Google Docs New Discussion Features

Google Docs New Discussion Features

Google Docs has had a commenting system for almost a year now. That system is a good one that I will use for commenting on my students' writing hopefully at Chulalongkorn University or Assumption University. In earlier posting, I requested and or suggested that CMU move toward the FREE Google Educational platform and do away with the squirrel mail. As usual, the ITSC and the CMU administrators are slow about ANY improvement with classroom based technology. Chulalongkorn University is the first and only Thai University with the FREE Google Educational Platform. I was amazed on how balanced and advanced the international thinking and research ranking at Chulalongkorn University.

Google announced an enhancement to the Google Docs commenting system. The enhancement is being called "discussions." Discussions will allow document collaborators to have threaded conversations in the margins of a document. By including the @ symbol before a collaborator's name you can reply directly to that person. Another option in discussions is the option to be notified via email of replies to your comments in Google Docs.

Right now discussions in Google Docs is only available for new documents. If you created a document prior to this announcement, it won't have the discussion feature enabled. Watch the video below to learn more about Google Docs discussions.

 

Educational Applications:

Discussions in Google Docs could be a great tool to use when editing students' writing. Discussions could also be very handy for groups students that are working together to create a document. Students will be able to track each other's changes and comments and reply directly to each other for peer to peer evaluations. I currently use titanpad.com and the MSword documents with editing features of both. To check for plagiarism I use viper. I believe the switch to Google Docs will make this easier overall. Google is becoming the premier educational platform for writing and research as they improve individual products and allow more integration with all of the Google essentials. To review all the “How to” in Google Docs community videos, I suggest subscribe and get up to speed on all the Google docs features…Enjoy! I just wished Zotero would be fully integrated will all integrated features. Yes, I know you can load the Google add on in Firefox and this will allow Zotero to function fully but that means I would not be able to use Google Chrome and its integrated features...I will just have to be patient for Google executives talk with Zotero (if ever).