Data-Driven Activities: Google Docs

Google Docs provides an excellent platform for math teachers to design and deliver quizzes, particularly word-oriented problems such as interpretive exercises that require higher-order thinking from students. An interpretive exercise provides rich introductory textual descriptions with embedded mathematical details and/or visual displays from which students extract mathematical concepts. Following introductory material are several multiple choice questions. Google Docs supports teachers in both preparing text-heavy/tabular word problems and importing images for students to address in a question or question set. Teachers can create a quiz template and then copy the file multiple times to share with small student groups or individuals. Students can access and respond to teacher questions electronically, perhaps by highlighting and marking the multiple choice answers they wish to select in bold face. Alternatively, students can save teacher questions in text, PDF, or Word formats to complete offline. Teachers can utilize Google Docs built-in commenting feature to provide feedback directly on student-edited documents.