Last month, I offered 10 reasons to have students submit papers using Google Documents.

I’ve been teaching an online Jterm course for the last three weeks, and I implemented paper submission via Google Docs. I absolutely love it, and I’ve discovered a few additional reasons to have students use Google Docs.

1. Follow-up Comments
   I had a student ask questions about my comments on a graded paper. All I had to do was open up the document, change the color of my highlighting, and I could add additional comments that addressed the students questions. Google Docs is great for back-and-forth conversation on a paper after it has already been graded.
2. Back-up PDF Reader
   Some of my students were having trouble reading some of the PDFs that I gave them for course reading. They could download the files to their computer, but for whatever reason they would get errors when they tried to read them. We discovered that you can upload PDFs to Google Documents and either read them in the Google Docs PDF reader or print them out. In every case, students were able to read PDFs in Google Docs that they couldn’t read with whatever native desktop PDF reader they were using.
3. Securely Share Electronic Readings
   The PDF reader gave me an idea. I can use Google Docs to securely share electronic readings with students. They’ll already have a google account for the purposes of paper submission. All I need is a spreadsheet with all of their names and gmail addresses, and I can batch upload them as a group in my contacts. The next step is to create a designated folder in Google Docs for readings, and share the folder with the Group.
   (p.s. You can get that spreadsheet easily if you follow my instructions to have students create it for you using Google Forms)