Google Docs is a revolutionary yet user-friendly word-processing tool. Gone are the days when people would share documents with others and wait long enough for their feedback. Google Docs has allowed individuals to meet tight deadlines, give immediate feedback, and instantly share documents within a group. This word-processing tool has mainly played an essential role in making classroom operations easier for teachers and students. Teachers can give their feedback on assignments instantly, and students can now work on group assignments together without needing to meet physically. Let’s delve deeper into how Google Docs is used in a classroom setting.
How to Use Google Docs in Class
Google Docs is a bonus for students since it has straightforward features that make it easier for students to work jointly on assignments, take down class notes, and structure and revise a document as a group. The result of all these is instant. Any number of students or teachers can access the document, edit it, or leave a comment from anywhere simultaneously. Therefore, the primary benefit of using Google Docs in class is the immediate feedback, which helps students and teachers save time. Even when an individual is offline, they can still get back online and continue working on the document from where they stopped. Additionally, teachers can monitor a student’s work and make recommendations where necessary, even before the final draft is submitted.
Google Docs for Students
Google Docs plays a role that extends further than just word processing. It comprises editing tools to help make one’s work legible, from line spacing to select fonts, headers, tables, and much more that helps one edit a document from any location. This amazing feature helps a student present quality papers like those written by professional writers at US paper writing service.The tool also has various image editing tools, which means you will not have to leave the page to fine-tune an image you intend to attach to the document. Also, you can retrieve the document stored in the cloud, Google Drive, from anywhere and edit it regardless of place and time.
The original creator can organize documents stored in Google Drive. The documents are stored in folders depending on how you want to access them. For example, you can label your folders according to their names or the dates they were handled. Folders make it easy to retrieve documents from your Google Drive. These folders can easily be shared through links to colleagues or the lecturer. Additionally, the original owner of the document permits how the document can be handled, including allowing any comments and further editing on the document.
Google Docs users can also download the document in any format, including PDF, HTML, and more. Through the explore section, students can browse and upload any relevant scholarly source or image to their document, making it appropriate even for research papers. You will also find various templates for your essays and reports on Google Docs. Another outstanding feature suitable for students is voice typing, which allows you to create an entire essay or presentation without laying hands on a keyboard; you will only have to dictate what you want to be typed. The translation feature also makes it possible to translate the document from a source language to an understandable one.
The primary advantage of Google Docs over Microsoft Word Office is accessibility. With Google Docs, anyone can access a document from any location. Microsoft Word limits access to only the device user where the document is stored unless shared via other avenues. Additionally, with Google Docs, several people can simultaneously work on the same document, as it is an instantaneous cloud-based application. The document shared via Google Drive can be accessed and edited anywhere and anytime.
Google Docs for Teachers
Teachers are gradually embracing the use of Google Docs in class, primarily due to the real-time feedback option, which allows them to make corrections to a student’s work at any time, even when it is in progress. They can also use it to monitor whether a student is handling an assignment. With Google Docs, teachers can grant access to class notes to students simultaneously and check whether the students have accessed the document. Google Docs has helped teachers streamline assignments and class projects in various ways, including:
- Arranging combined classes: teachers can blend different groups by giving students at different levels but taking the same course access to the same learning materials, which helps save time.
- Monitoring student’s progress: gone are the days of “I lost my assignment” since cloud synchronization has made it possible for teachers and students to work on the same document concurrently, making it easy for teachers to track the student’s work step by step and even identify if they are stuck along the way.
- Monitoring class participation: monitoring is particularly essential for group assignments since by looking at the history version of a document, teachers can identify active students. Every comment or change made on the document can help the teacher monitor the participation of every individual in the group.
- Involving parents in the classwork: teachers can create a progress report on Google Docs and give parents access, which makes it easy for them to monitor their children’s progress from the beginning to the end of the semester without coming to school physically.
- Providing instant feedback: giving immediate feedback even before the work is complete helps improve one’s performance since one will replicate the corrections made to the rest of the assignment.
Summing Up
The primary advantage of using Google Docs is that cloud synchronization allows instructors and students to work on a document simultaneously, regardless of where they are. Students can get comments from their teachers and correct the errors as they progress. The collaborative potential of this tool makes it suitable for use in classrooms where students and teachers need to work together. Tutees can also take quizzes from anywhere and receive their results immediately. Due to this word processing tool’s instantaneous and collaborative nature, it works best when online; however, you can also activate the offline feature that allows you to make changes on a document even without an internet connection.
