Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

What’s in a name?

Dec 10th, 2009 by Cathy Nelson

I was invited to introduce Google Docs for a collaborative project the teacher is riding through the end of the semester (which is in just 6 days!!)

Cloud Computing made easy
I talked about what it was, introduced the term “cloud computing,” showed the Common Craft video on Google Docs, and then proceeded to log into my account. I made a short survey using Google Forms to collect data from the class about connectivity, how to do projects at home when one does not have the application, etc, and immediately had them take the survey. I showed them the data in a visual format too! I had made a presentation of a few slides to use in this introduction, primarily to model the presentation app and to move me through the intro (below) and it’s not a stellar example, but we didn’t spend a lot of time on the presentation itself. We wanted the kids to begin exploring the tools for themselves.

So back to my list of google docs files that SERIOUSLY need to be filed in folders, I showed them my list owned by me, particularly pointing out which ones were shared and collaboratively created. I kept saying “do as I say, not as I do” because of the lack of indexing here–shame on my librarian side! Anyway I thought it was worth a giggle, but the almost 30 students, all male with the exception of 3–across grades 10, 11, & 12–laughed in that “knowing” way that there is a joke you suspect is about you. They were not laughing at my joke, but rather somehow “I” had become the point of humor. I looked baffled, trying desperately to figure out what I had said or done to cause me to be the object of the joke. When no one volunteered, I went on, saying something to the effect that the Google Suite was not the only solution, but I was a big fan. When I used the term “but” they fell apart all over again. Finally the teacher sitting in the back row pointed to my list of files. Yep, there it was. This class of hormone raging teens was losing it over one of my file names. See it below. Can you figure out which one they were laughing over?

Why the name?
Okay so please allow me to explain. First they thought it hilarious that the file was NOT shared–that it was “private” information. Then they insisted on seeing the file. They were really disappointed to discover it was just collection analyses compared, hence the abbreviated name.

Valuable lesson learned
But I learned a VALUABLE lesson today, and that is to be more careful when naming my docs here! I think my friend Kathy Schrock was right. I tweeted this out to share with my PLN, and she dm’d me saying: