To be honest I wasn't all that impressed with most of the Google things. It's not that they didn't do useful things it was just that in some cases they were more complicated than I presonally need. For instance I set up a calendar and it took longer than the paper one I now have that works quite well for me. I do see the benefit of the google calendar if you wanted to share your calendar. For me the white board family calenar works much better!
However, I did find some Google tools that could be useful. I did like the notebook option for saving research. Once I got the hang of it that worked very well. I was able to save the crib information I had researched and send it to my husband. It would be useful for doing research for the classroom as well. However, I was under the impression that we were not supposed to be using Google with the students. It would be a great tool for them to learn as well, but I understand the filtering system isn't as kid friendly.
Google Earth is always a fun tool. I really like the way it "flies" to another location. It would be great for searching out locations. You could start at your school's address and fly to the new place. The way the Earth turns really gives a great visual.
I was very interested in the scholar search. This would have been a great tool when I was in graduate school! It would also be very useful to older students. I think that most of the research would be above my fourth graders level. However, a useful tool for teachers looking up certain topics.
Lastly, the Google alert tool could be very helpful if a class is tracking a particular current event topic. However, once again I'm unsure about the districts policy on using Google with the students. I guess that alerts would be set up to my personal email address as it is a gmail address and then I could share the information with students. It would be really neat if you could set up a class email account and then students could be assigned to check the alerts each day. It would really get them involved in the information gathering.
The burning question remains how much of Google can we use with students -- how much can we allow them to do?
2 comments:
I think the district would rather the students use something that does have better filters for searching things, but for the google tools I don't see an issue. XXX rated things are not going to be coming up if they are looking at a Google calendar. My concern with google, and almost all of the things that we are learning, is that you have to have an e-mail, username and password. I am worried about privacy laws, and feel concerned about students using personal information. The tools are good for us, but there might be some practicality issues in the classroom.
I am going to ask the District for clarification on the Google policy. Based on the content of this course, it seems that since that original directive NOT to use Google came from Library Services, that they may have changed their mind.
PS- Sometimes when I try to log on as Trivial Pursuit, I can't get on, so my other user name is Alternative Ego.
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