21ThingsBCK Thing 3 Reflection: Collaboration Tools

Thing 3 has been great to increase my productivity. The template I downloaded for comparing cars will be a great tool in a career class where students have to think about which car they will purchase after finishing post secondary education and whether they can truly afford the vehicle. The collaborative aspect of Google Docs has already changed the way my classroom runs because I can comment on items for student to fix in a draft document and help each student create a final product based on collaborative feedback from myself and other students. This has been particularly helpful with some essay writing that students are doing for scholarships and college applications. Google docs has also saved unknown sheets of paper as the drafts don’t have to be printed multiple times in the editing process.I am trying to get my coworkers to get on board with using google docs as a paper saving device.

The other tool I used was Doodle to schedule a meeting where my coworkers would look at student essays to determine two scholarship nominations.  We could have used Google docs to read the essays and then come to the meeting with 3 top essay writers so we could have been prepared to simply discuss who was the best essay writer and vote. Instead, time was taken for my coworkers to read the printed essays, submit who they thought was the best student for the particular scholarship nomination, and then we voted.  Wasted time and wasted paper. Doodle did give my coworkers options on when to meet in person for voting on scholarship winners and Google docs had allowed me to give students feedback on their essays before I printed them for our faculty discussion.  Each step forward helps my coworkers and me become better technology users.