Google+Docs-+Need+for+Innovation

Two issues facing the district have spread through the media like wildfire in the last couple of months. The first is the increasing deficit in our budget. We have cut all after school programs, summer school, teaching positions, nurses and many other vital school staff positions. Despite this effort, this deficit continues to grow. The other is the low performance of many students on the state standardized tests. They say our schools are failing and that our district is collapsing. I say it is an indicator that our current practices, not the district, are coming to an end. Our strength as an educational institution has always been providing students with an education that reflects real world experiences. We have lost focus on that strength in an attempt to improve on our weaknesses. Today I suggest we use that strength to improve our weaknesses.

I am not going to sit here and pretend that a simple switch to Google Docs is going to solve those problems. It won't. It is a step, however, towards a district that is both educationally enriching and budget conscious. We need to cut spending. We also need to prepare our students for the real world. We need solutions to education which are both affordable and innovative, solutions that include skills that have real life applications.

Firstly I will state that Google Docs is free. Simply put it is free. We have computers. We have internet access in all schools. What we do not have are the funds to renew or purchase new software licenses for these connected machines. Spending money on a product that you can get for free is wasteful, especially when that product does the same functions with the added benefit of collaboration. Collaboration is key to how we manage the district and how our children learn.

Think about this: We pay thousands of dollars per school to purchase a server to store all of the students work and then pay someone to manage that server (and someone else to fix it when it goes down). At the same time, we limit access to the server for security reasons, forcing all student work to stay in the building. Imagine if students had 24/7 access to their work and their collaborative work. Imagine if students could have access to their classwork on their mobile phone or home computer. Imagine that student getting real-time feedback from their teacher, or getting the feedback the next time they opened up their work? With Google Docs, student work is stored in the "cloud." It is accessible everywhere with an internet connection (which 87% of our students have at home and the rest have on their phone and at the local library (or McDonalds). Our students are connected. Those who are not have not taken advantage of free internet programs in the city mostly because they do not know about them. Getting these resources to families would be free yet invaluable. Google docs comes with free applications to create documents, make presentations, draw, build forms and manage databases and create formulas that connect data to form information in a spreadsheet. These are some of the most widely used applications on computers in the world and access to them is free. Storage of them is free.

Students learn best when collaborating with their peers. Their lives, however, are varied and complex and do not always allow for collaboration outside of school. Yet with Google Docs, collaboration can be both synchronous and asynchronous allowing for collaboration to happen when it is best for each student. Imagine grouping struggling students with proficient students on a collaborative task. These students will learn with and from each other outside of school. If we can get students more engaged outside of school, scores will increase.

Google Docs will not solve our problems, but it is a step in the right direction. There are many other tools that increase productivity and learning while greatly decreasing spending. These tools not only enhance learning and bridge a gap between home and school but also prepare our students to enter a competitive digitally literate world.