Earlier today Google added a handy new sharing setting to Google Documents. Now when you share a document with someone you have the option to give him or her “comment-only” access. Comment-only access means that the person with whom you have shared your document can only add notes to the margins of your document but cannot actually change the content of what you have written. In the past your only sharing options were “can edit” and “can view.”

Applications for Education
My immediate thoughts when I learned about the “comment-only” setting went to peer-editing. Using the comment-only setting students can share their documents and get feedback without any risk of their peers accidentally making drastic changes to their documents.

I also think that the comment-only setting could be great for having students annotate the text of a primary source document that you may have found in the public domain. For example, I could have my U.S. History students annotate a copy of The Declaration of Independence.

H/T to Walter McKenzie.