First's Firsts

This school year my school district took Microsoft Office off all of the student devices. We now have iWork as well as Libreoffice, but using either of these choices mean that a student must complete the work on the device they started on. The majority of the work that our intermediate students do is on Google Docs, but up until now all of the primary students have been using Office. Well since they no longer have that as an option primary needed to find another option. After talking with all of the first and second grade teachers we decided to try and use Google Docs in conjunction with Google Classroom to help with file management. Using Google Apps will be a little challenging for our young learners because the login is much more difficult including capital letters, which is what they usually learn the first couple weeks, not to mention the @ and the length.

I want to celebrate these teachers' willingness to take a risk and try something new. The past two weeks all of the first grade classes came in to the computer lab and logged in to their accounts for the first time and started working on their first Google Doc. Although there were multiple adults in the room to help for the first time, and it took a little longer than usual, all of the students were successful. They logged in which included all of the accepting that comes along with a new account, joined the Google Classroom, created their first document, changed the font and font size, and typed their name and date ... all in under an hour! I know that this will be faster the more they do it. The best part is that they came back and completed multiple assignments, the students have learned the process and the teachers are now comfortable. I am so proud!