Improve Teamwork with Tasks in Google Docs

I'm going to start us out with a scenario: You are part of a committee (or club or group or PLC or any other collection of people). You have a meeting. At that meeting, you have some discussions, you write down some ideas or notes, and you probably create some sort of action plan or provide individuals with specific tasks to complete before you meet again. Does this sound familiar?

I'm sure you know that you can use Google Docs to make a collaborative document to take notes, and you may even know about the checklist feature that allows you to make "To Do" lists:

But did you know that you can also assign items from that "To Do" list to specific people? With specific deadlines? When you hover over each item in the list, you will see a little checked circle with a plus sign - it will say "Assign as a task":

If you click on that circle, you will be prompted to assign the task to someone - just type in their name. You will also be able to select a "due date" for the task. Then click Assign Task. You will now see that user's profile photo next to the item and if you hover over it, you will see all of the task details:

That sounds pretty cool, but it gets better...here are all the ways that someone could see this assigned task:

• Email Notification - once a task has been assigned to you, you receive an email letting you know about it.

• In the Document Itself - You can see all assigned tasks in your document quickly by going to "Tools" at the top and selecting "Tasks".

• In Your Tasks List - When you are in your Google Drive, there are little icons on the left side - the circle with the checkbox is your Task list. You can make your own personal tasks, but you will also see any tasks that have been assigned to you. (If you don't see the icons, you may have to click the arrow in the bottom right corner to open the sidebar.)

• In Your Google Calendar - Finally, if your task has a "due date", you will see it in your Google Calendar for that date!

I hope this feature will be as beneficial to you and your students as I envision it could be!