The whole collaborative nature of Google Docs provides a great way for students to keep track of their own progress in completing tasks for any subject area. It is fairly straightforward to set up a colour coded spreadsheet that will allow students to change the appearance of the document by simply pressing one key.
Just select 'Format, Change colors with rules...' and decide on the rules you want to use. If you are not sure how this works then have a look at the settings on this shared document or just select a cell and 'press the delete key' to see how easily it works!
I am using the above template with my classes this year and the students have been enthusiastically updating their progress as they go along, without having to be constantly reminded to do so!!
This is also a great way of enabling parents to keep track of their own child's progress as a non-editable version of the document can be published to the web, as shown below.
First came across this idea looking at Dan Stucke's own version for his Y11 GCSE class. Many thanks Dan :-)
Patricia Donaghy is an ICT Teacher in Dublin, Ireland. You can read some more information 
