Share Ideas and Opinions: Google Docs

Google Docs

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Google Docs is a productivity suite offered free to Google users and something that has become increasingly common as a tool for students throughout k-12. Google Docs offers the user tools for creating documents, Excel-style sheets, or slides in a Power-Point-like format. What makes it so user friendly is that it comes loaded with dozens of templates that the user can use to create professional-looking reports or presentations.

Google Docs works perfectly in service of the share ideas and opinions learning strategy because it gives students an easy-to-use method for communicating their thoughts and ideas on a given subject; in my case, on Social Studies topics that I might want to teach them.

A good example is the Slides feature. Within the slides feature is a great template for doing book reports, which is a great way for students to express how they are interpreting a shared reading project. The template has a title page, an "About" page, a main characters page, and more, already ready for the student. By taking the formatting work out of the students hands, Google Docs allows them to focus on their own thoughts and feelings about historical works and figures. i would have my students read a short book about the American Revolution and then have them use the Slides feature to report on the main themes and figures from the revolution.

The only drawback to Google Docs is that it might make it too easy for a student to cut and paste information into the slides without much thought as to what is most important about what they are studying.