Brandon Tuttle
Blog #3
October 29, 2012
Modern technology is vital in
today’s education. Students are bombarded for their attention from every
direction, and education has to compete with all of the other events going on
in students’ lives. One of the many challenges students face in classroom is group
projects. With the help of Google and other technology companies, applications
such as Google Docs have made tasks like getting a group together much more
easy. Google Docs can help in three main ways when doing group work. Online
collaboration, editing documents on the go or mobile, and having access to
others group files make Google Docs the application of choice.
Getting all the students together to work on a group work project can be a daunting task. With the help of Google Docs, students don’t have to be in the same room to be connected and share ideas. Google has made collaborating online so easy, feels like your group is in the same room. “From a collaboration point of view, it's sort of like breathing pure oxygen... Thanks to the way Google Docs works, collaborators don't necessarily have to announce where they are about to make a change. One of the real-time features is called ‘presence,’ and it tells you where exactly in a shared document the other collaborators have their cursors positioned.” (Information week) Multiple people can view and make changes at the same time. An on-screen chat window for spreadsheets is avaliable, and document revisions that show you exactly who changed what, and when.
“Group work is my favorite way of learning, I’m always at work or on the go, and before I started using Google Docs it was impossible to participate.” (Larson). Now with the help of smart phones and Google Docs, editing can be done on the go and from any smartphone or tablet. “No longer are Google Docs read-only on mobile devices. Instead, users can edit files and spreadsheets on the go. Therefore, the usability of devices such as the iPad presumably increases.” (Google)
When working in a group, a very commonly used phrase is “Email me that file.” Google Docs helps take this phrase from every group’s vocabulary. With Google Docs online cloud storage it’s now possible to save all files to the same place. Options are available to choose who gets to see the files and who can edit them. Apple and PC users can now work in unison without having to worry about different file formats; with Google Docs you can easily save, import and export files for easy access from any device.
Google’s increasing technology with Google Docs makes classroom group projects more productive and possible. Today information and the way students learn is continually changing. Online collaboration, editing documents on the go or mobile, and having access to others group files make Google Docs the application the top application for classroom group work.
Works Cited
"Google Docs Adds Capabilities for Mobile Users | Practical ECommerce." Google Docs Adds Capabilities
for Mobile Users | Practical ECommerce. N.p., n.d. Web. 29 Oct. 2012.
<http://www.practicalecommerce.com/articles/2561-Google-Docs-Adds-Capabilities-for-Mobile-
Users>.
"InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology." Informationweek. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Oct. 2012.
<http://www.informationweek.com/software/productivity-applications/first-look-google-docs-gets-
realtime-col/224400349>.
Larson, Erika. "Group Work." Personal Interview. 25 Oct. 2012.
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