Get students started with collaborative notes in Google Docs
Question from twitter that deserves a long-form answer:
“I’m trying to use Google Docs with a low ability year 10 class but I’m not using Teacher Dashboard. Am I wasting my time? I want them to have content notes available to them at all times. It’s proving tricky!”
Simplest possible
If your students don’t have school google accounts:
– login to Google using any account (your own gmail account is fine)
– go to drive.google.com
– create a new document and rename it something like “Year 10 English Notes.”
The start of the document should look like this:
———
YEAR TEN ENGLISH NOTES
This is a shared document. Everyone has the ability to add to and edit it. Please be a good “digital citizen” and respect this space.
———
Click “share” and change it to “anyone with the link can edit.”
Copy the “link to share.”
Go to tinyurl.com and paste the link in. You can give it a custom link. I often use my name and the date – but the school name is also a good idea.
Students go to tiny url.com/<whatever> and can then edit the document.
Best practice
If your students have school google accounts:
– login to Google using your school google account
– go to drive.google.com
– create a new document and rename it something like “Year 10 English Notes.”
The start of the document should look like this:
———
YEAR TEN ENGLISH NOTES
This is a shared document. Everyone has the ability to add to and edit it. Please be a good “digital citizen” and respect this space.
———
Click “share” and change it to “anyone with the link at <name of school> can edit.”
Copy the “link to share.”
Go to tinyurl.com and paste the link in. You can give it a custom link. I often use my name and the date – but the school name is also a good idea.
Students go to tiny url.com/<whatever> and can then edit the document.
The main difference between these two is that in the first method contributors are anonymous. By making it simple and avoiding account trouble, you make classroom management (and digital citizenship) and little more difficult.
…and that’s how I’d get started. Please let me know how you went in the comments below or on twitter.
