Guide to Using Google Docs in the Classroom

Google Docs is one of the most utilized technology tools for supplementing instruction in the classroom. Compiled below are some examples of the best ways to make your life easier using Google Docs from excerpts pulled directly from a Google presentation on the "32 Best Ways to Use Google in the Classroom."

Sharing Lessons

Using a shared Doc list available through Google Docs, "create a folder for your grade level to share resources" with the whole school, and find lessons through the list you can use and adapt in your classroom, as well. Use this tutorial to learn how to share documents over Google Docs. 

Editing Student Work

By having your students upload their work to Google Docs, it gives you an opportunity to use the Docs tools to provide ongoing feedback. Further, Google Docs's revision history allows you to see the changes made to a student's document to help see the student's process and also allow to see final drafts and rough drafts with the same file. Using the revision history option is as easy as clicking the File menu and selecting "See revision history."

Hosting Student Journals

Gone are the days of requiring students to buy Composition notebooks to record their journal entries in and you having to find a way to carry them all home to grade. Using Google Docs, students can used the shared document option to gather continuous entries. As a bonus, you can directly comment on each entry as they are entered in.

Creating Error Correction Assignments

According to David Dodgson, a young learner teacher in Turkey, Google Docs is a good tool for foreign language classes because it allows you as an educator to share a document with intentional errors with your learning class and allow them to correct it as a group or as an individual assignment. 

Communicating with Parents

The ability to easily share documents using Google Docs also benefits parent-teacher relationships, so long as the parents are also privy to the tool. Google suggests using spreadsheets to share with parents that track student homework; it recommends giving each student an anonymous number to be shared with parents. This way, parents can easily know if their child is doing his or her work on time and can intervene if not right away.

Further, the Google presentation highlights the ability to translate documents into other languages with just the click of a button. Teachers can write documents to parents who do not speak good English and by simply clicking "Translate Document" can create a document that these parents can readily understand.

Not to mention it takes the stress away completely from sign-up sheets. Whether you're trying to organize who's bringing what to a school event you're in charge of or arranging times for parent-teacher conferences, the easily shared spreadsheets makes your life much easier in this regard. Through back and forth sharing, you'll work out a final plan in no time.

Compiled by Nicole Gorman, Education World Contributor

05/22/2015