Googling and goggling! - Activity 4

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As I sit here in front of a computer at Northwestern University, where I should be working on photoanodes used for water splitting or sitting by the lake, I felt compelled to blog about all things Google (don't tell NU!).  I was inspired because I just sent my postdoc mentor a Google Doc of our meeting from this morning for her to preview and edit before I open it up and share it with the Professor! It is good that I am in this course!  I can see this being a real benefit this year.  In the past, I would do just like some of the videos we watched said!  I would email a draft of my NU paper to different people, they would separately edit.  I would then take or not take the edits and send the updated version to each person.  Sometimes it was madness! - so I am hoping this year it will be much better (although I do fear edits that I don't agree with - I believe Google does keep previous versions - I am interested in seeing how that works too).

I can see that this cooperative editing can be very helpful and I hope to also use this idea in my classroom.  I would like my students to write reports together and I want them to be able to critique other students writing.   I was thinking that I might split the class in half for each lab.  Half of the class (possible half of the lab groups) would be writers and half would be critiquers for each formal lab report.  One lab group would write the report and share it with another group who would be their designated critiquers.  After both groups were done, then they should share the document with me. Next lab, the groups would switch roles.

As for other Google applications, I also like the live spreadsheet.  Last year at the end of some labs, students frantically wrote their group's data on the board to share with each other for the analysis and then had to quickly write it all down before leaving class.  (I did let some use their cell phones to take pictures of class data on the board!)  A live spreadsheet would work great instead.  They could all add their data and access it from anywhere!  The form template was also interesting - I think I want to have a new student survey using the forms.

The Google calendar also brought great ideas to mind.  I've always wondered what all my students were doing at school activities.  I think I will have a calendar for each class where students can put down the play times or home soccer games or mathletes match - our own activities calendar.  I also have students do SciFri - science in the news on Fridays.  They are assigned dates for each quarter and often forget. A class calendar for that would also be great.  Finally, I do not know if I am ambitious enough to have a calendar of updated homework and due dates.  Perhaps if a student a week was in charge?  I will have to give it some thought.  There are still only so many hours in the work day!  (Oops - back to work at NU!)