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The Hottest Chat App for Teens is Google Docs (theatlantic.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: As more and more laptops find their way into middle and high schools, educators are using Google Docs to do collaborative exercises and help students follow along with the lesson plan. The students, however, are using it to organize running conversations behind teachers' backs. Teens told me they use Google Docs to chat just about any time they need to put their phone away but know their friends will be on computers. Sometimes they'll use the service's live chat function, which doesn't open by default, and which many teachers don't even know exists. Or, they'll take advantage of the fact that Google allows users to highlight certain phrases or words, then comment on them via a pop-up box on the right side: They'll clone a teacher's shared Google document, then chat in the comments, so it appears to the causal viewer that they're just making notes on the lesson plan. If a teacher approaches to take a closer look, they can click the "Resolve" button and the entire thread will disappear.
If the project isn't a collaborative one, kids will just create a shared document where they'll chat line by line in what looks like a paragraph of text. "People will just make a new page and talk in different fonts so you know who is who," Skyler said. "I had one really good friend and we were in different homerooms. So, we'd email each other a doc and would just chat about whatever was going on." At the end of class, they just delete a doc or resolve all the comments. Rarely does anyone save them the way previous generations may have stored away paper notes from friends.
If the project isn't a collaborative one, kids will just create a shared document where they'll chat line by line in what looks like a paragraph of text. "People will just make a new page and talk in different fonts so you know who is who," Skyler said. "I had one really good friend and we were in different homerooms. So, we'd email each other a doc and would just chat about whatever was going on." At the end of class, they just delete a doc or resolve all the comments. Rarely does anyone save them the way previous generations may have stored away paper notes from friends.
There's no lack of equity in the tools that any of the teachers, students, or indeed, any of us have.
Teachers don't have a mainframe and students dumb terminals.
No, instead we have CaptainDork's Corollary: "For every motherfucker out there with a computer, there's another motherfucker out there with a computer."
In an essentially P2P architecture, it's a level playing field.
The students are just a lot more imaginative, creative, and innovative, and connected than the teachers.
Because the student population is larger than the teacher headcount, simple math predicts that the students are more capable.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Chromebooks are popular in schools now. And by popular, I mean with the school districts.
Chromebooks are cheap. The district can negotiate with multiple hardware manufacturers for volume discounts. A Chromebook is easily replaced if lost, stolen or eaten. All of the student's "cloud based" course work and assignments are instantly on the new Chromebook as soon as the student logs in. The Chromebooks are easily reset -- even remotely, for the next incoming school year. With Cloud Print, students -- or faculty -- can print to various printers in the school to which they are given access. Access to everything on a Chromebook is centrally controlled once the district joins new Chromebook hardware to their Google account.
Now given the above, THAT is the biggest reason why I see Google Docs as a chat application. If everyone had Windows or Macs they could use other potential chat applications.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
So they reinvented Google Wave
They see people almost being denied a supreme court seat because they once had a beer while in school.
Whoa! That must be some super thick syrupy Kool-Aid you are drinking there.
The reason justice Kavanaugh was taken to task, was not that he had a beer, it is that he lied about his conduct, which included heavy drinking and mistreatment of female students.
The recent admissions scandal story makes a nice addendum to justice Kavanaugh's appointment.