Google Presentations help Teachers and Students collaborate.
Posted by Kira on January 18, 2012
I recently did a training for the teachers at my school and taught them how to use GoogleDocs, which I am VERY fond of. In this training, I had them all sign up for a google account, which is free and easy. Then I had them get into groups and prepare a collaborative document. This is called “sharing” by google, and you can share any type of document. A “Document” is word processing, a “Spreadsheet” is Excel, and a “Presentation” is Powerpoint or Keynote. You can download these from google when you are done with them, and the presentation will even download as an actual powerpoint!
What a great way to get your students tocollaborate. This week I will be implementing it in my Photo class, where students will have to complete one slide each in a class presentation so we can critique their work. They won’t have to “turn it in,” because in preparing their slide and sharing the final document with me, they will have done so already. On their slide they will be placing their best example of work along with an artist’s statement on the process of creation and completion. A great way to get a class portfolio together which includes writing samples!
An idea for teachers: on open house night, we give presentations to the parents. We are all expected to use our projectors and create presentations. So next year, our teams will be creating collaborative presentations shared with each other in order to streamline the process and create a distinctive “brand” for their team. For example, there are three photography teachers at my school and we all do a different presentation- really, it should be the same because our students will all be experiencing the same units and lessons, and using the same equipment (theoretically.) So if we all add our input to the same collaborative document which is themed and prepped by all of us, we will be giving the parents the same information for our course- without each of us reinventing the wheel. We are really looking forward to it.
There are many ways you can have students collaborate using GoogleDocs- and it eliminates the often mentioned complaint- my group member isn’t here, or we don’t have enough time to finish in class. Guess what! You can work on a googledoc anywhere you have internet, and most of the kids at my school even have smartphones they can use. So that excuse becomes null and void. Yay! Do you have any ideas? Leave us a comment and we’ll try it out and write about it!
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