Thing 16

I love Google Docs! I wish I had it when my five children were asking me for help in editing their various college papers and college application essays. We as a family could have really made a party of it - just kidding. I was just able to retrieve an old document based on a son's college assignment that had to do with a personal family immigration story and share it easily for the first time with all of my children. Reading it again, I can see that my children can expand on it by asking questions and those answers that we'd have to research would really enrich it.
I can see a use for it in the classroom especially if students are collaborating on a project or even a lab report. If I had the lab document (questions etc,) saved on Google docs then they'd be able to work on it together. The challenge still is how much collaboration do I want them to do? If I can save a document (by scanning it) so can the student if they have access to a scanner. I think I still am not cognizant of the level of cheating that can occur. If a student is a poor writer but can scan a framework of a paper and the criteria that need to be covered in that paper then another student can more easily contribute to it and then how can cheating be proven?
I love that spread sheets can be made and accessed and groups can contribute to it. That is a powerful application of the tool. One can have a science experiment where groups are averaging in other participating schools' data. That sends the experience of doing trials to a different level.