Google Docs and Spreadsheets
Google recently released an on-line software package called Google Docs and Spreadsheets. It is, as the name suggests an on-line word processor and spreadsheet program. I’m not sure where the Spreadsheet part came from but the Docs part—the word processor–was formerly called Writely. Google bought Writely, to much fanfare, several months ago.
I’ve had a Writely account for some time but when I first tried it, I didn’t really get it. The interface was easy enough but I didn’t see the point in an on-line word processor. Microsoft Word is available on all the machines on which I work. When I tried Writely I didn’t like writing in a web browser. It felt a bit clunky. I had tried other on-line word processors and felt the same way about them. Regardless of my early experiences, when Google announced its Docs and Spreadsheets program (a revised Writely) I decided I’d give it a try. That’s when I saw it’s potential.
To me the potential is not in the word processor per se but rather, in it’s collaboration feature. It has the collaboration benefits of a wiki with the editing/layout features of a word processor. Docs gives several people access to the same document. People can edit the document simultaneously or at different times. Here’s one teaching situation where Docs and Spreadsheets may help.
As a teacher my class often does group work. Problems come at the end of a class when students are not finished an assignment. If it was an individual assignment, I’d just assign the task to be finished for homework but how do I fairly assign a group writing assignment for homework? I can’t—until now. With Google Docs and Spreadsheets one student can post the work to Google Docs, invite the other group members to collaborate and they can easily finish the task later–working individually or simultaneously. Because of the features built into the program they can even see who in the group is pulling his/her weight and who is not. If teachers are given access to the document, they can see a complete history of the work—a handy assessment feature.
Docs has a lot of potential for group writing tasks among teachers too. Curriculum documents or common assessments can be collaboratively revised using Docs and Spreadsheets much more easily than using track changes in Word.
I don’t see myself switching to Google Docs and Spreadsheets as my main word processor but for tasks when I need to collaborate with others, it will come in handy.
