This week’s entry in the School Counseling Technology Series will cover part one of the Google Docs tutorial I have planned for you. This is a (most likely) two part video blog covering the different aspects of Google Docs, how we can use these powerful tools as educators, and a quick tutorial on how to use each program within Google Docs. Google recently changed their Google Docs to Google Drive, which has a downloadable program that syncs a folder on your PC with all of your Google Docs files — this is not required to use Google Docs.
This first post will cover the Document and Presentation functions of Google Docs. These three are going to most likely be your biggest focus (along with the Form & Spreadsheet function). As I mentioned in the preview of Google Docs, it is all hosted in the “Cloud” or digitally online. This provides us with the ability to share, collaborate, and access our work anywhere with internet connectivity (including phones, tablets/iPads, and laptops).
As always, if you have any questions, comments, or requests for things you would like to see covered – I will do my best to provide. Shoot me an email, comment below, or Tweet me.
Video and links after the break.
Links to view my demo documents (you can try commenting on them too):
Document Link Document Help Page
Presentation Link Presentation Help Page
The blog author, Jeffrey Ream M.S, PPS, writes for The Counseling Geek. Connect with Jeff via email, Twitter, Google+, and Facebook.
I see a lot of counselors use Google Docs for counseling notes, referrals, etc. Is there any concern about privacy and confidentiality? Any tips for precautions if someone does use it for these reasons?
I don’t store counseling notes in the cloud and hesitate to suggest it. Dropbox and Google Drive would likely comply with a subpoena to give notes they store over to a court. There are some more advanced ways to encrypt folders in Google Drive and Dropbox but I keep them stored locally in a password protected and encrypted folder. I do host low level info (names etc) via the cloud though.
(PS – this post is due for an update – one of my first)