ICT in my Classroom

This post includes some reflections on the use of Google Forms in data handling teaching and some problems we encountered in using them in the classroom.

For a few weeks now we have been exploring data handling in our numeracy lessons - we have included lots of work to allow children the choice of some current tools to use in their own investigations. In separate lessons we have explored how to use Create-a-Graph, Google Forms for collecting data and Excel for charting data. All of this exposure and practice in using these tools was a precursor to the children making some choices in the design of their own data investigation.

The children were working in small groups of 3s (about 10 groups) and the majority of them chose to collect the data for their investigation questions using a Google Form. I directed one child from each group to author the form and to share with all of their peers within the domain. (This was done by clicking on “EMAIL FORM” when editing the form and clicking on “CHOOSE FROM CONTACTS” and choosing “ALL CONTACTS” from the drop down menu)

I decided to build in some time for the children to complete the forms that different groups were sharing with them. And this is where we began to run into problems. The progress of each group was starting to stretch out - some were completing forms and some had lots of data, others had only a few results because the forms had not been completed yet. The difference in what they may be doing was also beginning to mean that I had no way of ensuring a specific group was at a certain stage.

The simple fact is that I had no way of ensuring that every child completed every form. As a result the pool of data was different for each group.

I still believe that using a Google form is a valid way of collecting data - it also organises info and even produces a graphical representation of it. A powerful tool. But it is difficult when trying to collect lots of data from a year group at the same time. If their are lots of forms from lots of different groups it becomes unwieldy and difficult to steer on the right track. Saying that, I still wanted to provide the choice of tools to the children, attempting to replicate what happens in real life.

Here is a possible solution that we have thought of:

1. Children work in small groups of 3s
2. Generate a question for their investigation eg “What is Year 5s favourite lesson?”
3. Plan for the process and choose from a range of tools that have been covered in previous lessons. The children still have the autonomy to make a choice, which is key.
4. Draft their investigation question - a single multiple choice question.
5. Teacher/TA or children from the different groups author a single form including all of the questions from the different teams.
6. Form is shared with whole class or year group.
7. Children are given time to answer all of the questions in the form via their GMail- this way you can guarantee that all of the groups have responses.
8. Once all of the responses have been submitted then the resulting spreadsheet can be shared with the whole class. Children would then be able to view a single column of information for their own question.
9. Further graph work could be completed from then onwards.

I recently had a great conversation with my teaching colleague Rick about the use of technology to engage children with reading comprehension. This post is about my lesson I taught today as a result of that brief yet productive talk.

Although we have been reasonably successful in addressing how we use our available technology to support the development of times table knowledge, reading comprehension has been much more elusive. This afternoon both Rick and I explored two different ideas we had, regarding the use of technology to engage and support the practice of comprehension skills. 

Rick was using the Flip Cameras in his lesson, he had about 3 available to him and was looking for the children to generate their own questions about a text. After talking with a partner and drafting the question on small whiteboards they recorded the question to camera. When there were a few Rick showed these to the class and worked on modelling the answers and then setting the children off to find the answers in pairs. By all accounts an engaging way to explore text.

We have used the discuss tool in Google spreadsheets and presentation chat before to peer review presentations. 

I worked with a Google Presentation and wanted to engage the children with the text through the use of the instant messaging window that is available. All of my children love using MSN and Google Talk/Chat, it is the one application that they all use very regularly. For two years now both of my Year 5 classes who have been using Google Apps discovered Google Chat in GMail by themselves and have got busy using it.

So how was this all setup? There are some things that we have in place that have helped. Firstly the children are using Google Apps for Education and have a unique login. Secondly we are working in my classroom on laptops.

1. I created a presentation, which is in effect our text, in my Google account.
2. I shared the presentation with the class as VIEWERS. This is important as it will mean that the children will immediately see the file in presentation mode and not in editing mode. Loading time was slow today, although once all loaded we had no other problems.
3. The instant messaging window will open when they click “View with others” (Bottom right hand corner) you will see their names appear in the “VIEWING NOW” box on your own presentation.
4. We then did some shared reading of the text about Spies and Gadgets. I used the “CONTROL THE PRESENTATION” tool available to me as owner of the document. As I clicked and moved through the presentation everyone’s laptops updated. This was immediate in every case, not bad for sixteen wireless laptops and proved useful for whole class work.
5. Once we had a good look through the text as a class, and some initial discussion, I then explained the question answer process. I would add a question in the IM window and they needed to navigate to the correct page and respond with their answer, also in the IM window.
6. As I typed I muted the projector image so kids didn’t get a head start, that was helpful.
7. The children answered in the IM window and I could see their name with the response showing ownership.

You may be thinking that some children may just look at other people’s answers. I talked to the class about this and encouraged them to engage with the text themselves, nevertheless seeing their peers answers proved a valuable function of this group IM session. Children were commenting on other answers and it caused some to question their own accuracy if they saw something different.

Of course there was the odd smiley! But that is what the children do when they IM, I was kind of entering their world. It is a delicate balance. I want to harness the engagement that IM brings and yet not make it too schooly so they switch off. I ensured that when they answered anything all of our usual literacy standards applied and the class responded well to that.

We worked on about 10 questions together and all of the children were totally engaged and motivated to find the answers and use the IM to form their response. They also maintained this engagement for considerably longer then when we work with paper and pencil.

As the answers rolled in I was able to immediately give feedback to different children, asking them to look again at what they had written. One particular question about the reasons why we use tables to present information caused the children to respond about the content and not the purpose. I discussed with the whole class what the correct answer might be, gave the children the start of the sentence in the chat window and asked them to answer again.

Beyond this one lesson I think that if the children were to use the Google Talk client then we could be looking at a variety of different texts and not just something created in Google Presentation. With the chat window open and a website or film playing it would allow us even more flexibility. In fact it could work with any other type of available application.

My target in the lesson was to engage the children with reading comprehension using technology we use in our classroom. I think we did that. It is taking what the children enjoy doing and harnessing that engagement, attempting to merge and utilise the skills they use outside of school to impact on their engagement with their learning. 

In November 2007 I began the first of a series of Google presentations gathering together some ideas about the uses of different tools for the classroom. I thought that the easy manner of sharing Google Docs was ideal to collate thoughts, tips and suggestions from teachers and educators all over the world.

I began with interesting ways to use the interactive whiteboard and the family has since grown to include, tips for Google Earth, Google Docs and the most recent Pocket Video Cameras. It has been great to watch them evolve as people get in touch and I add them to the document and they make their own edits.

Here is the family photo

My intention from the beginning was that there should be many authors of the presentations and that teachers and school staff could happily take the resource and share it with their colleagues. As it is in a simple presentation format it seems to have been successful in doing that.

In total we have collated 100 101 suggestions, tips and ideas for the classroom! (I can’t type quick enough and people keep adding more ideas!) It is fantastic to be part of that collaborative effort to share what we do.

The most recent on pocket video cameras seems to have really hit a rich vein of classroom ideas - so far 29 ideas have been shared by people all over the world and I only started it 3 days ago. I haven’t had chance to add an idea myself yet! Perhaps this wealth of ideas illustrates the power and potential of video in the classroom - which isn’t particularly new but pocket video cameras give us, and the children we work with, much easier access.

Who knows what the next 100 ideas will be about but I hope that you can be part of it - please take some time to take a look through some of them above, let me know if you have used the presentations with your staff. If you want to add an idea to any of the above presentations just let me know your email address and I will add you as an editor.

In this post I welcome James Mansell, a fellow primary school teacher here in the UK, who explains about a wonderful resource he has created and brought to my attention that addresses the use of APP in school.

APP or Assessing Pupils’ Progress is the new (?) national approach in the UK to understanding children’s learning needs. There has been a whole heap of related links and materials released through the Primary Strategy site and no doubt if you are Literacy or Numeracy coordinator you will be (or have already) attending training in the UK. I will let James introduce himself further and explain more.

My name is James Mansell, and I work at Earl Soham Community Primary School in Suffolk. We are a small rural school with just three classes. I am currently teaching Years 4/5/6. I have been using Google Docs for my own planning for about a year and a half now. I have found the flexibility of being able to access my plans from anywhere, and link to resources from them, has made my job easier and helped me to be more organised, as I no longer get to school and realise I’ve forgotten to transfer my plans to my memory stick or left them lying on the table at home! In the last year, I have also begun using Google spreadsheets to keep an assessment record. This again has meant that I can access and add to assessment files without the need for carrying bulky box files between home and school.

Download you own copy of the APP Guidelines Doc

With the advent of the new APP materials from the Primary Frameworks for Literacy and Numeracy, I wanted to stick with my new paper-free way of working, but was unable to find an easy solution as the APP guidelines were only produced as PDF’s (ideal for printing, but not much good for working with online). So I decided that I would need to spend a bit of time taking the guidelines and turning them into something that I can use in Google Docs. After much copying, pasting, and reformatting the result is a spreadsheet which contains all of the Maths, Reading and Writing APP Guidelines currently available (Levels 2-5). Each Guideline is set out in the same way as the original PDFs, each taking a different sheet in the spreadsheet, but with two important differences: they are now editable and stored online.

There are a number of ways that the materials could be used, but this is how I intend to use them:
As APP is designed to be used with a sample of six children from across a range of abilities, I intend to select my six pupils and create six copies of the APP Guidelines, with the filename as the child’s name. I will then select the appropriate guideline sheets for each pupil and delete any unnecessary sheets (cutting the number of sheets by a third). Whenever I wish to make an assessment, I can highlight the appropriate statements in the grid, by changing the cell colour, and use the comment feature to reference any evidence I have used in making my judgement. It is then a simple matter of entering a Y or N in the appropriate box to show whether they have reached a particular level. If used with a class laptop, comments could even be made during a lesson when working with a small group or individual child, so that a bank of evidence is built up to support the assessments.

I hope that other teachers find this resource useful, and if you have any ideas for how it could be improved, please feel free to contact me. mr.mansell+app (at) gmail.com

I am sure you will join me in thanking James for the hours of work that has gone into the APP Document and for being willing to share it to help other teachers. Please let us know if you find it useful.

In my science lesson this afternoon we used Google Earth, Google Docs and Twitter to help us get a better understanding about how day length varies across the UK, and an insight into the differences around the world.

As part of our introduction to the concept of day length I used Google Earth and the sun/shadow layer to illustrate the movement of the Earth’s shadow. We played the animation for the day and talked about what we could see in the way it moved.

What did Google Earth do to enhance the lesson?

• This tool allows you to control the Earth’s shadow - that is a powerful simulation in the context of this lesson.
• The timeline at the top of the screen shows accurate timing of where the sunrise/sunset is during a given 24 hours.
• You can play through 24 hours of sunlight and darkness in a matter of seconds.
• It offers children a global perspective on day and night - and yet in the same moment you could be focused in on your school and explore it on a more local level.
• If I was to continue this unit further I would consider a more prolonged and individual use of Google Earth and simple data sets of sunrise/set times. This would provide the children the link between the times and a visual representation of the Earth’s shadow.

In pairs the children worked in Google Docs on a set of sunrise and sunset times for UK cities. They used a simple formula to help them calculate the differences and so work out the day length in hours and minutes. They then looked at ordering the cities according to day length.

What did Google Docs do to enhance the lesson?

• The children were able to share document ownership of the day length calculations.
• Docs remembers to save the progress regularly - data loss is very rare.
• Children’s completed spreadsheets were “handed in” to me to review by sharing with me as a contact. The docs will then appear in my own list and I will get an email message too.
• I was able to model on a shared copy of the document displayed on everyone’s laptop screen. The changes that were made were updated in real time on their copy. When they went to make their own copy the modelled examples were part of their own.

As a longer extension to this task I asked on my Twitter network to provide some real locations for my children to research and find sunrise and sunset information for. 

I have used Twitter in a similar way in the past and once again I was thrilled to get so many responses that challenged my class. The locations were from right around the globe - India to Australia, from Thailand to Scotland. As an extension my class chose one or more of these locations as they appeared in my replies window on TweetDeck, and found out the day length.

What did Twitter do to enhance the lesson?

• Real data, from real people in real locations. I would just explain a little about the person Tweeting if I knew them. Real connections.
• Purposeful challenges from real people.
• It may only be a short 140 characters from those who contributed but it provided a hugely engaging task that made us think beyond our shores.
• I cannot think of any other tool that would allow me to connect to so many teachers so easily.
• The contributions were from so many different parts of the world that it provided us with day lengths that we could compare and contrast with our own. 
• The teachers that connected with us naturally asked other questions and challenges that allowed us to explore other things. 
• It provided the whole class an opportunity to think, if only for a few minutes, as global citizens.

It was an great hour or so and I believe the tools we chose to use to support our learning were the correct ones. I was of course pleased to see the children engaging with Google Docs so effortlessly, it is just part of what we do now.

Curiously Google have altered the process of creating a copy of a document, removing the “Copy Collaborators” step. This caused us no end of headaches when sharing a doc with many students, as they in turn copied the document and also the 60 collaborators. You can imagine the burgeoning number of copies! I hope our efforts to share what we did contributed in a small way to that development. 

Every teacher should use Twitter, not only as a networking tool to help them learn - but in regards to connecting to the wider world to support learning. It is easy, it is fast and in my opinion peerless. Thankyou to all of you who contributed to the lesson with your messages - I hope that this post provides a context for your contribution.

What follows is a proposal I submitted to my headteacher regarding a trial of the use of Google Docs (as part of the Education Apps) to deliver online reporting to the parents in my class. I have spent considerable time working with Google Docs both on a personal level, organising planning files and within the classroom as a tool to support learning. The ease with which you can share a document is central to the idea that I could share a collaborative report throughout the whole year - updated at times when units of work are completed or at opportune moments of review.

My headteacher gave me his consent for me to explore the idea and I suggested to him posting the original proposal for reaction from a wider audience, he was also keen for this to happen - as this post and hopefully your reactions will help us develop and refine the whole concept.

What is the proposal?

I am proposing to use Google Docs as a platform to trial the delivery of online reporting to the parents and children in my class for this academic year 2008/2009.

What is the National Picture?

It is clear that the government is positioning itself to deliver real-time online reporting by the target year of 2010 for secondary schools and 2012 for all primary. According to Schools Minister Jim Knight:

“Real time reporting will deepen the school-parent relations and is not a substitute for regular personal contact with teachers. Effective technology systems can actually significantly cut the staff workloads - but it has to be to be manageable for individual schools and meaningful for parents.” Jan 2008

The aim is to develop a real-time reporting system that means parents will be able to access frequently updated information on children’s achievement, progress, attendance, behaviour and special needs wherever, whenever they want.

According to this announcement from the DCSF Primary schools must meet the basic requirement to provide information to parents covering achievement, progress, attendance, behaviour and special needs, on a timely and frequent basis - this should be at least once per term by September 2010 and the real time requirement by 2012.

According to Tanya Byron:

“Schools already using online reporting methods have noted that teachers spend less time in total producing three reports each year online than they did when producing just one by hand. The anytime, anywhere aspect of online reporting allows teachers to have greater control and flexibility of the use of their time. And, importantly, online reporting allows teachers to see the ‘bigger picture’ for each student because they are able to view grades and progress in other subjects.”

Why Google Docs?

This tool presently has three main advantages:

1. It is already in place to be used within school, therefore no new software or programme has to be installed or found.
2. It is free - we will not need to buy into any contracts or purchase new software.
3. It delivers the real-time aspect of the online reporting requirement. This is because parents and children will have complete access throughout the year to the document. It is always on.

What will be the differences with the current end of year system?

We will have to unlearn some things. The sense of a formalised report at one time of the year will no longer exist. In this proposed system the parents (and children) will have continued and timely access to a single document that is the child’s report. That document will be periodically updated by the teachers as various units of work are completed and key assessments are finished throughout the year - not just at the end of the year. There will be key contributions from the children as they also comment on the work they have done and explore their own targets for improvement. Parents will have room to make comments based upon the contributions from teachers and children.

Will it increase the workload for a teacher?

For many their first reactions will be that it will, as you are in effect reporting throughout the whole academic year. However in my opinion the timely nature of reporting extends to the teachers too. I believe I will be able to better report to parents if I have the opportunity to just write comments about, for example, a history unit completed at Christmas time. As opposed to doing it 2 terms later alongside all of the other subjects. I believe I will find it easier to write subject comments if it is all fresh in my mind, consequently this will increase the quality of reporting to parents.

When would the report be updated?

I would expect that comments are updated when major units of work are completed in Design and Technology or History for example. Specific times throughout the school year must be negotiated for adding comments about Literacy and Numeracy and some of the other subjects.

What about parents who do not have access at home?

Although more and more families in the community have access to the internet, due to lowering costs, not all of the children in my class (2008/09) have access at home. For the 2 or 3 families that do not have access I will operate an open door policy in terms of the access to the report document at school. The parents will be welcome to come into the classroom immediately after school and access the document.

What is the teacher’s role?

As the year progresses I will schedule times that I will add comments about particular subjects - at the end of units of work, after major pieces of work in the unit are completed. I will also plan time for children to add their comments about the work that has been completed and support them in adding examples of what they have done. I will also collect evidence that is suitable for the online form of the report. I will notify the parents when these updates have been completed or if there is something that needs their attention.

What is the parents’ role?

In the document there will be room for the parents to add comments and feedback about the examples of work and subject comments about their child.

What is the children’s role?

The children will take an active role in updating the document with examples of their work and comments about their learning. At the end of units of work a structured class activity will see them remark upon what they have learned from a subject unit and the highlights from it.

What is the headteacher’s role?

The fourth collaborator on the report document will be the headteacher who will act as overseer on the process throughout the year. A final end of year comment will still be present but the document will be open to any comments from the headteacher throughout the year.

What might the report look like?

The report will be similar to the existing paper version with areas for subject comments. Room must be made for comments from all of the different stakeholders. Photos of the children working will be able to be included as well as examples of work. Links to other online documents and work examples will be used.

What needs to be in place if we were to begin?

• Parents consent.
• Email addresses need to be collected from the parents.
• Schedule of commenting mapped to curriculum.
• Information letter to parents.
• An agreed report layout in Google Docs - what would we want to include in the report?
• What will happen to effort and achievement grades?
• What do we need to unlearn about the current reporting system.

This week we used Google Forms to collect and share preference data about fruit. We spent Wednesday afternoon’s design and technology session learning about different fruit as a precursor to creating a healthy fruit smoothie.

The children had the opportunity to taste about 15 different types of fruit and record their thoughts and preferences. I used a Google Form to collect this data into a spreadsheet so that the children could use this information to help inform them of their peers’ preferences. That is why this was so useful, the form acted as a simple data entry point to contribute to a wider pool of data. This larger set provides the children an insight into the a wider range of preferences which we will use to help plan the ingredients for their smoothies.

We are working in Google Apps for Education and there are a number of ways to share both the form and the spreadsheet, in the screenshots below I explain some of them because there are a few different options.

I used this feature when I shared the fruit form with my class. They accessed it from their email and the form was included in the message. However be aware that when the children completed the form and clicked submit from the email message ironically the Google toolbar blocked the pop-up that opens as conformation. The form data is not submitted.

In order to sidestep this quickly during the lesson without having to ask the children to edit pop-up settings I asked them to access the form via the link that is included in the email. In the future I will just send the link to the kids and get them to access it outside of their email. 

Remember that the form and the spreadsheet can be shared separately - once we have collated all of the data we need, I will be sharing the children into the document so they can access the results. I displayed the spreadsheet data on the IWB so the children could see what was happening I highlighted the live update of the data as forms were submitted.

This final option to share the form will allow children access to it from their documents home screen. We had great fun sharing the fruit preferences we had by using Google Forms and we will soon be all set to average out the data to help with our smoothie recipes. 

With a week passing since we began using our docs accounts the kids have experienced the use of sharing and working on documents, forms and spreadsheets - on Friday the children worked in pairs on a piece of work in RE, shared with each other as the pair were co-owners and then handed into me by sharing too. I showed the children how I star the documents that I need to mark and how to filter their docs home view in different ways. It is still enjoyable to see children sharing Google Docs to hand work in, it is just so simple and effective.

Important to note the pop-up problem if you share the form embedded in an email - next time I will probably use option 3 rather than email.

Related posts:

• 10 Google Forms for the Classroom
• So can I use Google Docs at home?
• Marking work in Google Docs
• Creating an emotion graph using Google forms

Absolutely. One of the children in my class had waited to the end of the session to ask me if they could access Google Docs at home. This afternoon we introduced all of our Year 5 children (60) to Google Apps and we had lots of fun exploring the tool with our new classes. 

We discussed with the children the make-up of their usernames and then the syntax of their email. I use a little information sheet (see above) for them to record their data on, I asked the children to come out to me and I tell them and write down their password. Simple and effective.

Please use this document to support your own introduction to Google Apps in the classroom.

With the laptops already running  back at their tables they then go and login. (It is worth noting that they also have to go through some security questions before they access their Docs home.) As we had last year we had the usual problems of not typing things in correctly but otherwise the children all managed it well.

I decided that a simple data entry spreadsheet would be one of the best ways to introduce the idea of sharing a document. I created something that would accommodate the results we have collected during our circuit training in PE, number of repetitions in a minute for steps ups and star jumps, that sort of thing (see the header in the film clip). Once I created the document I shared with all of the children in our year group, this way when they login they will see a document in the home screen.

All the children had to do in this intro activity was to find their name and add their data they had recorded on paper to the shared resource. Just before they began I asked the children to try to imagine what it would be like if I asked every child in the class to record their data on one sheet of paper - their bemused looks helped me to emphasise the power of working in an online document and how we can all access it at the same time.

We began to explore the spreadsheet and as we opened it we could see that the other Year 5 class were well on their way in terms of adding their data. Again I took this opportunity to help illustrate the live update of the document and how the different coloured cell outlines signalled different users (Incidentally if you roll over these coloured cells you will see the username pop up) I asked one of the children in my class to enter their own data and we watched as it updated on the class IWB and all 16 laptops looking on. The children’s excitement was building, similar to the moment when they realise what all the fuss is about in a Voicethread.

This short screencast shows our spreadsheet being updated - a pretty dull video but useful to illustrate how it looks when being worked on by 16 users.

The children were buzzing by now and I felt we could push them on to learning about how you share a document, so once I had shown them how to do it I challenged them to create something and share it with me. I displayed my inbox on the screen and watched as the message alerts came rolling in. I realised the children loved to see this, they got so excited to see their email alert pop into my inbox - before their friend had managed it! I remember this being the case last year. I am going to explore the idea of incidental writing opportunities using email this year.

I showed the children GMail and asked them to send me an email and once again they were very adept at what they were doing, highly accustomed to it all already and were clearly enjoying it. I once again observed, even in this first session, the community of use that appears - children helping each other out, a supportive word, children asking their friends. And of course children empowered to be a mini-expert.

We have gotten off to a flying start and this week I have declared it a sandbox week, in that the children can email me and share any documents they create, a time to play and get used to this great set of tools. At the end of the week we will rein in this activity a little and discuss some simple guidelines for sharing docs.

Last year we only had about 7 weeks of work with Google Docs, today it begun in our classes and I am really looking forward to digging even deeper into what we can do with the tools to support learning in the primary classroom. And we have a got a whole year to dig!

Who knows what we will find?

Some related posts from this blog that you might find useful too.

• “Google Apps in School - Week 1 , Week 2 , Week 3 , Week 4 , Weeks 5+6“
• 11 Google Apps improvements for the classroom
• 10 Google Forms for the Classroom
• What my class thought of our Google Docs project
• Peer feedback using the chat feature in Google Presentations
• Marking work in Google Docs
• Creating an emotion graph using Google forms
• Using the “Discuss” tool in Google spreadsheets
• iFrame Goodness: Embedding Google presentations
• Using Google Forms in the classroom

I have been thinking and writing about the use of Google tools within the classroom for a while and so I thought I would record some ideas for improvements that have been buzzing around in my head. Although I use the tools personally, the improvements are to do with the use Docs and Apps in general within the classroom, how they affect a teacher’s organisation, the ways that children interact with the tools, missing tools and other possibilities.

1. Ad-free Blogger accounts as a service within Ed Apps - a blogging platform as part of the overall Ed Apps services would provide an easy way to generate blogging accounts. It would allow children to use just a single login to access docs, gmail and their blog. Along with this the children should be able to click publish to blog from within a doc - sending their work to their own blog.
   
2. Integration of Google Notebook in Ed Apps - one of the most powerful tools Google has developed. It certainly has a great deal of unexplored potential within the classroom and is notable by it’s absence. If I were to ask children to research together online this is the tool I would use as a first step, not Docs - they would export their notes to Docs and not work there until research has been gathered. Why use Docs when you can work in an application fit for purpose? Some previous thoughts on Google Notebook and it being missing from Ed Apps.
   
3. Grab a copy / Templates - a simple link for each Doc that allows you to get your own copy without the collaborators. The ability to create a template out of any Doc. In the past when I want a whole class of children to work on a certain document and for them to have their own copy I would use a MS Word Template. The children would open it and they would have their own copy - the process is trickier in Docs because it often leads to duplicated documents everywhere when the children click “Include the Collaborators”! Imagine this times 30! 60! Templates are already in use and soo we will be able to make our own, and I hope to be taking advantage of this new feature to hand out work soon.
   
4. Audio support for docs - marking work could be very different if a teacher could add a simple audio comment. Along with the different ways to mark text a simple audio file would surmount to a much greater personal style of marking. Children could respond in kind regarding the comments you have made via audio. We would not just be repeating what we do on paper but changing it, challenging it, reinventing it.
   
5. View Filter signal - a way to signal to a user the different type of filter currently being used in the Docs home page. Many children think that they have lost documents because they are unaware of the current view. They may have clicked on a folder or on a type of doc filter, without it being made very clear - perhaps something next to the More Actions button on the top bar in the Docs home.
   
6. Not just “Shared With” but “Shared By” - when the children hand me a document, a piece of work that they have completed they share it with me and it appears in my Docs home list. It would be very useful to be able to filter the Docs owned by different children in my class. I could then compare a variety of Docs from the same child, perhaps a series of pieces of work or a collection for a single unit. Even better, for portfolios, would be the ability to then export multiple docs at once - two clicks and you have exported all of the child’s docs.
7. Remove the flicker - when you are working with someone else’s document and it autosaves your screen flicks up to the top. Annoying and the children found it a little off putting when in the midst of writing.
8. Add chat feature into Docs - it’s there in Spreadsheets and when you view a Presentation - children are very motivated by IM and it would prove a useful feature within Docs.
   
9. Archiveable chat - a great feature currently available in Spreadsheets and Presentations but nothing can be archived - it would be useful if this was tied into Google Chat/Email chat (archived their) the chat could be archived for the owner of the document. As a teacher I would like to be able to export it into a Doc as a permanent record of the discourse. We have used it here and here to good effect to support learning going on in the classroom, its just a shame we currently cannot archive it.
   
10. Export Form data to different Docs - we can get a simple summary of the form data and I am aware that this will soon have a wider range of features including different graph and chart types, but it would be very useful to also be able to export some or all of the summary to a new doc/presentation/ssheet. After all once data has been collected we want to analyse, discuss and present that information.
    
11. Gears as a local backup for Docs - in an ideal world my students should be able to access their Google Docs on a local level even if the internet has gone down, just as you can with Google Gears on a private account. No internet = no Google Docs, and although we had only about 2 days of troubles last year with our internet connection it would be useful to have our eggs in more than one basket.

In my opinion the two most important changes would be the inclusion of Google Notebook as it is a lovely little research application and the support of audio within Document commenting. (And of course a platform for blogging as part of the Ed Apps package would also be great)

What do you think of the list? What would you like to see altered, changed, developed or improved that would make a difference in the classroom?