Tool 4: Cool Google Tools (Reader and Docs)

This particular tool was enlightening to me, because I have always heard of this type of technology being available, but I have never participated in a google doc until now. As I was watching some of the youtube footage on this particular topic, I found myself saying "I wish I would have known about this when I was facilitating the after school programs we did" Because I noticed a lot of the after school program required a lot of tedious paperwork. However if the parents and students were trained in this particular area, then when doing permission slips and so forth, I could have the parents fill out their child's form online. I also thought how neat would this be when preparing for a meeting with colleagues how this could be of great help in getting ideas rolling or at least everyone's brains turning because they could add there own notes. I also thought that we could have students record on paper or even an "itouch" certain data onto a template created by the teacher, and this way it could be recorded automatically without us having to go back and enter it in, and with that being a hopeful possibility how this could hopefully integrate within Fitness Gram, and how that would allow more time for activity and less time in the office recording data for students, it would hopefully eliminate an extra step with our huge state test that we do twice a year. All this is hopeful thinking for now, but I definitely think that this is something that could be executable with the right computer programmers and so forth. I liked google reader in the sense that instead of always having to check certain sites we find helpful, that if we were subscribed "we" would be notified of new messages or postings rather than us checking them, and that is one less thing to not have to constantly check, since email is something we check daily anyways as teachers. Like I said I am seeing so many possibilities, but I would like to sit down with someone in our particular field of specialty and let them know what we could really use when it comes to our classroom. Now one draw back I did notice, was I believe, now I could be incorrect as I am not the most technologically advanced, but if they did not have a gmail, they would need to create one as this does not sync correctly with school email for instance...??? Anybody know if this is workable? or something that they are looking into integrating all types of email accounts and types?