Thing 20

Google Docs are the most useful tool in our department. We use it for just about everything that we do that needs collaboration. Examples from just this last semester: time sheets for summer work, inventory, Friday meeting agendas, ideas for staff development, ideas for end of the year documents, school maps, training schedules, etc. I really could go on for a long time. All of our New Teacher Orientation is on a Google Doc so that our whole department can view, edit and collaborate. Makes life a lot easier. We've suggested this to our teachers as a way of collaboration, but there are still a few hoops to jump through to get them on the MISD Google Doc...which is the goal.

One problem that we've had with the spreadsheet is that it is very inconsistent when trying to use a form. Last semester we tried to do an inventory form for our campuses to use to document what computers they had in their classroom. We all (6) created the form together, and shared it in exactly the same way. It worked for me, but did not work for 3 of the other ETFs. Very frustrating and we couldn't figure out what the difference was in the way it was shared. I hope it'll be fixed next year or at least we can determine what the problem was.