Educational Collaboration using Google Docs

This week's activity was to collaborate as a class to define education in a Google document. While I'm a seasoned veteran collaborating using Google docs, I still found the experience unique. I don't know if the rest of the class has used Google docs in this manner but it was interesting to see the different definitions (text, image, or video) we came up with and shared.

I think this exercise, however chaotic as I thought it was, turned out useful in learning more about a topic. While I don't think we were successfully proving any points or composing a literary masterpiece, I think we all were able to determine the benefits and limitations of this medium. Obviously the greatest benefit of using Google docs is that all users who have access to the document can add to and edit collaboratively at the same time. There is even revision history to revert to if things get too out of control.

I think using Google Documents for a group assignment could be a great tool however planning and coordination need to occur for consistency and coming to a desired conclusion. I feel we would have probably come together more in terms of collective intelligence to deliver a more polished writing rather than a show and tell free-for-all if there was a little more structure. Developing an outline as a group would have guided our efforts to a more cohesive result. We could then have refined our thoughts as more information was added.