Google docs is a great piece of online software to get you kids working collaboratively in the classroom.   I recently spent some time working with a reading teacher who wanted to have his kids work in cooperative groups on a creative writing project.  He wanted each person in the group to take turns writing out a different line to a story.  For example, he would start the story with a single sentence such as;

It was a cold, dark, and rainy night.  I was at home all by myself watching television. Suddenly I heard……

Each student in the group would then take turns adding the next sentence to the story.  Google docs lent itself perfectly to this activity.  He basically created the document which housed the directions, prompt, and group members.  Once he was finished, he shared out the public link and made sure that anyone viewing the document had editing privileges.   That way the students did not need a google doc account or sign-in – they just clicked on the link provided by the teacher.  Since students did not need sign in credentials to access the document, each student was idenitified by the font color they chose to type in.  Anything in red was contributed by Danny, any sentence in green was Olivia, etc.  Another great feature of Google docs is that it automatically saves all work every 15 seconds, so you will never need to worry about students not saving their work.   As with everything Google, you have a very realiable product that is free of charge. Anyone can sign up for a google docs account – even if you don’t currenly have a gmail address, just use any existing email address to get started.  Just go to google.com –> click on the “more” link at the top of the page –> scroll down to documents –> click on create an account now.

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