I am slowly acknowledging the fact that school is soon to begin and all the wondrous information I have been privy to over this summer of learning needs to be tried and applied. today, I am experimenting just a tad more with my Google account. This reminded me that I had not entered any notes from my two experiences with training for Google; one with Lucy Grey in Lisle this winter and one with Brian Mull of November Learning at the BLC. So, as good a time as any to look over past notes and review.
This past May, Goggle introduced a special section of tools especially for teachers. This suite of activities is in addition to all the things that are available with a regular Google account-Google docs, Google earth, blogger, Google reader, Google maps,Google sketch up, etc. Lucy Grey will be hosting a Google educator workshop in Chicago that has yet to be announced.
My initial curiosity about Google was the concept of being able to use Google docs as both an alternative for those students with non-Office based computers in addition to experimenting with it as a collaborative tool for student work. In order to use Google as such, it would be necessary for each student to open a Goggle account, which potentially could be an issue with parents. Lucy suggests that student accounts for projects be generic, a one name fits all kind of thing perhaps by group .
Google spreadsheets, which I have not had the nerve to attempt, apparently also has a survey feature that can be used. ( I have also heard a lot about survey monkey, a tool to create online surveys. I could see the students having a lot of fun with this, especially with an election year.
I created a Google reader section on my Google page as a result of this particular presentation. Google Reader serves as a news aggregator and I have many of my favorite blogs that I follow listed usder it. The RSS portion of Google Reader notifies me any time one of my pages has had additional information added to it.
It has also allowed me to see that some of the bloggers I used to follow have way too much time on their hands or not too much of a life. ) Hopefully, I won't turn into one of those people, but I must add that there is SO much to write about, I imagine it will be tough.
