Caring About Sharing

When I was a senior in high school, I won an award from a civic association that my guidance counselor convinced my mother was a big deal.  It was called, plainly and simply, the Caring Award, and I'm sure it was not a whole lot more than recognition of hours spent in community service and leadership in youth organizations that my counselor had submitted.  In either case, what I remember vividly is that the banquet dinner was held the same night as my boyfriend's state championship game, and I was incredibly resentful of having to attend, in all and only the ways that a teenage girl can be.  I actually mocked the slogan on the certificate, "Sharing is Caring," and the cheesy speeches that were given the entire way home.

This came to me when I was thinking about this post, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about it.  The post, though, is really, I swear, more about a few lessons I've learned recently about sharing Google docs with students.  My school recently acquired a mobile Chromebook lab, so I've had an opportunity to try some things that weren't possible for me in the past, and the learning curve has been steep. Some of my most significant (and immediate) findings around issues of sharing documents with students:

1. Think carefully about which editing privileges students really need.
In one of my first forays into using shared documents in a writing lesson, I created a document that my students could access from their Chromebooks, and it contained thesis sentences I wanted them to revise.  How great, I thought, it would be for them to see multiple revisions in real time right on the document...  It was a disaster.  Students were totally overwhelmed and disoriented by how frequently the text on the document was moving, and I was concerned that some students were altering the text with help and pointers inadvertently; twenty-three active users made the whole process sloppy and hard to manage.  After my first period, I decided to modify the document settings so students could only comment instead, and in the next class, the exercise went much more smoothly

2. Provide templates to expedite work.
Sometimes, I want students to play in ambiguity, to develop their own criteria for success, to think creatively and boundlessly about possibilities... other times, I need them to finish a product on a tight timeline.  Sharing a template with them to work from eliminates some of the (often, very slow) presentation-planning that occupies a group that should be more concerned with content-creating.  Not long ago, my class was split into five groups, each of which read a different non-fiction article to support our study of The Call of the Wild.  Each group collaborated to create a multimedia summary of their text, supplemented by images or videos.  In the old days, we'd go to the computer lab, and they'd huddle around one monitor, or make a mess of a file by sending it, opening, adding, re-saving and re-sending it; this year, the Chromebooks came to us and students could work at the same time, on the same document, without wasting a lot of time setting up slide designs and layouts.  One class period was sufficient to prepare their work, and they presented the very next day.

3. Sharing allows for simultaneity.
It's a simple point, but one I appreciated after experiencing the above collaborative activity.  Even in a lab setting, without documents that are actually shared, students need to work sequentially, or if they're working independently, at least one needs to be the aggregator to compile each person's contributions.  With shared documents, students can work on their own content sections at the same time, and no one gets the extra job of stitching things together.

4. Sharing makes collaboration more visible.
If you  as the teacher create the shared document, then you will get emails when comments are made and resolved.  This gave me a delightful window into the process that different groups were using: Which groups were still going back and forth at 9:00 p.m. the night before sharing?  Which group members were largely absent from the exchanges happening among collaborators?  Which student that doesn't usually speak up in class offers substantive and supportive feedback to peers from the safety and security of his own bedroom?  This was a totally unexpected surprise the first time I planned an activity like this, but it's now one of my favorite reasons to dot it.

My Ed Tech Resolutions

I don't really like making New Year's Resolutions. I generally fail not just to keep them, but even to remember what I've pledged to be more diligent about, and I don't like how arbitrary it seems. Nonetheless, there are just a few things I'm serious enough about that I will pledge some real time and energy to accomplish this semester...

1. More blogging.  While this doesn't necessarily have a direct impact on my students, writing about what I've tried, experienced and learned is an important part of my reflection on my practice, and I enjoy it.

2. More screencasts and self-made videos for my students. I want to unlock more of the advantages that flipping the classroom can offer, and I'm a firm believer that the more materials I make available to my student that way, the more I'm also addressing the needs of the learners who benefit from aural reinforcement or repeated viewings.

3. More shared documents with students. I've started experimenting with how to use Google documents and forms with students in the writing process, and I'm excited about some of the early feedback I've gotten from students about how helpful it's been for them. I look forward to finding more ways to facilitate their collaborative work and assess it effectively and efficiently.