Had I known that there were at least two free document tools, I would not have just paid megabucks for Microsoft Office. I am impressed with both Open Office and Google Docs. I like that anyone can use these regardless of income. Both are easy to use. One of the problems I have had in the past with my Mac was the inablity to share documents with PC users. The different platforms available on Open Office is appealing.
I chose to work with Google docs for this exercise, but plan to get back to Open Office at a later date. This had applications for school as well as in my personal life. My husband, who is now working in Singapore, sometimes runs documents he is working on by me. Using google docs would not only speed up the editing and revising process, but we could do it in "real" time. I was just now explaining that to him. I told him that we could be talking on Skype and editing his document both at the same time. He was impressed..... Again, this would work well in a school setting. The ability to share documents interactively will foster the idea of collaborating on projects.
What amazes most so far about google docs is the templates that are available. Software always comes loaded with them, and I guess those can be updated online, but I got perusing the education templates and am very excited about what is available. I am going to share the student schedule, student cover letter, research paper and resume templates with my college bound son.
Back on the task for Wiki's, I tried to make a collaborative word study project. I just wanted to have a little project for kids to become more aware of suffixes or prefixes that are already in their own vocabulary. I had hoped to take the primary concept of a word wall and expand it to include multi-syllabic words. I think using a shared Google document might be a simpler way to go. It would be an open ended project to add to all year long. When I get it put together, I will add it to this post.
Okay, I have made my Google Doc Word Wall, now let's see if we can get there from here!
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What a neat idea. You could even make your Word Wall the home page on your classroom PC so that every time the students opened up the internet, they would be reminded. You might want to add new words to the top instead of at the bottom if you do that so it would be easier to see what's been added.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure how I would do that....
ReplyDelete