I can recall the days when google meant nothing. Yahoo was
still the most popular search engine to my peers and I and Wikipedia was
considered a credible news sources in college. Then Google changed the face of
the internet. It was not until this week that I was exposed to the power that
Google is capable of. I can now see why Google’s stock is consistently strong
and they are consistently in the conversations within every tech corner.
Incorporating Google into the classroom is a very
beneficial, if not an essential tool in a teacher’s tool belt. It can literally
be used in every grade level that students can write, read and compose complete
sentences. I recall my Jr. year of college during a business statistics course,
the semester long project we had to complete as a 3-person group was conducting
a survey and analyzing the results. Unfortunately for us, this was in 2006,
before Google Forms and similar online tools were available. We had to print
each survey and walk around campus administering the survey. We then had to manually
input the survey results into a computer program to analyze the data. With this
amount of work, it was no wonder the project was all semester long and ended up
being a 137page report.
Piggybacking from my college project, a great application is
to use Google Forms for students to conduct a survey and graph their results.
This type of assignment is versatile for math students between 2nd
and 12th grade. The topic of the survey project can differ from
grade to grade, with high level grades presented more challenging, thought
provoking questions and topics.
Another way to incorporate Google during classroom
instruction is to require students to utilize Google Docs during a collaborative
group project. This assignment would be more geared towards secondary students
in any subject content. The purpose for the usage of Google Docs is due to the
live, up to date changes and revisions that can be seen by every student.
Instead of wasting time and effort emailing one another an updated version of
their portion of the paper, students just need to communicate with their peers that
their portion has been updated. This also provides students the opportunity to
continuously revise their work to produce the best product possible.
Lastly, a great use of Google forms is for athletic coaches
at high schools. I have been a part of, and have seen many teams where players
do not have the contact information of one another and the coaches are not in
constant contact with the parents. At some programs, coaches spend just as much
time with student-athletes as their parents do, so having up to date contact is
essential. A coach can use Google Forms, after parental consent, to distribute
a call roster that provides phone numbers and email address for coaches and
parents so the team can stay in touch with one another and pass along information
swiftly and effectively.
I like your ideas for using Google! They are very different from how I would use it with third graders! Google Drive has so many possibilities and tools that can be used. There is also Google Apps, a word processor, spreadsheets, drawing, forms and surveys. The resources are really endless and something that should be utilized as often as possible. I love the idea that all of these resources are available with only internet access.
ReplyDeleteHi Michael, I agree with you thing change. I remember using the phone to access the internet. I remember the sound of connection. Google drive has been changing the way we can learn and provide students with very good learning tools. This tool is good for group projects, creating assignments and the most important stay in communication with students.
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