Tools and Techniques: Google Spreadsheets

I am not a fan of high tech. I am not a fan of low tech. I am a fan of appropriate tech. However, appropriate technology has become more and more difficult to peg. I find myself osscilateing between all and nothing much the way a chronic dieter swings back and forth between celery and cupcakes.

That being said, I have discovered a great Web 2.0 application: Google Spreadsheets. Actually, I have known about it for some time but it took a while for me to use it in my classroom. I had to play with it first and get comfortable myself before trying it on my kids. As a science teacher, I feel very strongly about data. The message I try to pass on to my students is this: more is better.

Google Spreadsheets is one of Google Docs suite of tools that makes pooling the data of a group of students really easy. Primarily because I (the teacher) don't have to do it. They take responsibility for it and get to learn a very simple, very useful tool for online collaboration.

From now on, I think I am going to use it for students to upload their data after every lab. That way they can compare their results to that of the students in all of my classes. It changes the whole idea of an outlier. Instead of one of a group's data points being "off," those students now have a broader perspective as to what is actually in the acceptable range of data.

Caveat: Google spreadsheets can sometimes be a bit buggy. Initially, it kept hanging up. I found that if you refresh the page it eventually works and autosaves to the spreadsheet. In the end, all of my students posted their data without many problems.