Google Apps For Education
Google Apps are pretty darn cool. These are great tools for collaboration, but more importantly, as long as you have internet access, you can have access to your documents! I've "used" google docs before. By this, I mean I've opened up a google doc and I've shared a google doc with someone. But that's really the extent of it. I've never really explored the different things you can do on it. I've never used Google slides before. After I imported a Powerpoint slide, I only noticed one small formatting issue. Again, it would be great to always have access to these documents.
- The first thing that really stood out to me was using the Google Calendar. As I read the instructions on how to use the calendar, and the suggestion for keeping track of birthdays and important dates, I thought it could be a really useful tool for keeping track of birthdays on our team. It's always nice as a teacher to know when your students have a birthday. If each advisor input the birthdays of our kids, and shared the calendar with the team teachers, we would all know when our students had their special day.
- Another aspect I thought could be useful with google apps was using the calendar to set reminders. I am, unfortunately, a forgetful person. If I don't write something down, I have a hard time remembering to do it. I can now use the reminder aspect of the google calendar to put in important things I need to do at a certain time, such as a meeting.
- Finally, I think I see something with technology I might be able to use in KW! I am always trying to find ways to keep kids who are unable to physically participate in class actively engaged in learning. I have this rough idea in my head that kids who are not physically participating for the day could use their iPads to create a google doc on the topic we are covering in class. They could set up different sections for rules of the sport, muscles being used during different actions, or even a section for strategy. I could see them writing a blog like this on our unit, then having other kids who are out as well, adding a comment to their blog or a comment to the google doc. We could even open it up so kids from other KW classes can comment on their thoughts as well. Definitely something I will keep in mind for the fall...
I love your idea of using google docs for kids who are unable to participate in a sport or activity. I am sure kids can get a little restless just sitting and watching, so how nice for them to have a way to stay engaged. Great idea!
ReplyDeleteHi Andy! I agree with Lindsay - keeping kids who are injured engaged must be a difficult task, and the Google apps are great for students interacting with minimal supervision. I also love your idea of a shared team calendar with birthdays; I am pretty bad at remembering them, so I wrote them all down in my paper gradebook this year, but then I had to transfer them to the paper class calendar and remember to check...a Google calendar would be perfect for this. Since half of our team is enrolled in this class, I think we could get it up and running, and then having it in place would also minimize the time we have to spend in team meetings checking a bunch of other calendars and then emailing the dates to each other for confirmation. I would really like to try this as I have not really used Google calendar to its full capacity either (mostly only for accepting events that other people add me to).
ReplyDeleteGreat idea to create a team google calendar.
DeleteI love the team Imagine team work. Trust me I would never remember anything without reminders from my Google Calendar. I even have multiple reminders for an event so that I have a warning about an upcoming meeting or school wide activity. Helps me adjust my plans or complete paperwork in advance!
ReplyDeleteMy husband gets upset with me always saying, "if it's not on the calendar, it doesn't exists". We actually missed a Ravinia concert a couple of weeks ago because we forgot to put it on the calendar. It's truly my lifeline.
ReplyDelete