Student Collaboration in the Online Classroom with Google Docs

When using Google Apps, I have noticed that most people focus on the "Make a copy" kind of assignment. 

The teacher creates an assignment that they send to their students. The students make a copy, complete the assignment, and send it back to the teacher. 

This process is done over and over again. I do it all the time! It is not a bad thing! 

But Google Docs can do so much more than that!

I know it can be scary to give students access to your master of any type of assignment but you can make a copy of the original or always revert to the original version. 

So, here are some amazing ways to have students collaborating in Google Docs. 

The first one is a product in my TPT store, but I have my students work together in a Google Doc to create our class rules! Check it out linked below. 

I try to think about what I would have students collaborating on in the classroom and then translate that to online learning. 

So another option would be to do silent discussions. One way to do this would be to have the discussion topics each on their own page in a Google Doc or on a Google Slides Presentation, and students move through and add to the discussion by typing in the document. 

You can also have students access a common Hyperdoc or some other online text and "annotate" it as they go through it. Give students suggesting rights or comment rights and this allows them to make comments, but in no way change the original text.

They can also have conversations with their classmates in those comments or by @ -ing each other! 

Google Tools were specifically built for collaboration. That is what sets them apart.

Yes, Google Docs is basically Microsoft Word, but it has abilities that Word can never have because Docs is cloud-based and collaborative. We as teachers just need to take advantage of it!  

Give it a try and let me know how it goes!