"OOOOOHHH AAAAH!"

This is the reaction I got when I told my fourth graders that we were going to be starting a collaborative project on North Carolina using Google Presentations. They love working in groups, of course, so this was right up there alley. Being a self proclaimed Google Girl, I use Google Drive all the time! It's just so easy to use and share! But I haven't used it much with my students for creating, mostly because they don't have their own Google Drive accounts. But, after talking to a few of my teacher "idols", I decided to give it a whirl. I created a Google Presentation for each group and shared it with them for editing. We discussed proper use of the documents and how to use the chat feature (which they love). The students were amazed that they could sit at their own individual computers and work with 3 others scattered around the room. They were actually communicating and discussing their project more by using the chat feature than they usually do simply talking about it. It was so great to see them collaborating and working together that I shared the links with a teacher in Pennsylvania. He let his 8th graders look in while my kids were working. They sent a nice message in the chat box thanking my kids for sharing and how great they were doing! My kiddos were ecstatic!!! All their little chests poked out and their chins raised with pride that 8th graders in another state were commenting on their work! They should be finishing their presentations next week and then we will be presenting them to the class (and possibly on UStream) the next. I'm sure this is only the first of many Google Docs projects we will be doing!