W6, #4: FEEDBACK ON USING GOOGLE DOCS?

Set-Up: By this point, everyone has set up their Google Docs account. Additionally, all of you have submitted a major essay (and drafts for early comments) to Mr. Long using GDs.

Challenge: I’m curious what all of you think about the process, as well as any tricks or challenges you’ve had along the way.

Hopefully by sharing our successes, problems, and questions, we can all learn ways to take full advantage of this very new (to us) tool.

Length: 7+ sentences.

TIME TO START YOUR GOOGLE DOCS ACCOUNT

Note:

This is NOT a blog entry to ‘respond to’ for credit for Monday.

This is an assignment in addition to the weekly blog entries.

Due: next Wednesday (9/17)

Assignment:

1. Required: Start your own Google Docs account (which you can start here for free). You can either use a Gmail email account (which you can start for here for free also) or any other email address you may already have. Let me know if you have trouble getting your GDs account started. We’ll figure it out together.
2. Optional: If you haven’t watched the short video on the start page, watch it now.
3. Required: Send me an email — longchristian@gmail.com — telling me that you’ve successfully started your Google Docs account. This will also be the email address you’ll always use to ‘invite’ me to read and comment on all of your Google Docs essays this year.
4. Optional: Consider keeping an eye on the “Official Google Docs Blog” to learn some cool tricks and ideas that may help you using GDs in all of your classes.  And if you find out anything interesting, tell us about it.
5. Optional: If you want, you can create a “new” document and send me an invitation to “read” or “collaborate” (i.e. comment/edit) to see how it works; look under “Share” in the upper right of any document you’ve created or uploaded. Note: If you do this, make sure you unclick these 2 options: a) “Collaborators may invite others” and b) “Invitations may be used by anyone” so that you can be assured that ONLY the person/people you invite have access to this specific document.

Explanation: Starting next week, we’ll start using Google Docs on a regular basis. The purpose is to:

• give you a way to submit papers to me digitally/on-line (as well as turning in paper copies)
• give me a way to leave comments ‘inside’ your paper
• give you a way to easily revise formal essays and send updates to me
• give you/I a way to review all of your old essays throughout the year

W2, #5: TOURING GOOGLE DOCS

Set Up: As you’ve all heard since day 1 of the class, all formal essays you write this year will always be submitted in 2 different ways to Mr. Long:

1. A paper copy handed to Mr. Long directly at the beginning of the class on the day it is due
2. A digital copy submitted to Mr. Long via Google Docs by the beginning of class on the day it is due

Challenge:

1. Please watch the two following videos that explain Google Docs. Note: It is a YouTube video so you will not be able to view it at school unless you ask Mr. Long to show you directly.
2. Take this brief web tour of the features found in Google Docs
3. Tell Mr. Long — in a blog comment response — what seems confusing to you or what you would like him to explain in detail in class when we go over this web-based file sharing tool

Note: I will walk everyone through the set-up and use of a Google Docs account before anyone is asked to use it. I just want to make sure that everyone has some knowledge before that conversation

Video 1: a ‘tutorial’ video telling you what Google Docs does in general.

Video 2: teachers/students talking about why/how they use Google Docs.