[DG: Teaching & Learning] Using Google Docs

[John Johnston]

Here are some observations of the rSmart Google Docs integration:

Integration Features:
• Dynamic links to Google Docs. Derivative formats of a Google Docs are automatically updated when the source file is edited
• Read access to Google Docs for site participants. Resources created of the type “Link to Google Doc” will automatically allow sakai site participants to read the content of the Doc regardless of the permissions settings for that document in Google Docs.
• Access to the Google conversion engine (save files as .pdf, jpeg, .zip, rtf, etc.). Conversion formats available vary depending on the file type of the source file.
• Document editing within Google Docs (for those with granted access through Google Docs)


Shortcomings:
• Google Mail, Calendar, Photos, and Sites are not integrated
• The directory of Google Docs does not provide any metadata (date Modified, file type, size); This limits the user’s ability to identify the correct file
• Editing permissions from the Resource tool are not passed through to Google Docs to site participants with “edit any resource” permission (empowered users can edit properties, but not the file contents in Google Docs). 

On Mar 20, 2011, at 1:04 PM, Bruce D'Arcus wrote:

> On Fri, Mar 18, 2011 at 11:07 AM, Neil Sheflin <sheflin at rci.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>> I am using google docs to have students in a 30 member honors
>> macroeconomics course do weekly, 'team' executive summaries of course
>> related current news. Each student in a team of 3 is supposed to write a
>> punchy, bulleted exec summary of an item related to the team's focus
>> (economists' blogs, monetary policy, etc.) and supposed to correct,
>> extend, comment on another team member's post. Since all students work
>> on the same document, they advertently or inadvertently are seeing
>> everyone else's postings, and I can quickly go down the 'page' and see
>> what everyone is doing. Due to very early beta implementation of docs in
>> sakai, I am doing it out of sakai so far, although using sakai for the
>> rest of the course. I previously tried this in wiki, too awkward, and
>> using blog, way too awkward.
> 
> I wonder how the new commenting features in Google Docs might
> facilitate enhanced collaborative approaches like this.
> 
> <http://googledocs.blogspot.com/2011/03/introducing-discussions-in-google-docs.html>
> 
> I haven't used this sort of thing yet in classes, but I'm interested
> in exploring the possibilities. The key technical thing that I'd need
> to do this is for Sakai permissions to be integrated with Google Docs
> permissions, so that I could assign a Sakai group, say responsibility
> for a document, and they in turn could open up their doc(s) for wider
> viewing and comments, without having to go manually configure this
> themselves (by adding lists of email addresses, say).
> 
> Does the GD integration rSmart wrote cover this?
> 
> Bruce
> _______________________________________________
> pedagogy mailing list
> pedagogy at collab.sakaiproject.org
> http://collab.sakaiproject.org/mailman/listinfo/pedagogy
> 
> TO UNSUBSCRIBE: send email to pedagogy-unsubscribe at collab.sakaiproject.org with a subject of "unsubscribe"
> 
> 

=============================================
John Johnston, Sr. Business Systems Analyst
Teaching and Learning Group, ITS, University of MIchigan
=============================================