One of the courses that I’m teaching this year has an emphasis on computer repair and support of computers in a small business environment. Documenting everything is one of the things that I emphasize in this course. That includes documenting problems as first observed, documenting troubleshooting steps, and documenting resolutions. 

Recently, my class acquired a bunch of older computers that won’t properly start-up. Most of them are sending beep codes indicating errors with their Intel-based motherboards. Before I set my students to attempting to fix these computers they’re going to review the steps of the troubleshooting process. To that end, my students will be using Google Drawings today to create flowcharts of the steps that they’ll take to troubleshoot based on the beep codes that they hear when they try to start the computers. Intel publishes a list of beep codes. Students will start their flowcharts working from that published list. 

There are lots of tools that my students could use to create their flowcharts. Today, they’ll be using Google Drawings to create their flowcharts. There are two reasons why I’m having them use Google Drawings. First, Google Drawings has some simple templates that they can modify for today’s activity. Second, my students can share their Google Drawings with me via Google Classroom as I’ve made today’s activity an assignment in Google Classroom. 

Here’s a video overview of using Google Drawings and Google Classroom to distribute flowchart and graphic organizer templates.