Google Docs: Making Group Projects More Accessible

As a college senior I dread group projects more than any other type of assessment. This loathing stems from the inconvenience of being partnered up with people you don't know, trying to find a time that everyone can meet, and relying on other people's work to determine your grade. It took me four years to discover the break through in group projects...Google Docs. I learned abut this in my integrating technology in the class and have used it for three group projects since then. I like this technology because it allows multiple students to work on and revise a document at once. This means that students don’t have to find a time when they can all meet because they can work on the document from the comfort of their own home, when they have time to do so. Another feature that Google docs has that is beneficial to group projects is a chat feature. If members are in the document at the same time they can chat about changes that they want to make. This technology also eleviates the stress of depending on someone else’s work to determine your grade because you can see and edit parts of the assignment that you feel need to be improved. There is another very similar technology to Google docs, which is called Google power point and is used in the same way as Google docs. This technology can be used successfully in elementary through college age classes. It eleviates having a group of children sitting around one computer working on a document or power point. With Google doc and power point each student can be working at a separate computer on the same document. Since learning about this technology I do not dread group projects as much any more because I can work on it in the comfort of my own home, on my own time, at my own pace.