- As with the shared "Unblocking Google" document it gives us the ability to collaborate with others without ever having to meet face to face. The hurdle of finding a shared space and time for a meeting vanishes. I can attest that our department is now accomplishing more in a shorter amount of time than was ever possible before. The cool part is that I can also collaborate with others outside my office, outside my building, outside my city, state, country. To understand how transforming this truly is I sent the email to share the "Unblocking Google" document on Saturday at 12:38 pm and Carla added information to the Shared Google Doc about an hour later at 1:39 pm. Wow - it's a bit mind bending and when we're able to have our kids collaborate outside the four walls of our classrooms it will transform education.
- Our office still has face to face meetings but instead of everyone recording their own set of incomplete notes we put the agenda in a Google Doc and as we are having the meeting everyone adds notes "Live" while the meeting is taking place. The benefits have been tremendous. Everyone leaves the meeting with access to the same set of complete notes and if anyone was absent from the meeting they have access to these meeting notes and are up to speed in a flash with no misunderstanding about progress or decisions made during the meeting. I have noticed this year a complete absence of questions like these coming from our Instructional Technology team. - I can't remember did we decide to do A or was it B? or I know we discussed this a few weeks ago but I don't remember who was in charge of what. What's our next step? We effortlessly are staying on the same page! The same Google page that is.
Side Note: I'm also a huge fan of the iPhone and this past Friday I was the one who missed the face to face office meeting. With Google Docs and the iPhone I was able to view the meeting notes as they were happening. Can't edit from the iPhone "YET" but I could view what was going on. It really would be cool if I could edit. To give you an idea of what that might look like I've included a screen shot off my iPhone of the "Unblocking Google" document. I can scroll down and read the entire document while standing in line at Best Buy and I can see who's contributing. Thank you "cmsuzie5" for your comments on the topic. It's sort of like being 007 and having a cool device in my hand designed by Q. Click on the graphic below to see the full view as it appeared on the iPhone (my blog shrunk it a bit) and you can see how I know that "cmsuzie5" edited the document at 1:39 pm.
BTW - almost all of the Google tools are accessible from an iPhone so often I'm reading my Google Reader RSS feeds from my iPhone instead of from a computer. - A third way we are making use of these tools is by gathering information from a group of individuals that automatically flows into a Google spreadsheet. This is often simple data such as dates, email addresses, birthdays and phone numbers but we've also used the tool to gather opinions and as a simple assessment instrument. The possibilities for gathering information for classroom research is limitless.
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