Thursday, July 19, 2012

Tool 4 - Google Apps (The Cloud)

Google Docs:
At DAEP we use Google Docs for many forms and spreadsheets that many people need to access and be able to edit. One document I created is something that DAEP teachers can fill out when when need to send work back to a student's home campus. It simplied my life. One other teacher edited it to meet her needs and made it a 1/2 sheet document.


Google Forms:
We are preparing to offer more clubs and a class peirod during the day for specialized interest classes. This is an advisory period that we will be able to offer some fun activities for the kids. I created a form today that asked the teachers what type of class they would like to teach during this advisory period and emailed it to several staff members.


Google Apps:
This is a very useful too to educators. I already use it a lot with my colleagues but would like to use it more with students. I do see students saving documents to their google docs accounts and then accessing their own account in class. It is a great way for them to save projects and documents and then enable sharing to the teacher that needs to see it. We also do this for our DAEP teachers that need to share work with their home campus teachers. It works well.
I would like to see students do more collaborative projects using Google Apps. They can create and edit without having to get together to do it. They can start in the classroom and continue the work as homework and not have to be together to to the work. I am excited to try it more and expand what we have already been doing with it.
__________________________
1. Create at least one document in Google Docs and share it with a few others on your campus or within your department. It could a team member, a department colleague, or another teacher with whom you plan a collaboration. Ask that person to comment or chat and real-time edit the document with you.
2. Create one form in Google Docs and send it via email to at least two other people and ask them to respond.
3. Briefly discuss how you can use the tools in Google Apps with your team or department. How can you incorporate Google Apps as a tool in your classroom? Which tools are you excited about using with students?

1 comment:

  1. Another cool use for the form is in quizes. You can put any kind of multiple choice test in a form and the cool part is, all the answers come in to you in a spreadsheet. Be sure to require either name or student id number.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for leaving a comment!