I wish I could take credit for this one. But let's be real, most of the best ideas in teaching were copied from somewhere else and modified for classroom use. In this case, the stolen idea came from a link I noticed one of the Wired.com blogs. They have a document that charts layoffs in the tech industry. It turns out it is nothing more than a spreadsheet created in Google Docs. The document automatically updates every 5 minutes. This means any changes the Wired.com staff makes to this document are available to their readers within minutes.
We used this tool in class today to help students with a research project they were working on. I noticed that many students throughout the day were asking for help finding information. Rather than finding the same information multiple times, I created a Google Spreadsheet with a list of links and posted the url on my class website. It ended up working out really well, with students later in the day being able to benefit from links I found and saved in the morning!
If you would like to recreate this, simply:
- Create a document within Google.
- Click Share --> Publish as a Web Page --> Publish Now
- Then simply copy and paste the link to your website, blog, Twitter, etc.
- Your page is now available to the world!
