Week 7 - Reflection

Using Google Drive for teaching and learning

The most basic way to describe Google Drive is that it is an online file cabinet where you can store documents and other digital files. Think of the word “Drive” the same way we would think of the word "hard drive"  on your computer, except that Google Drive is cloud-based application, in other words it exists online, so you can upload a file into Google Drive from your home computer, then open your Google Drive on your work computer and get into that same file. It’s accessible from wherever you have Internet. I have used Dropbox app, and it is almost the same, with the big difference that once we are inside Google Drive, we also have access to a collection of tools we can use to create things. Many of these perform the same functions as tools we are already familiar with. For example  Google Docs is a word processing tool (like Microsoft Word). Google Slides is a presentation tool (like PowerPoint). Google Sheets is a spreadsheet tool (like Excel). Google Forms is a survey creation tool (like Survey-Monkey). So Google Drive is not just a place to store things. It is also a place to make things. This means we and our  students can use these tools to do any kind of writing assignment, take tests and quizzes, and create slideshow presentations all inside the same platform.

One of the challenges we have as educators is to manage and organize documents with a class full of students. Using Google Docs which is very easy to learn as a tool for our students to make their writing assignments could make so easy for teachers to collect and control all student works. The students work using Google Docs and the teacher could use Google Forms to collect assignments. In other words Teachers create and publish a Google Form to be used as an InBox. When it is time to turn in a Google Doc, students complete the simple form and submit a link to their Google Doc. The information submitted by students automatically populates a spreadsheet to be used by the teacher to keep track of all the assignments and also to quickly access those assignments for review and grading.

Another idea is to create some kind of self-grading quiz. If we use this kind of quiz we can provide students with immediate feedback. This can increase student motivation, so we just have to create a simple self-grading quiz with a Google Form.  We create a quiz with a few multiple choice questions. Students take the quiz themselves to submit the correct answers, the app pops a simple formula into the spreadsheet end to let the app do the grading for you.  This immediately publish the spreadsheet of results. We have to teach students how to use the find tool to quickly find their score and significantly raise the stakes to increase student motivation.  It would be better if  we require students to sign in with some sort of unique identifier that protects their privacy.