group of 4 or 5 students a topic and assign one student in each group the leader to create the Presentation then share it with the others. Have each student and one or two slides then they all have to comment on each others slides to edit their groups work. So much better than two or three students huddled over one computer trying to do a PowerPoint Presentation together.

Here is the slide I created for our group presentation about ourselves this past week:

We also touched on Google forms but Lucie had already added the formulas into the form. She did model a great way to introduce forms thou in that we simple had to copy her pre-made form with the formulas already in place and add our data. Any time you can take away a step for students the first time they have to do something challenging that is new that is a plus.

Like I said at the start this was a jam packed workshop and could have easily been two or three workshops. Lucie was fantastic and I hope have another session with her before we are finished. The only thing that was disappoint about this session was we did not have time to get to Google Draw at all and that is the on thing I have very little experience with so I will be looking to find some help with that on my own in the very near future.