PE4_Google Docs

Hello again folks!  Welcome back to my blog and thanks for the support.  I recently was enticed by an assignment of finding a tool that serves practical purposes in my environment.  Google Docs has been a joy to discover, but the reality had not dawned on me that I can solve a flash-drive problem at my high school.  My students have a hard time of hanging on to those things, for whatever reason that is.  I want a way to solve the problem for students who are forgetful and whom have circumstances of why they don't have their  flash-drives.  So i investigated the potential; my number 1 source?  Lynda.com.

As you can see with the above image, I was able to insert Power Point Presentations; the one above is a Computer Orientation for the first days of class.  I found that presentations that the Lynda tutorial stated of a Power Point 07 not to properly load, but proceeded to convert and upload as a 97-03 format.  Google Docs can serve a purpose in my classroom though because of the upload ability of Word, Excel, and PDF's.  I love how you can transfer files and you can have accessibility to your igoogle features.

The second image shows a built file list in my All items mode.  I am starting to have confidence in the possibilities of introduce this tool to my class.  I have to increase my knowledge of these features, but thus far, I've been impressed with the innovation of Google.  For them to create something of a web ecosystem has been marvelous with virtually no expense but a computer and internet, it's something.   Google Docs and it's versatility carry an abundance of weight with them, as it's an easy plug-in with Microsoft Office, one of the course applications I teach.  Do the documents upload perfect?  An example of a bad experiment might be more of a document with complex formatting settings.  However many standard documents are easily plug able.   In addition, the tutorial covered many ways to use ready-to-go templates at Google Docs disposal.  

I was thoroughly impressed with my initial experiences in really digging in Google Docs potential and impact on my classroom.  Stay tuned for further updates on the Google Docs week experiment.