The whole collaborative nature of Google Docs provides a great way for students to keep track of their own progress in completing tasks for any subject area.
It is fairly straightforward to set up a colour coded spreadsheet that will allow students to change the appearance of the document by simply pressing one key.
Just select ‘Format, Change colors with rules…’ and decide on the rules you want to use. If you are not sure how this works then have a look at the settings on this shared document or just select a cell and ‘press the delete key’ to see how easily it works!
I am using the above template with my classes this year and the students have been enthusiastically updating their progress as they go along, without having to be constantly reminded to do so!!
This is also a great way of enabling parents to keep track of their own child’s progress as a non-editable version of the document can be published to the web, as shown below.
First came across this idea looking at Dan Stucke’s own version for his Y11 GCSE class. Many thanks Dan
Also, watch out for the ’teaser trailers‘, which will be released in the weeks preceding the conference.
In the meantime, you can join in the 2nd live LAN party from 6:00PM to 8:00PM EDT (10pm GMT) on 20th October 2009. Gather in the EdTechTalk chatroom with colleagues to view two past conference presentations and engage in lively discussion.
Create your own examples or simply explore and use the shared content. You can, also, easily embed any of the content on your blog, website, social network or e-learning system as well as downloading it.
Free Online IT Certification Training is also provided, by ProProfs, for the following qualifications:
* CompTIA Certification
* Cisco Certification
* Microsoft Certification
* Prosoft CIW Certification
* SAT Test Training
The amount of ads displayed can be a bit of a distraction but, if you can get past this, there is lots of useful content included! This is a little spreadsheet quiz based on using Excel.
The whole collaborative nature of Google Docs provides a great way for students to keep track of their own progress in completing tasks for any subject area. 
Patricia Donaghy
