Conversation transforms learning in Google Docs and NON Google Docs, in Google Drive - Digital Literacy Dover

Saturday 15 March 2014

Conversation transforms learning in Google Docs and NON Google Docs, in Google Drive


Many educators have now discovered the phenomenal potential of Google Doc commenting to transform learning and teaching. If you don't know about Google Doc commenting, see some of the other posts on this, here, or here.

Used effectively Google Doc comments are another very effective illustration of what I believe are the 5 transformative elements of ICTs - SAMMS, they are:

Google Drive & Situated Learning

Situated - Comment anywhere, any space, any place that is suitable to you.

Access - link to references and resources anywhere on the wild wonderful web to support feedback, or to push/extend content further.

Multimodal - with Add-ons like Kaizena you can even add audio to your feedback, of course you can link to all sorts of rich web content, like online simulations to resolve a particular misconception, and students can easily create a screen recording to narrate their 'learning journey' through a beautifully busy comment thread. Revision history is great for this as well.

Mutable - Comments aren't locked they slip, slide and glide, anywhere they need to, but always tethered to the context that makes them meaningful, and of course comments can easily be edited/modified to clarify feedback, to better articulate reasoning, or maybe just to choose a more appropriate term.

Social - Commenting that is isolated is not much more than replacement tech, albeit without the need to squeeze your extended feedback into a scrawl that is so tightly packed into the margins of the page that it looks like a herd of spiders... No, to amplify or transform reflection and feedback, invite collaborators into the document, then stand back and watch in awe, as turning this document into a mini 'social network' radically redefines reflection, from 'me, me, me' to 'we, we, we'.

So what are you waiting for? You can view this album of screenshots for ways of how you can do this, or see an example below:



Image comments can refer to specific elements of the image, or be more holistic.

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