teachers and 70 students. We are just using Docs, not Gmail or Calendar. Here is what we've
learned so far:
.Ideally we envision at least four way collaboration on documents: student/teacher/parent/tutor
(our school has in-house tutors)
.Bringing a single class of a single teacher on board every week is a good pace.
.The training regime for students is extensive and was done as follows: discussion of student
writing history (handwriting, typewriters, word processors, web 2.0), discussion of online
collaborative writing concept, how to log in (website/username/passwords were disseminated on
address label stickers), how to create a document from scratch, how to word count and spell
check, how to share a document with a teacher, how to organize your files, how to spawn a
document from a teacher's template
.file organization becomes an issue quickly, so training students how to use folders and hide
documents is an early priority
.spawning documents from a template is a challenging four-step process for students: copy the
text of the template, paste the template into a new document, give the new document a
meaningful name, share the document with the teacher. Teachers create the template and share it
with students as view only.
.our IT department is pretty busy, and Apps is administered by me and other teachers with no
interaction with the school's server (but as has been mentioned, server integration is possible).
The only cost so far is the $10 we spent on the URL, and we bought when we registered (Google
uses GoDaddy) so there was nothing to configure.
--
Matthew J. Frattali
frattali@labschool.org
Learner/Teacher
The Lab School of Washington
(202) 412-8194 (cell)
www.mattfratt.com
"Me. We." -- Muhammad Ali
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