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!