If I could give every teacher one tech tool, it would be to be able to teach "in a Google cloud." Our school got "cloud coverage," this year. It has meant that sharing work student to student and student to teacher is possible with a few clicks. Here is an example of how Google docs has changed the most straight forward of assignments in my classroom: reading and responding to a set of questions about a lab or a reading.
The old way: Students had questions passed out or e-mailed to them. They wrote answers. They printed their work and passed it in. I wrote comments and passed it back. I addressed any misconceptions revealed by the assignment with the whole class. And in most cases, that was the end of things. If a student really didn't seem to understand the work, I might ask them to redo it.
The new way: Once students write their answers on a Google doc, my interactions become more individualized. I am not correcting their answers so much as editing and responding with more specific follow-up questions. I ask almost all my students to take a second try at these questions now.
They get a second chance to show their understanding (and almost all are successful the second time.) And I get a second chance to target my instruction in an individualized way.
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