Document Sharing

This post is about using Google Drive for document sharing.  While I can see how this can be a useful resource, I can't see it being practical to use in the elementary art room.  Especially when there's little access to iPads, or any way to get online.  And I'm not sure how I could set up accounts on Google for my students, or how I would work around that so that they could collaborate on documents.

My friend, Stacey shared a document with me. I added comments and added content to the document as well.  

This is a screenshot of documents that have been shared with me.

Here is a screenshot of that document opened, where I have added comments and added my own text and photo to it.

And here is a link to the document that we shared.

I can think of a couple of ways that this could be useful to me.  First, I think it would be incredibly useful to use with other members of committees that I serve on or other staff members relating to a specific topic or collaborating on meeting notes or anything like that.  I like the fact that you can add notes, make changes to documents, and I think that would be a great way to save on time and paper too!
In the classroom, it might be a fun way to create a brainstorm list for ideas for artwork or for students to add their thoughts and opinions about a particular artwork as well.  I think the training I would have to do so that elementary kids would be independent enough to do this type of activity is a little overwhelming, and especially so, since we do not have one-to-one technology.
I also think it might be a fun way to work on a big project together, like writing a life history with my family or something.  I know that's not an art related thing, but one of the things I treasure is a stack of paper my grandma handwrote of her life.  Wouldn't it be cool to do this with your family where everyone can collaborate on stories they remember?

When Stacey first sent this to me, I didn't know what it was until I got to this lesson.  So then I opened it up and tried some of the things I learned about in the tutorial.  It was easy to add comments & make changes in the document.