Google Docs- Decentralizing Learning with Comments

With the deployment of a one-to-one environment in my classes this year, a goal of mine is to remove myself from the centre of the classroom. I want to decentralize the learning environment so I am no longer the only source of course content. In the first few weeks I have found some amazing uses of Google apps to put the learning and student voice at the centre of the classroom.

Decentralizing Learning- Google Docs and Commenting

To change the focus from a teacher espousing knowledge and content, to the content and learning itself, I have had some great success with Google Docs. As part of our grade 10 academic English course, students study logic and rhetoric. One of the primary focusses is on their ability to identify 19 logical fallacies in literature and the world outside of school. What follows is my workflow in creating the space for student voice to help their classmates develop a better understanding of logical fallacies.

1. Using our paper handout of Fallacies in Logic, I scanned the document to a .pdf, uploaded it to Google Drive, and "Open[ed] with" Google Docs. This created an OCR scanned and editable document that digitized the handout with few corrections necessary.
2. The Logical Fallacies Google Doc was then attached to an announcement of the "Learning Goals" for the day on Google Classroom. In the sharing privileges, the Doc was set to be available to anyone with the link in our district (only people using the school administered Google Ed accounts) with privileges set to "Can Comment".
3. While I was at the front of the class providing explanations and examples of each of the 19 fallacies, the entire class was encouraged to highlight a fallacy and add a comment providing a further explanation, the teacher's example, their own example, or a question.

After class was over, I reviewed the comments on the Doc and was amazed to see what was happening while I was teaching. There was almost no example of students copying my examples or definitions verbatim, but a conversation with additional examples (most much better than mine, embarrassingly enough) and students building off each others' examples had occurred. The students were able to learn and share their understanding of the fallacies in real-time and in a way that I could not replicate on my own.