In writing, students are required to create compositions daily, and they are asked to share their writing with the instructor . In the past, I would have students save their work on either their USB or mine. A tedious task in many ways as sometimes students would forget their USB at home, or the USB drive would fail, not to mention the time this process would take. It was definitely not user friendly.
Thanks to all students having a myBVC (Google) account, they now have a very simple way of achieving this task. Students are using Google Drive. Though this may sound like a daunting expectation for students at this level, it was easily achieved by all students in my class during the first lesson.
After asking students to log in to their myBVC account, they opened "Drive" which is located at the top of the home page. To create a new document, they simply chose the red create icon. As students write, their work is saved automatically. This is a very helpful feature! Once students have completed their work, it is time to share it with me. This has a few steps, but it is quite straightforward. They choose the "share" icon, change the privacy setting to "Anyone who has the link", add my email address, and choose "Can edit". Finally, they choose "Share and Send". I now have access to their document, and I can comment and edit their work.
Only two of my students were familiar with Google Drive before my first lesson, and the others were nervous about having to use this type of technology. At the end of the first lesson, all of the students agreed that it was easy and user-friendly. Now, having completed the first week of class, I find that my students are accessing their drive at home and working on their compositions. I have never had students so motivated to write on their own time before. The energy and enthusiasm the students are displaying about using this platform is encouraging.
Inspirational article. This article proves that students at basic reading and writing can take advantages of educational technologies like Google Drive to succeed at learning. And they enjoy it.
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