9:17 pm Google
I have always been a big fan of using test corrections. Sometimes they are required of all of my students and sometimes they are optional and students can earn some points back. Over the years I have worked to push my students to make more careful corrections. For the most part I haven’t had trouble, but every now and then a student will turn in rather shoddy work. So, I began to think of ways to try and get my students to spend more time cleaning up their corrections.
At the same time I began to think on how useful it would be to have digital copies of my students work. With hard-copy only work, there is no way to easily share strong work, or save it for later use. I wasn’t excited about using a scanner, so I decided to push my students towards using MS Office’s built in equation editor.
For the last couple months of last semester I gave my two AP Calculus assignments that were required to be typed. Over those two months I had my student email me their finished work.
In that first wave of digital document submission I learned:
1) My students would create very clean, thoughtful documents that were easy to read. They liked working with Office and Equation Editor was not that hard to use.
2) Not all of my students had home access to Office, so many students typed up their work in the library.
3) Some versions of Office and other equations editors were used by some students and the file types produced were hard for me to open. So, I quickly made it policy that all documents had to be sent to me in their original file format AND in pdf format. I had my students use CutePDF Writer (free!) to generate their PDFs.
4) Having 44 students email you two or more documents a week was hard to manage.
Coming into this semester I was excited to continue my research into using digital document submission in my Calculus classes. I was eager to overcome the major obstacles that I encountered the previous semester. I was primarily driven to design a system that any student could use on any computer without special software. This is what I came up with:
1) Google Documents for file creation and submission.
2) Sitmo Latex Google plugin for equation creation. (GDocs does not have its own equation editor. Doh!)
Major points about this system:
1) Students are able to instantly submit their assignments to me by sharing them with my GMail account. They are also able to share their work easily with class members and actively work on one document simultaneously.
2) There is no longer a need for students to print anything. They don’t have to worry about their thumb drives, if their printer is working, or if they are going to lose their assignment on the way to school.
3) I can easily add typed comments to their assignments. My students no longer have to slog through my not so nice handwriting.
4) By using the Sitmo plugin, my students have been learning LaTeX code, a universally used publishing language.
5) The Sitmo plugin is a little tough to use at first. You have to copy paste the equation images into the document. You can edit the equations directly so you have to paste in the code as a footnote in the document.
6) Google Documents does not handle some image-pasting very well. This was a particular problem when using paint or WinPlot images for graphs. My students learned that the best way to add an image was to save it locally and then upload the image to the document.
7) My students can save their work locally on their own computers at any time by using the export function. The export function allows the student to save their work in many different formats including pdfs.
8 ) Students are able to work on their assignment on any computer that has an internet connection and a web browser. GDocs has a smooth enough interface that people on dialup connections can use the system. It’s not too snappy, but it’s workable.
9) There are major issues with importing word docs with equations created with the built-in office equation editor (math type). We found that it was sometimes possible to manage some kind of work around by creating the document in Office2007 and then saving it in 2003 format, but it was not consistent. Also, GDocs does not currently handle Office2007 documents (docx extension).
Overall summary:
1) The only major sticking point is that it’s not quite easy enough to edit equations in Google Documents. Other than that the system works beautifully. There are lots and lots and lots of people clamoring for a built in equation editor, so hopefully it will be added soon!
2) I really, really like how students can easily collaborate on assignments. In the next couple weeks I am going to have them create a major assignment in groups of 3. Longer assignments are currently a little too difficult to create for one person at a time. I will have them do work by themselves once a week on half or a whole homework assignment.
3) My students filled out an online survey about their first two weeks of using Google Documents. They came up with some great information. If you’d like to see what they wrote head on over here. (Email me for the password.)
Final thoughts:
1) Google Documents + Sitmo has a few issues but is well worth using especially for shorter math assignments.
2) Google Documents looks like it will work VERY well in classes like English and Foreign Language classes for assignments that don’t need super special formatting. (You can set Google Documents to use MANY different languages.)
3) Google Documents can also create spreadsheets and presentations. Both of those tools could be wildly powerful in many different classes.
You must be logged in to post a comment.