Google Docs, Yes, Yes, Yes

I love Google Docs.  I think ultimately this style of application will become the basis for how we get students to work collaboratively and present group work in the classroom in the future.  The most amazing aspect of Google Docs, to me, is the ability to create a "form" that students can fill out, helping you obtain survey information.  As has been demonstrated in class, where we fill out account info and user-names, the "forms" aspect of Google Docs can completely organize "secretarial" aspects of classroom management and organization.  Most importantly, the sharing aspect of the files is incredibly useful for users, allowing team editing and effective benchmarks to establish progress in a particular project.  I always hated in school dividing up tasks, completing my assigned section and wondering all the way until the due date if my partners were keeping up their end of the deal.  With Google Docs, ideally a student would be able to see how his/her partners are managing the material and assist them if need be.  Also, as a teacher it can be more easily identifiable as to which students contributed and how much, based on timestamps, for any piece of group work.  Again, I love Google Docs!

Twitter

I'm not a huge fan of Twitter.  I can understand its use as a social network, but it seems to me if it were brought into the classroom, as some of the articles I read did, that it would create more distraction for class than aid it.  In the collegiate classroom maybe this would not be such a problem, but as for me, thinking about my future high school classes, I just don't think it would work as well.  I know we would all like to assume that our future students will be studious and hardworking, refraining from "outbursts" of unruliness, but the truth is if one were to use a program like twitter, there will inevitably be a student that will exercise poor judgment in a text just to get a laugh.  Also, if your class were like a huge lecture hall, such a program like Twitter could prove useful in order to address comments that cannot be touched upon during class, but in a smaller environment, a class of fifteen or so, hopefully you would be able to address any problems on the spot during your lesson.  I just think the social stigma associated with programs like Twitter ultimately hinders the usefulness said application can contribute to the learning environment. 

Wiki, Wiki, Whoooooooo!

I enjoyed using the wiki for our class and can see how useful a tool like this could be in the classroom.  I think it's a great way for a class or even just groups of students to collaborate and compile information on topics they are investigating.  I can foresee some short-comings, especially how revisions kept getting erased because of users posting at the same time, but I think these kinds of mishaps will be less likely to occur for work done over longer periods of time.  I think it is vital that the group members to come together before starting to edit the wiki in order to establish some guidelines for formatting and presentation, as I spent a lot of time adjusting forms on our class wiki to assemble some kind of unity.  If everyone has a uniform grasp of what font, size, structure of layout, etc. then the "making it nice" would be a lot less of a hassle.