Inspired by Tom Barrett and his comprehensive blog on using Google docs I decided to have a go at my own project with my year 6 children.
Aim
To use Google docs to create a shared word document relating to our History topic which was post war history through the eyes of John Lennon.
What Happened
First of all I tried to get the children to set up their own Google mail account. This proved slightly problematic as the children were using 35 wireless laptops routed through the same server.
After about 13 or so setups the Google server decided that we were some sort of spammers and refused to create anymore accounts until the next day. This was slightly annoying, but not insurmountable. Tom got around this problem by buying a domain from Google, but I’m just a cheapskate!
Once the accounts were set up I got all the children to email my account. By replying to these emails their details were automatically set into my Google contacts. I then set up a shared spreadsheet with columns for our email addresses and names and invited all the children using the ‘invite contact’ option. Now the children entered their own emails and names into the shared resource.
I appointed some group leaders who were then asked to set up a document that they would them invite their friends to.
The documents themselves had individual headings in them such as ‘Early life’ ‘The Beatles’ so that the children could work on the same document but in different areas.
I then let them loose!
Lessons Learned so Far
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Buying or owning a domain would make life a lot easier setting up emails
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Sharing documents wirelessly slows things up hardwire preferable
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In a shared ‘word’ doc you can’t use a chat window, but if you agree one font colour for chat it seems to work well.
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You can leave marking / suggestions in the same way. (I use pink at the top of the doc)
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Takes time to set up, very exciting once it’s going!
I’ll give further updates as I go along!
I have noticed that only 10 users can edit one document at a time. Have you run into any problems with this?
My money is on you! Fantastic way to engage your students..I will keep up with your blogging!
btw, I’m in St. Louis, MO, middle of the USA
This is great stuff, Steve. My first go at a collaborative doc wasn’t great! How much does a Google domain cost for a school?
Thank you so much for blogging your learning adventure. I am interested in doing this with year 4, 5, and 6th graders. What do you feel is the benefit to using Google docs versus having the students use their own wiki space?
@ wcstech I’ve only used small groups with word docs as I think it could all get rather messy with larger numbers. As far as I know you can have up to 200 pepole on a spreadsheet, but this can really slow things up on the wireless especially. So I think the solution is to keep the numbers small.
@msmithpds I’m a wiki novice so I can’t really comment on their use in the classroom. I thicnk that the only advantage I could think of is the live aspect of Google docs, perhaps you could contact Tom (mentioned in the post) as he might have more experience in that area.
Thanks for the comments.
I haven’t used Google docs, but I wonder if you could use the gmail hack of adding students to a teacher’s gmail address to set them up in the first place? (that is, the teacher’s account might be MrSmith@gmail.com, and the students are added as MrSmith+maryt@gmail.com, MrSmith+tomg@gmail.com, etc.
It will depend on whether students need access to their email account to use Google docs, or simply to register. You can use this for edublogs, so maybe application to Google docs could work?
Hi Steve
You could always use google apps (http://www.google.com/a/help/intl/en/var_1c.html) for setting up your email accounts – no cost involved!
Patricia
PS. You might be interested in adding your blog details to the International Edubloggers Directory at http://edubloggerdir.blogspot.com