Innovation in Language Learning

Google Drive applications, particularly docs, have been effectively used in writing classrooms to further collaboration. However, docs and other Google Drive apps can be used equally well in other skill and content areas and with other tasks in which the primary focus is not on constructing a written document, but in analyzing a written document. Reading experts Fisher and Frey have pointed out the benefits that students derive from what they call “collaborative conversations” (2013, Rigorous Reading). These collaborative conversations—in the form of textual annotations, graphic organizers, plot maps, character sketches, chapter summaries and more-- can be facilitated in the EFL classroom through the use of Google Drive.

Google Drive apps can change the face of traditional in-class collaboration.  The traditional model of collaborative learning has been to put students into groups, give them a task, and have them report back either to the class as a whole or perhaps to the instructor only. The benefits of the collaboration occur among the members of each group, where the negotiation of meaning –and hence the learning--takes place. Groups may become isolated units within themselves, and there is likely no inter-group collaboration or sharing of ideas and opinions.

With Google applications, all students in the classroom can interact, even when they are working in separate groups, allowing the benefits of collaboration to extend beyond individual groups to the entire class. Two features of Google Drive make this possible: annotation, and synchronous editing of documents and other files by multiple users.

This presentation will show a variety of Google Drive uses in EFL Reading classes that can further discussions and negotiation in class, and make learning fun and social at the same time.