My english teacher wants to be able to see document history. He says that my process is more important than the product. Is there any way to do this in libreoffice or some other open source document editor?
My english teacher wants to be able to see document history. He says that my process is more important than the product. Is there any way to do this in libreoffice or some other open source document editor?
Step 1 is communication.
Talk to your english teacher. Explain to them, why Google Docs, the way they track history and changes, is not a preferred option for you, due to ethical or privacy considerations.
Explain to them your selected technical alternatives for tracking changes. A few alternatives are (many commenters already covered):
Secondly, you need to remember that what your english teacher wants is not “document history”, but instead seeing your process (maybe to prove you didn’t chatgpt it, in which case, writing it on paper also might prove that). If none of those technical alternatives are viable solutions for them, another alternative is to simply submit documents that encapsulate each stage of the process. For example, a common pattern that my teachers and professors would do for writing assignments is:
The above setup is nice, because it is not tied to any particular software, and can even be executed on paper. This would mean that future students, similar to you, going through the same class, could write essays with their preferred writing software, instead of only with google docs or whatever solution you get the teacher to learn how to work with (assuming they are nontechnical and teaching the teacher is difficult.
I only started seeing it done like this in college classes. High school classes only sometimes required an outline, and never required an annotated bibliography. It also is more work then just writing an essay from sources.
But the two big benefits of this setup are:
Good Luck!