CMS: What's up with Google Docs?

Deb Perry, technology teacher at CMS, recently completed a lesson with all 8th grade students on assessing various Internet search engines. She used Google Docs for this lesson, since it offered the relative advantage of allowing all students the ability to collaborate synchronously on one document. Everyone saw each groups responses in real time.

All students first reviewed this custom video created by Common Craft called Google Docs in Plain English. (This video is available on YouTube, but is embedded below from TeacherTube, which is not filtered in the elementary.)

The students were asked to remember the search engines and search directories that had been used the week before to look up information on "green" jobs. (They focused on Librarians Internet Index, Clusty, Ask, Surfwax, Quintura, and Scirus.) You can see the categories the students researched for each search engine in the image below.
The students used a rubric which was available in Blackboard. Working in groups, students discussed the values and particular qualities of their search engine and made notes in a Word document. The link for the empty Google Document was available in Blackboard, and the students contributed their findings to the Google Spreadsheet.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW THE FINAL DOCUMENT.