Skittles and Bits (Again)

Another day, another tech meeting, another head full of ideas. Today we talked about digital citizenship - what is it, what does it look like ("What does it smell like when it goes wrong" - Terrel Hill), and how to teach it.

True to some of the new pedagogical teachings it was not a stand a deliver day - it was collaborative. 25 people working together on one Google Document. We all edited it at the same time (that was an fascinating exercise). I liike that tool.

My thoughts - we all think along similar lines - at least when it comes to education. No running in the halls. When a bunch of teachers get together to create a policy we first think about what behaviors to ban/limit/control. Our Digital Citizinship curricum started out looking like that. (I am not innocent in that regard.) It didn't stay that way - we moved onto more constructive thoughts.

All in all, another great day.

Google Documents Basics

Yay! Rob Wall has been at it again! He has created two more screencasts showing how to use Google Documents.

Here they are:

Using Google Docs, Part 1 and

Using Google Docs, Part 2 (Formatting)

Google Documents is an excellent FREE web based set of office tools (word processor, spreadsheet, presentations). The nice thing about them is that you can access your files from any computer with an internet connection.

Part 1 of Rob's screencast is the basics of opening, using, and saving documents in Google docs. Part 2 shows how to use formatting options like alignment, text fonts, and text colours. If you are familar with other word processors than Part 2 will seem a little elementary but that is ok.

What I am waiting for is for Rob to get to adding collaborators to a Google document - that way multiple people can work on the same document at the same time! Lots of possibilities for us teachers!

Good work Rob. (And thanks for letting me post them here. Blogging is so much easier when you don't actually have to make up anything yourself.)