For this project, I decided to focus on Google Educational tools. It is my goal to go 100% Google next year within my classroom. This project has been very beneficial on multiple levels. Below, you will find my checklists and I feel that I am definitely over 80% competent in each of the areas. I focused on Google Docs, Google Hangouts, Google Slides, Google Drawings, and Google Classroom.
Reflection
I feel like this was a very realistic project that awarded me the opportunity to learn and create a project that was completely relevant to my teaching. I can see myself utilizing each area of the Google Suite that I focused on within this project. There are also a few other areas that I wish to explore before the end of the summer: Google Photo, Google Forms, Google Sites, Google Scholar, Google Sheets, and Google Keep. Google definitely is teacher and student friendly. Each year they make their products more accessible. The best part is...it is all free! At my school, Springfield Clark Career Technology Center, we are a one to one school. Each student has a Chromebook - which has driven my Google based management and implementation within my curriculum.
As for each checklist, I feel quite confident in not only using these tools in Google, but also teaching them to my students and my peers. I hope to share my blog with fellow teachers so they can get a quick introduction to these awesome features. Google Docs was probably the easiest to figure out among the tools I decided to discover. It is so similar to Microsoft Word but on a much more simplistic level. I believe anyone with Microsoft Word experience would find it easy to navigate and figure out. Google Hangouts on Air happened as a fluke add on. I needed a way to interview fellow peers about their technology usage and this seemed like a good option. I was able to question, record, save, and then upload directly onto YouTube...and it was fairly easy to figure out. However, I did have to use the Google Help option a few times. I also used my husband as a guinea pig to test it all out before I contacted my co-workers. I learned real quick how to use it as I had to teach my coworkers how to access it and utilize it as well. Google Slides is very similar to Microsoft Power Point. It was easy to navigate and similar to Docs. The great thing about these two tools that the Microsoft equivalent doesn't feature is the fact that students can share and collaborate on their work. This is a huge bonus for my and my English Language Arts classroom. Google Drawings will be used as my replacement to Microsoft Publisher...but I feel there is so much more to do with it. Yes, there aren't pre-made templates, that I know of, but it's easy to manipulate shapes, boxes, and tables as necessary. You can also create really cool interactive images too. The ability to hyperlink and embed documents, videos, images, webpages, etc. is very cool. My students are going to love it! The last area of exploration was Google Classrooms. This final lesson just made sense...using Google apps why not have it all end up in a Google Classroom? I delved right into the classroom features and started comparing them to my current management system, MOODLE. I quickly found that while I didn't care to much for the organization aspect I did LOVE the grading aspect. Everything is automatically organized for me when students turn in work. It ends up in my Google Drive and within the folder aptly named whatever I named the assignment AND they are put into alphabetical order. The idea of being able to embed video directly into the classroom was very appealing too.
All of these features are awesome for a teacher in any area of academia. I think teachers should embrace these free tools and get learning. There are constant updates and new tools/apps being created. I have to admit it can be difficult to stay abreast of all the new ways to manage your classroom and conduct work, but I think it is worth it. I think we, as teachers, need to help each other and collaborate on how we can make it work for our environments. Overall, this has been an extremely beneficial project and I don't regret my choice of immersing myself into Google.
Thank you!
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