Google Docs in the classroom

Google Docs works quite similarly to the Microsoft applications, without some of the glam. Can you do everything Word, Powerpoint, and Excel can? No. But if you're looking for an easy way to get collaboration into your classroom, Google Docs may be just what you're looking for.

Having worked with the collaborative features before, I can say you and your students will perhaps find it slightly frustrating the first go out, since even though the documents are meant to be collaborative, if more than one person is trying to edit at any given time, then it could kick someone else's edit off. However, this is true of most collaborative applications. In other words, if you chose to explore this, know ahead of time that students should give each other some lag time between posts. The more people who are editing any given document, the slower it will go, too.

If you're looking to add technological collaboration to your classroom, check out this Google presentation on interesting ways to use Google Docs in the classroom.