Making Life Better for Kids (and Teachers)

As we all know, technology can be a great thing. Sure, it can be a pain sometimes, but there is often a lot of positives about the new technologies that are out there. Over break, our library automation software was updated and today was the first live day. Overall, you never know what will happen with a software upgrade, but for the most part, everything went rather smoothly. My library and 2 others are piloting the software prior to the rest of our schools jumping on board. I love being part of pilot programs because I'm willing to jump and try new things. I'm open to learning and am always looking for ways to make life easier for my students and teachers. This new software has a lot of great parts and I can't wait to share it with staff and students. They will certainly benefit from it and will hopefully learn more!

The three media specialists involved are using Google Docs to keep track of our new discoveries, tips, and other general notes and questions about the software. I introduced this web 2.0 technology and they really seem to like it. This collaboration tool is great and it's letting us work together and learn from each other rather than keep individual notes. As we learn more, we can edit the document. In addition, as the other schools get the software, they can have access to the document as well.

I'm thrilled with Google Docs. For us, the sharing of information is a necessity and this web 2.0 tool is going to be a huge help! I'm curious if anyone has used Google Docs with students? Beyond the headache of getting accounts set up for kids, is it worth a shot?