Becky Perkins

Using Google Docs in my classroom.

Throughout the year I have tried out several Google Docs applications, including Forms, Documents, and Presentations. By far the most useful tool for my students was Google Presentations which they used for book reviews and summaries. Google Presentations was an easy to use tool for student collaboration. In small teams students worked together to summarize novels. All team members were able to actively participate in the making of the presentations at the same time. Students found that it was easier to work on the presentations if they split up the assignment into parts and worked on different slides. Do to some lag time, it was sometimes confusing if they were working on the same slide simultaneously.

I used Google Forms for peer evaluations. They rated each project on a scale of one to five for each requirement of the project. The peer evaluations were part of their final project grade.

We used Google Documents to create class projects like our poetry unit, where students each added a poem to the document. Students found the collaboration difficult until I added a table where each student was assigned a specific slot for their poem and/or picture.

Once students were used to the logging into Google and using several of the applications, it required less and less of my input. The class became more student centered and driven.




There are few examples of my students' work using Google Docs. After looking through the examples posted, use the link for the Second Semester Pinnacle Evaluation.