As one of the directors of the education component of The Quito Project at the Univeristy of Michigan, I was introduced to google.docs last year. It was my job to recruit undergraduates to serve as math and language tutors in Quito, Ecuador. In trying to figure out a way to organize interviews, another member suggested that we use google.docs. Using google.docs saved me an immense amount of time. I did not have to field a million requests for times, I did not have to create a schedule, and I did not have to send confirmation times to everyone! Instead, our prospective tutors simply logged into google.docs selected an open date and time and the interviews went on without a problem!
As the testimonial video showed, google.docs allow for a more interactive classroom. Students can work simultaneously on projects and they can provide each other immediate feedback on work in an effort to create high quality documents. Once again, however, Web 2.0 brings up the question of access. Google.docs would be a great classroom tool; unfortunately, my school does not have the tools necessary to make make my classroom a Google.docs zone. Maybe I need to write a grant to acquire some IPads for my classroom... but then what do I do about Internet?
No comments:
Post a Comment