In the summer I teach a science methods class at Bank Street College Graduate School of Education. I use Google Docs to make the class more interactive and allow teachers to collaboratively learn how to teach science. In the typical graduate class the students hand papers to the teacher and get individual feedback. In my class the students can share ideas and give each other feedback. We also use Google Docs during the sessions to create KWL charts and more. The Google Docs interface allows for constant collaboration. It has transformed my class from Education 1.0 to Education 3.0. Here is an excerpt of a reflection paper from Marie Lawson, one of my Bank Street students.
In many courses at Bank Street, technology is an afterthought… I had a course where the forum was a static, boring place, where we would merely comment to fill our requirement. Even in a hybrid on-line/face-to-face course I took at Bank Street, many links posted were outdated and the my.Bankstreet website, with its freezing and need for frequent refreshing was a burden more than a help.
In this course, however, technology has been a powerful tool to communicate with our fellow teachers. The organization and easy access to the course website has been wonderful. The website gives links to articles, videos, and related sites in one convenient location. From an eco-standpoint, the fact that we do not need to print out articles and waste paper is another benefit to the site—and we can quickly find an article should we need to return to it.
The Google Docs method of posting papers ensures that all students are able to easily access each person’s ideas. Whenever I post a reflection, I am sure that my post is visible to those who may wish to give me feedback, and I can quickly access the thoughts of others. In addition, the Google Docs easy comment function allows us to have a virtual conversation that is much like a real conversation. I also love that the Google Docs allows multiple contributors to a single document. Never have I seen 25 cursors adding questions to a document at the same time, as we saw in class. There is something really significant about being able to add to and change a group document like that. It made me feel as though we were all part of a huge, collaborative force of thinkers, all working together to solve problems together. Seeing our questions come together with each person contributing from their own computer was somehow more satisfying than hearing ideas called out, or being written down on chart paper by a teacher. It makes me consider the role of technology in helping my own students collaborate and share ideas. Because this course uses technology so well to give us ease of access to resources and to each other’s ideas, I hope to find ways to modify technology to make it accessible for my students.
Dear Mr. Benedis-Grab,
I am a former professor, research scientist, and technical software product developer. I am investigating the development of high-end portals to support interactive web-based learning environments ranging from college-level classes in science and mathematics to professional collaborative engineering design projects. I am very interested in the range of capabilities provided by Google docs and Google apps, in general. I am particularly interested in developing powerful cloud-based systems (such as scientific applications written in or wrapped by Python code) that could be facilitated via Google apps as a front-end for end users.
My question for you is this: are you aware of a group of scientists/educators/developers that are actively pursuing these kind of activities for the markets I mentioned above? Also, do you have some contacts at Google or elsewhere that would be interested in collaborating with me/us on such a program?
Thanks for your time,
David
Hi David,
Thanks for your question. I found Google Docs to be a powerful platform for collaboration at the graduate level particularly around writing. You should look at Google Apps Script. There is a bunch of documentation on this from Google and it can allow you to add extra functionality to Google Docs as well as interact with other web software. I would think the help forums for Google Apps Script might get you where you want to go. I am not aware of people who are using Google Docs as a user interface because all the data resides on Google’s servers. I will also post your question to other Google Apps for Education Certified Trainers and see if others have leads.
Thanks,
Greg
Would it be possible to take a photo of a page from this class’ Googledoc to show what digital student-student and teacher-student interaction looks like?
The comment feature is great. You can insert a comment anywhere in the document. Also you can access revision history easily. I am having trouble inserting the screen shot into the comment using Word Press. I will email it to you.