Thing 11- 23 Things

I do like Google docs and think that it solves some of the problems we have with students ability to work in different locations. Our students have a difficult time transporting work back and forth for several reasons.

• They don't all have the same program we use at school and not all documents will convert to our format, I've used Zamzar to convert documents on a regular basis, works great but takes time.
• Our students don't all have e-mail programs to forward documents to and e-mail servers are sometimes blocked.
• Students working with partners or groups usually need to use SharePoint to share documents but they don't have access to SharePoint from home or teachers have to move documents between teacher's folders and students. Both good work arounds, but not very efficient.

Google docs does allow sharing and portability but for school use and in the future I can see where we will be paying for some type of secure service - so yes Microsoft has some competition. I wouldn't store or share everything there and I would want backups of important documents. Since the Internet is sometimes slow, blocked or otherwise unavailable I wouldn't want to count on it for a presentation without a plan B. Technology as I am sure most of you would agree needs a plan A, plan B and just in case a plan C -that comes with a large bottle of aspirin.

I'm actually getting ready to use this with some students but I still have some questions and concerns. In their Terms of Service document :

• section 4, they can stop the service at any time without giving you access to your files
• section 11.1 " By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services."
• section 2.3 you may not accept the contract if you are not of "legal age"

WHAT IS THE LEGAL AGE for students? I can see in the elementary setting up student accounts and a teacher controlling them much they way I'm doing student blog accounts right now, but at what age can we ask a student to set up an account?