Thursday, June 04, 2009

My New Toy

We've done it. We've ordered a netbook. I've been mulling this over all year but I haven't had the guts to pull the trigger. My husband finally took that step for me. It should arrive tomorrow.

My goal is to use this netbook for all my anecdotal record keeping. I'd like to keep these records in google docs that could also be used by my amazing co-teacher. Sadly, I'm really bad at being able to plan well for something ahead of time. I tend to have to modify again and again in the midst of everything (hence my classroom being rearranged almost a dozen times this year).

I want these records to be easy to use both as we input information and as we come back to them. I'm pretty good about keeping anecdotal records on my students but I am awful at using them to plan future instruction. I want to solve that problem. My hope is that google docs will make it so that I can sort and search in order to form small groups for enrichment or remediation.

Do you know of anyone who has done something like this? Do you have any advice for how to organize it? Can you think of any pitfalls we should be planning to avoid?

2 comments:

Ian H. said...

Have fun with it! What kind did you get?

Tim said...

I'm afraid that the only piece of Google Docs that sorts is the spreadsheet and it will only sort by one column at a time. More advanced sort tools are near the top of the list for the developers but there's no telling when those updates will appear.

Having said that, I still love Docs for collaboration. We use it in the office for planning. Even though our cubes are in the same room, it doesn't mean we are ever in them at the same time.

Enjoy your new computer and let us know about your experience, the good, bad and otherwise.