Week four and five (Sep 9 - Sep. 20)

Last week the students finished their Word of Mouth projects. The walls outside of the classroom are now wallpapered with selfies and dotted with QR codes. If you happen to swing by, feel free to use your scanner app to hear the kids introduce themselves and describe some of the things they love about Kinkaid.

On Wednesday, I introduced Google Docs to the students and its collaborative features. During a demonstration in one class, I opened a document that I had been working on with Mr. Jordan and he just so happened to be using the document at the same time. I started up a chat with with him and the next thing the kids knew, Mr. Jordan was making changes to the text up on the board right before their eyes. "How can he do that?!" one exclaimed.  We then opened a document together where we all worked simultaneously adding comments, chatting, responding to comments, and finally resolving flagged areas of text.

This week will be a busy week as the students will take their new-found knowledge and create a tutorial for the Word of Mouth project. This project is two-fold in that it helps me assess their understanding of the prior work they just completed, while giving them a chance to practice and demonstrate the collaborative features of Google Docs. Built into this project is also a HW assignment. One of the features of Google Docs is the ability to be anywhere in the world and be able to work in real-time with another person or group on a single document. To best illustrate this the students are being asked to spend five minutes at home working on their document with their partner.