Google Docs

[Dave Bast]

My district has made the decision to block access to Google Docs, although we used it on a small scale in the past with no problems. This year we were hoping to have each student in our tech classes sign up for an account so that we could utilize the free apps, and allow collaboration on projects between students. I'm just curious, do any of you have experiences you could share, good or bad, about using Google Docs with students?
Thanks in advance,
Dave Bast

[Ben Rimes]

Wow, since I'm the first to respond, I get to ask the question on everyone's mind. Why did your district decide to block Google Docs? I can understand blocking Google Image Search, but I'd love to hear the perspective of why Docs had to go.

Oh, and since you can't do Google Docs, try Zoho or Buzzword. Zoho is a free full office suite of applications, all online, and ready for collaboration, while Adobe's Buzzword is a free collaborative online word processor.

[Geoffrey Legg]

Hi Ben, I work with Dave and this is the response we got from our "Help" Desk/Tech. Office.
" We are not allowing this because of the security risk for students since there isn't a way to monitor the documents for any potential objectionable content if need be."

We haven't gotten an answer to who made the decision and we are continuing to inquire and will keep everyone posted. BTW we don't ban flash drives and we can not monitor what students have on them. Thanks for the alternative ideas.

[Ben Rimes]

I love that argument "no way to effectively monitor the content." Following that line of thought, all notebooks, papers, and all writing implements should be banned from school because students could be writing all SORTS of awful things in their notebooks. Bring that up the next time you have a discussion of this nature, and see what the reply is.

[Geoffrey Legg]

Believe me we have a dozen of other items we should ban but we are afraid that if we bring them up then they might add them to the list ;-) We agree 100% and we'll keep you posted on how the battle goes. Our hope is to show them how it can impact student learning. We think they don't completely understand what Google Docs is and how it can be used. So rather than learn it, ban it. Much easier that way. Sad.

[Jay Bennett]

I love it when they go to security risk as an answer it's almost cliche. Here's a couple of reference articles that may or may not apply.

http://weblogg-ed.com/2008/is-my-head-and-my-life-in-the-clouds/

I can't find the other one, but if I recall it was a story from Will about a student that still had access to a term paper even though the district servers had gone down. I also find it amusing that flashdrives aren't considered a security risk, yet google docs are. Keep fighting the good fight!

[Dave Bast]

Good news. We were able to convince our district to unblock them, provided that we follow some guidelines that we discussed. Just curious, for those out there who use them with students, do you provide them with an account, or do your students create their own? If so, what type of communication do you have with parents about how this will be done?

[Ben Rimes]

Great news, Dave! Way to go. I believe the students would have to create their own account, as they need their own e-mail in order to do it.

[Patrick Diemer]

Hi Dave,

I teach in a high school and I have had nothing but good experiences using googledocs. I am now requiring all group work to be done using googledocs or zoho and they must invite me to the document. I love the program and our kids seem to like it as well.

[Dave Bast]

Did you have kids create their own accounts? At home? At school?

[Steve Dickie]

I teach at a high school and we've started using Google Apps, which includes docs. We set up our students with accounts on our domain. So they are [e-mail] This allows me to reset their password for them, but doesn't let me into their stuff unless they invite me.

I haven't used Docs with my students yet, but a couple of our teachers have and have had good success.

[Patrick Diemer]

I had the kids create their own accounts at school. We have a one to one laptop program so most kids had their own email account anyway. If anyone objects to using google, I have them use their existing email account and their pod uses zoho. I have not had a parent complain about this, knock on wood, but if they did the tech department and principal does a great job filtering us from that.

[Tim Staal]

We're providing both teachers and students with google docs accounts.
We're using the Google docs for education - bought 3 domains:
1 for staff, 1 for grade 7-12 students, one for grade 3-6 students. This way we can manage access privileges differently for each group . We rolled out access to staff last year, 7-12 this fall and will be working with a pilot group of 3-6 this spring and the rest this fall.
So far - most folks are happy!