We’re so excited about our new cloud-based assistive technology that can be used by any student that needs literacy support! Our new board-wide tool, Read&Write for Google Chrome, is used within the Google platform (G Suite), so we’re going to be writing about some of the G Suite applications in order to become more familiar with them.

First up: Google Docs! Did you know that every teacher and student at EMSB has access to Google Docs with their EMSB accounts? If you would like to know more, please contact your ICT, RECIT or AT consultant.

What is Google Docs?

Google Docs is the word processing application of GSuite (its based in your browser, so its cloud-based).  Its also an excellent real-time collaboration tool for writing. Students and teachers can edit a document at the same time, while seeing each others’ writing and edits instantaneously.

Google Docs is organized like a filing cabinet. You can create folders and add your files into those folders. You can also share files and folders easily with others.

Bonus: you don’t have to save files or folders. They are automatically saved to Google Drive, the online storage for Google Docs.

There are some amazing features in Docs (among them: voice typing, collaboration tools, commenting, chat, etc.) for students and teachers. For a quick overview of Docs:

Check out this video tutorial.

Or this “Get Started with Docs” from the G Suite Learning Centre.