Sunday, March 14, 2010

Google Docs and the Research Paper












I began piloting my school district's switch to Google Applications for Education with my American literature and Creative Writing courses in September. I've enjoyed using Google documents, forms, spreadsheets and presentations with students.

Recently, I experimented with templates by creating a template of a spreadsheet for my students to use in order to begin adding quotes and analysis for their two texts they will use for their research papers. I really like that I'm able to color-code the template and ask students to share their work with me. Since they shared the templates with me to edit, I'm able to give them feedback along the way. Next week, I plan to teach them how to use Noodle Tools so that they can share their digital notecards and annotations with me as they begin finding literary criticism.

2 comments:

  1. Document looks great, and great idea. Here's a yellow column suggestion:

    To aid students with analysis I ask them to identify key passages and then respond to how the passage adds to, reinforces or changes what they know. These three key phrases are great ways of getting students to analyze rather than just re-state.

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  2. Thank you, Lynn. I like the way you phrase the tasks and I'll definitely try it out next time!

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