What Can Google Apps for Education Do For Me?

     The most recent amazing innovation in teaching is Google Apps for Education.  It is truly unbelievable what this new technology can do for your teaching.  Google Apps for Education include: Google Docs (Documents, Spreadsheets, Forms, Presentations, and more), Sites, Mail, Calendar, and Chat.  But, it's not the products themselves that are so amazing, it is what you can do with those products.

     In Google, you can share your work with others easily because all of your work is saved in a "cloud" instead of on an individual computer.  You can access your work from anywhere with internet capability.  No longer will you create something at home and email it to yourself at work or save it to your "jump drive" and then load it onto your computer at work.  You create and save within the cloud and that's it!

     Here are just a few possibilities that you can use Google Apps for Education in your classroom:

Collection of data through docs, forms, spreadsheets, etc.

• You can create student observation forms (or teacher observation forms for principal use).  Using your SMART phone or other internet enabled device, you can fill out the forms and track student data, type up running records/conferring notes, and more
• Discipline Forms - Principals/Secretaries can put discipline forms into Google Forms and save lots of paper.  The form can them be shared with the principal immediately for faster access to the information.  Data can be tracked by the principal and secretary through the spreadsheet attached to the forms.
• Formative and Summative assessments can be created in Forms and shared with your students.  You can even use the Flubaroo script in Forms to grade the assessment for you.

Collaborate on Student Work - Students can work together on the same paper at the same time.  Or, you can have students work individually on assignments that you can view and make comments to help in the writing process.

• Teachers can view the student writing and give feedback and see the revisions that have been made by the students.  This is a powerful tool in the writing process.
• Digital Storytelling with Google Sites or Presentations.
• Students can type and record voice to their stories.  Students can add pictures and/or video to their digital stories (depending on the student level of technology).  Teachers can view the story and the revision history.
• Reading Response or Learning Journals - Instead of writing in a composition notebook, have students type up their thoughts in a Google Document.  You can give feedback to each student through Google Docs instead of having to carry around 25 journals back and forth from school to home and back again!

Ability to translate documents into other languages -excellent for parents of ELL students

   

Shared Lesson Planning and Calendars - A great way to collaborate with teammates!!

• Share with your team or grade level/subject area your lessons.  Allow them the ablility to edit the lessons and you all have input on the lessons for the day, week, month, etc.  Also, share your calendar with your teammates so they know when you have IEPs, parent meetings, etc. scheduled.  You can also share meeting agendas or minutes in order to save paper.  
• Create Share Collections (folders) in Google Docs.  All of your meeting notes can be in one folder, lessons in another folder, etc.  These collections could be shared district-wide so others who teach your same grade level or subject area have access and can add other information to the collection.

**There really are so many more things you can do with Google Apps for Education.  Google has their own online training center with modules you can watch to help you learn all about what Google Apps for Education can do for you.  You can also go to YouTube and watch numerous videos on the subject.  One of my favorites is shown below.

I hope this blog entry has been helpful and good luck with Google in your classroom!