A revolution in being able to monitor student work from afar has happened in the past year with Google Docs. (Docs.Google.com) For the past three weeks, I have been traveling in Poland, the Ukraine and Romania, looking at schools among other things. Since all my students work is done online in Google Docs it enables me to read and correct their work from anywhere in the world. Not all teachers would be excited about accessing student work when they are away on a trip, but Docs gives them the option if they want to. My students are all journalism students who need to keep writing every week in order to gain fluency and proficiency. It is an exciting tool that enables up to fifty people to collaborate on and comment on a document. Parents and teachers might want to check it out to see for themselves.
In my recent travels, I have been impressed that schools even in remote villages in East Europe have some kind of Internet access, even if they are using old computers and phone lines. In most cities in Poland, there is free wireless access in the malls and in Wroclaw, Poland I saw kids with laptops in the malls everywhere. In a tiny village outside of Krakow, the school had a computer lab and when we came in to the class, students first showed us their school website and then accessed my school’s website.(http://voice.paly.net) They were excited to make the connection and we hope to continue it. More schools might want to take advantage of connecting with students around the world using ePals (www.ePals.com) which is the world’s largest online learning community.
