Thursday, May 1, 2014

Collaborative Projects and the Goodness of Google.

Earlier this week I participated in the Google Summit and so am fully googled inspired. : )

One of the google features I have not made full use of in the past is the google form. Many of the workshops used google forms at the beginning to gather starting data about the participants and to get feedback at the end. 3 questions seemed to be a good number to gather info but not make the task onerous.

For those of you new to google forms and wondering what on earth I am on about, here is a link to creating a google form.

For those of you keen to give google forms a go in your classroom but not sure where or how they would fit in, here is a link to a whole list of examples of google forms used in the classroom (scroll to the bottom of the page)

One workshop I would like to share with you used google forms as a way of getting us into working teams.

Julie Lindsay - Collaboration: Concept, Power and Magic
Julie sets up collaborative projects internationally for schools/students and so this session demonstrated the use of digital technologies to support geographically ‘dispersed’ collaboration.  It used Google Form to assign collaborative groups, Padlet to ‘virtual handshake’ group members, Google Docs to collaborate on tasks and finally Google Presentations to present learning.
Julie stated the session by talking about the importance of giving our students opportunities to develop the skills to work collaboratively across cultures, time zones and distances. She says “It is imperative students receive a global education and have the opportunity to connect and work with others in the world.”

In this workshop we started by completing a google form (choosing a favourite colour) to group us into working teams. Even though we were all in the same room we did not move to sit with the people in our group, instead we stayed in our seats and worked collaboratively online, using google chat and comments in the google docs to communicate. This was very challenging at times and I was so tempted to jump up and rush across the room to tap a team mate on the shoulder and say “read my comment!” : )
We started by introducing ourselves and getting to know our team, then we began to work on a collaborative presentation. We only had a short time to complete the presentation so had to divide tasks up and work as a team.
This exercise was a great introduction to working collaboratively across distances.

I would love to hear of you trying this in your school. I imagine starting as we did in a classroom and then moving to collaborating with students from another class in the same school before moving to inter-school, inter-island, inter-country collaborations.

You can find more information about the Flat Connections Project by following these links.

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