I just started in a new district and have mentioned Google documents to a few support staff. They are really taking off with it. I had 30 minutes in front of all principals the other day and showed them the Common Craft video on Google docs.

They are booking me to come and train their support staff on using Google Docs. I even had one ask me "why have we been wasting money on [large software brand] office software?"

I explained that partly it was due to the fact that I just started two weeks ago...heh.

Anyway, the idea of collaboration and EASY form management using Google Docs (I don't think abbreviated "GD" looks good) is really taking flight where I am. I appreciate these added links you posted. They will come in handy!
Joel Adkins | Homepage | 08.13.08 - 12:25 am | #

The staff just returned to work and I've already implemented an ASVAB survey for parents, class registration for small workshops, staff day feedback surveys, program change update forms, etc.

The ease of deployment for non-technical users is what will make gDocs shoot into the stratosphere. I'm helping my teachers move from crawling to walking with the aid of gDocs
Chris Bell | 08.13.08 - 12:52 am | #

Miguel, thanks for putting together the video!

If you haven't seen this yet - Writing Our Future, I think it's a great opportunity for high school teachers to start the year in the collaborative writing mode.
Gail Desler | Homepage | 08.13.08 - 8:53 am | #

Gail, please note that I did not put together the video! If someone knows who did, please speak up.

Thanks for sharing the "Writing Our Future" video!

Miguel
Miguel Guhlin | Homepage | 08.13.08 - 9:23 am | #

Perfect blog post title from your post: "High level superintendent type gets GoogleDocs religion"

I look forward to reading it.
Scott S. Floyd | Homepage | 08.13.08 - 9:30 am | #

Thanks for putting together these links. I have been teaching GoogleDocs for staff dev this summer and will teach it for our tech fair. It has been fun because nearly everytime I teach it I am able to add something new that GoogleDocs can do! My personal favorite thing to do is to create a form with headers for a "todo" list. I have the fields set at paragraph text, and headers like date, contact, category (drop down list), details, date completed, and notes.
Once it is is created you can click the embed button, get the code and save it in notepad as an html file on your desktop plus email it to your self. That way you have a quick way to enter information from anywhere!
You can start with the basics and modify it as you need to.
Dee Martin | Homepage | 08.13.08 - 11:55 am | #

Hey Miguel - Google put the video together...
Susan Ettenheim | Homepage | 08.14.08 - 10:55 pm | #

Susan, thanks! So nice to "meet" you in the video. I remember thinking as I watched the video, "Wow, I've read thes folks and now I get to see their faces!" What another level of...appreciation that brought to the video for me!

Take care,
Miguel
Miguel Guhlin | Homepage | 08.14.08 - 11:16 pm | #