Improving Writing Skills with Google Drive

Google Drive make it easier to do the draft. Since Google Drive automatically saves, students can write their thoughts down even when their writing is not perfect. Google Drive also allow users to edit collaboratively so students can share their work to their writing buddies at this stage for peer editing. Google Drive also help in the revision process, the third step of the writing process. Since Google Drive allow users to insert comments or see the revision history, whatever the teacher ask the students to use during peer review, the author of the writing piece can think about the comments of his/her writing buddies and edit his work or if they edit it directly, which I think would be confusing for younger students, the author can decide if he/she will or not accept the changes or go with an earlier version of his/her writing piece which can be his/her own version or another students’ who edited it earlier than the others. Since it is easy to share Google docs for editing, obviously, this Google Drive feature lends itself in proofreading and publishing, the fourth and last step of the writing process, the student can share  it to the teacher for proofreading and when the teacher approves the writing piece, the student can publish his work by sharing it to the whole class at this time or better yet if the class has a classroom blog with links to each students’ blogs he can click on the web clipboard button to copy his selection to the web clipboard  then paste it on his own student blog.

The more student write the better they will be at it. Google Drive will help improve students writing because they can save a document limitless times as well as share documents for peer editing. I would introduce Google Drive during center time, students will take turns typing their draft in the class computer while the rest of the group will do their group work. This way when students will have to do the revising part of the writing process, they will have a fresh look after not looking for their output for a while. After everyone has their first draft, I would assign buddies to work together on a classmate writing output (still during center time). The class will probably do the draft for the first week then revision during the second week since there is only one computer in the classroom unless of course I managed to borrow at least five laptops from the teacher center for the first week. After introducing Google Drive in class I can share a book report form that the students can fill up at home. 



The results of the entries in the book report form will display directly on My Class Book Report Entries spreadsheet that is part of my Google docs.

 This way I was not only able to track who took what books home from the class library but also who is not doing this homework. I would of course encourage parents to go to the local library with their child to complete this assignment if they don’t have computer connected to the internet at home or if they don’t have a cellphone with internet connections.