I’ve been playing around with some of the opportunities for collaborate learning through Google Docs. I created this revision lesson for Yr 12 to fulfil several criteria. Firstly I wanted a student led overview lesson. Secondly I wanted that lesson to give me some feedback on areas of misunderstanding. Thirdly I wanted to be able to discuss essay technique with students individually while the rest of the class worked and finally I wanted something that provided a copy for students to have at the end of the lesson.
Ahead of the lesson I created a Google Doc with 50 questions. I then made this editable to anyone who had the link, and I embedded the link in the class Edmodo course.
In the lesson we logged in to two netbooks and opened up the Google Doc. I also projected the questions. I had a further 4 netbooks around the room students could use for research, alongside their books and notes.
Students had the hour to work together to answer as many questions as they could. They came up with the idea of writing up the 50numbers of whiteboard and crossing them off when someone ‘claimed’ that question. At the end we went through the list together and they went off to complete one further question each for homework. At the end they’ll have a list which I can do a final check on and they can print off if they want.
Evaluation
It worked well, generally students were focussed, plus it did marvels for their teamwork and problem solving skills. I’d be inclined to go for 40 questions next time. Noone like question 50, but I do, so it stays and they’ll all have to submit a Haiku at the end of next lesson!
Variations
If you don’t have Google Docs you could use any collaborative plaform – a wiki or a service such as primarypad
You can view the questions I asked here >. Copyof50questionchallenge (pdf)
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