| Despite years of reform efforts in public education, the classrooms of today are more like classrooms of 30 years ago, and less like the classrooms intended according to the goals of reform. One of the goals of reform was to increase collaborative structures within classrooms, to enable collaboration beyond the school campus. Collaboration beyond the school campus is thought to allow learners to participate in a knowledge creation community. Participation in a knowledge creation community enables learners within a school to collaborate not only with other learners, but also with experts in a given field. Ultimately, instead of mimicking subject area experts, learners are able to participate alongside experts, attempting to solve real world problems.;Collaboration beyond the school campus can be made possible through technology. Online collaboration tools and the all-encompassing "cloud" have sprouted up as possible solutions to facilitate collaboration. However, Google Apps has emerged as the front runner, because of its unique ability for multiple users to simultaneously collaborate on a single document in real time. Additionally, Google Apps provides numerous tools that not only have collaboration as an inherent feature, but are also specialized to complete numerous tasks.;This study sought to examine how Google Apps improved collaborative structures in the Hawaii Department of Education (HIDOE), and what hindered the implementation of Google Apps in HIDOE. The results showed that Google Apps improved collaborative structures in HIDOE, but the improvements were mainly to enhance and not change pedagogical practices. The results also showed that barriers within HIDOE exist, which hinder the implementation of Google Apps. However, state-level technology administrators have applied administrative innovations, which allowed for numerous technical innovations. |
