Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Googling!

Monday this week was a teacher in-service. I spent part of the day learning more about the Google things for teachers.

My school has a goal of becoming a Google school, with all, or at least most, of the teachers certified at Level 1 by Google. So, we have been learning about how we can use the various Google products in our teaching. It's a lot to take in, but it's exciting to see some ways to use this technology.

Since starting to learn about Google for Education earlier this year, I have tried out Google classroom by assigning an essay. I liked it because we were already using Google docs and by assigning the essay through Google classroom, I can see their work as it progresses, but I don't get a zillion emails telling about every update.

My latest project is using Google slides to create an ongoing resource that students can use. We do a research project every year wherein students pick a topic about the Revolutionary War and write a paper. Most kids pick a person to write about. We have a list of interesting people, but usually 4th graders don't know anything about most of them and end up picking at random. I'm putting the names of researchable people onto Google slides with enough information to help kids decide if they might be interested in researching. We'll see how it works in the next few days!

4 comments:

  1. You will love using Google Slides with your kids. It's such a great resource that is so motivating for them. Have fun with Google!

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  2. I love google everything; personally and professionally! I was so excited to hear our district going to Google last year. It's tough for some but very welcomed by most. Our biggest problem now...infrastructure. We don't have enough computers for every student and only 2 computers labs so having all assignments online can be an issue.

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    1. That would definitely be a problem. I've had issues with kids not having computer access at home either because their parents don't let them on or even because there's no internet where they live. We are very fortunate this year that most grades have one-to-one devices. 4th grade has chromebooks now. It's working pretty well.

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