Documents/Presentations/Spreadsheets - I think this would be a really helpful tool, especially for sharing documents within a class. Actually, in this Media course, this was the first time I was ever introduced to GoogleDocs and I was confused on how it worked. I didn't get that there was a document that could be shared, added to, edited, by multiple people through the internet, with such simple steps. I think for group projects this would come in especially helpful. Not to mention the fact that students can use it alone to create and save documents, saving themselves from having to download it to a computer every time they want to work on something. I wish I had been able to use this a little bit more, and to have maybe a little more in depth walk through of it, but I'm sure over time I'll become more and more familiar with it.
Forms - This tool seems like it would be helpful for similar reasons as Googledocs. Collecting a wide range of information all in one form would be so helpful in a variety of situations. The first thought that came to mind is if as a teacher, I wanted to know some of the students' thoughts about a certain topic. I could create a spreadsheet and then ask them to go online and answer the questions, and all of their responses would be appropriately divided on my spreadsheet. Maybe this could be used to vote for something in the class, or to express an opinion about something that we've been reading in class. What I was wondering, however, is if there is a way to individually tell who submitted what? I'm sure there must be, in which case, there is probably a way to do some kind of online tests or quizzes through this very program. I can see it being quite useful for simply creating research projects documents such as graphs and tallies and spreadsheets about given information. It seems simple enough for anyone to be able to handle.
Calendar - I think if students were to make use of Calendar, it could be very useful in their own scheduling. They could easily write down homework assignments for all of their classes and keep it very organized in one document. But as a teacher, what else could be more useful than this? This Media course uses calendar for every assignment so any day of the week I can log on and see what I should be working on. I don't need my personal planner there, I just need the internet to see that week's assignment. I think what we've created with our online sites is going to be really helpful - the site itself of course, but the calendar within the site, full of all sorts of choices and options of how to lay out the calendar. This way, there's pretty much no excuse for students to feel that they weren't informed about an assignment.
iGoogle - iGoogle seems like a really great resource for organization. Right now, if I want to view everything that I use on a daily basis, I would need to go to five or six different sites, many of which would be accessible on this igoogle page. If I created one (which I probably will) as a teacher, I would think it could be very easy to stay organized with everything that I would have to keep in order. I could have my class website, my email, my calendar, simple reminders, the weather, and other favorite sites of mine. On a tutorial that I watched of iGoogle, they also showed how simple it was to not only navigate through this simple page, but to organize it, moving things around to where you want them to be, and making the most important things the biggest things on the page, or the most obvious. I could also teach my students about this, and see if they would have interest in this site. I'm not sure how I could make it applicable in my classroom itself (as far as content is concerned) but for my personal organization and pleasure, I've already started using it a little bit and think it's really helpful.
Blogger - Blogger is something that I've been using for years and love. I love how easy it is to use, and how I learned how to almost fully use it in a couple of days. I use it daily for journal writing and for a public blog of mine as well. Through this class, I was introduced to using blogger as a way of turning in assignments, which seems so helpful. Right now when I turn in assignments, I have to type them up, save them, email them to myself, go to school and print it, then turn it in to the teacher. It would be so much easier and more efficient for me at least, to be able to turn in all of my assignments on a blog. My question, however would be if it would be as easy on the other end of things. Is it that easy for the teacher to read 45 blogs when viewing an assignment? I'm pretty sure that Dr. Cox said that when she reads our assignments they all kind of funnel into one document that she can read. What about editing? Is it possible to edit off of blogger? Probably not. So my vision is that blogger would be a great way for students to do "responses" but not necessarily to turn in essays.
Reader - This is a tool that I have very little experience with but I can see how it could be helpful in a classroom setting. Something that came to mind is a class, having google reader connect your students to a variety of sites that you think would be helpful for their knowledge. For example, if you are reading a book that is hard for some students to understand, you could connect them through the reader page to sites that help explain it or give context when needed. You could have a site that talks about current events if that's what you want to do, or a connection to your own site so they see if there have been any recent modifications to your site. The nice thing is that you can also comment on the sites. So you could say, "Read the first two paragraphs, skip the third and forth and read the conclusion. Blog about your thoughts." This would be especially helpful for academic sites that you think are worthwhile, and students could again access it quite easily. If you don't use the interent a ton in your class however, this doesn't seem like the most reasonable tool to use in your classroom but has potential depending on the structure of the class.
Google Maps - I originally thought that google maps was only used as map quest is, to locate something or view a place on the screen. I didn't know that it had multiple functions. As an English teacher, I could see this being useful as I teach literature that was written all over England. As we read certain peices of literature from England and around the world, I could have a map set up to show where it took place. When the students click on that place, a video could pop up to show what happened there. Maybe an image of the author, the characters, some kind of explanation, etc. This sort of interactive map might make reading 19th century literature a little bit more interesting. Another way that this could be used is as a homework assignment for the students. I could assign them perhaps to trace chapter 3 on a google map, and to find images for each place to demonstrate what happened there in the book. I could see this being really useful for a history class, and for English, it might be a little bit harder to find a way to bring this into science although I'm sure people get really creative. Interesting tool.
Google Earth - I love google earth; I don't have it on my computer but I really like it. I think just for personal use, it's so much fun to look around the world at different places and see what's happening there, almost real time. I also think it's fun to look at my address or my parent's address and to see pictures of their house come up. In a classroom, I could see this being a lot of fun (kind of like google maps) to show the students certain places that you are talking about. If you're discussing one of Shakespeare's theaters, wouldn't it be cool to type in the address and show the students what you're actually talking about? Or if you're talking about where Mark Twaine grew up, wouldn't students really find it interesting if you could pull up an actual image on the screen of his house? This seems more interesting, more detailed, and more interactive than just pulling out a text book and looking. Students can see what it's like today, and it may make it more meaningful for them. The tacks seem helpful too, how you can embed actual images into your map (like google maps but different) and demonstrate exactly what you're talking about.
Groups - This tool helpful in the same way that Google Docs does, only it seems a little bit more interactive with some other options that Google Docs doesn't offer. Obviously one of the best things that I could think of this being useful is for group projects, especially more long term group projects. I could have each group set up an account with google and that could be the main way that they do some of their research and sharing. I would like to be a member of the groups so that I could take a look at their progress, and this would help me to see who's doing what and how often. This would be interesting, because instead of saying "You have 3 weeks to do this project" and not knowing what's going on for three weeks, I could take a look inside. I could see every message, every attachment and every video that was added to the group and to see the steps that each student took to get to the final result. This is probably the best tool that I've seen for group work - in and outside the classroom. I can see also getting together with teachers and being able to share helpful information through this tool - lesson plans, interesting ideas, thoughts on a fieldtrip, announcements, etc.
Google Custom Search Engine - I really like this tool, especially for use in the classroom. It would be really useful to be able to direct your students to the internet for research, but for them to only come back with hits from the pages that you've selected. For example, if you love wikipedia, then use it. For me, there are literature websites that I think could be very pertinent to my class' research, but not necessarily every single English Literature website out there. So I could give my class an assignment, to do some research on Harriet Beecher Stowe, and have them answer some questions about her from internet research. But if they use my custom search engine, I don't have to worry about them finding random facts that may or may not be true, or that may or may not have any importance to the lesson. Not to mention for my own personal use, it seems like this could be really helpful for my own research and study, to save myself so much time while I'm surfing the internet. Perhaps instead of 10,000,000 responses to something I search for, there could be a couple hundred, or maybe less, from sites that I've already approved. Also, if you're asking your students to search something that could have multiple "kinds" of responses, this could weed out the inapprpriate ones.
Scholar - I see Google Scholar being helpful for some of the same reasons as the Custom Search Engine, only it can be used for legitimet research projects. This would be really great for students to have access to so that they could go about looking for sources, but already know that what they're searching through is going to count as a credible source. I think online research for many kids will come more naturally than going to the library and looking for books, even though I think they should both be used as tools for research. But this may be something that would help students be able to do some research from home, and to avoid having to filter out thousands of worthless informations. Also, you can narrow down your search quite a bit, making it possible to really get a detailed response from your search. My question would be, how do you give high school students access to this kind of a site? Would they have a password? Would they use a school's password or something? I ask because I know some of the academic sites aren't free, so there would have to be a way for students to have access to it without paying. Seems like a great tool though.
YouTube: This is a google tool that I have usually only used to listen to music on the computer, or to watch video clips. But through the last year in school, I have also found it's an interesting way to do some very light research. I can listen to interviews, look at "how to's" of certain things and so on. It seems that pretty much any thing that I want to see a short video on, I can hop on youtube and see something pretty recent about it. I feel like in a classroom setting, this could be an interesting way to get kids involved. It may not necessarily be the most advanced way of doing actual research, but high school students use youtube daily and I think they would really relate to any assignment involving it. For example, if we were reading "Scarlett Letter", maybe I could assign the class to find a youtube song that might be playing in the background of Chapter 7 (or something along those lines). For instruction, I could pull up interviews and current events for students to watch. And of course, there are tutorials for everything you can imagine on youtube so if there were anything particular that I wanted them to briefly learn about, it would be an easy way for them to do it.
Reflection: While learning more about these programs, I feel like the ones that seem to catch my eye the most are the ones that deal with actual document sharing such as groups, docs, blogger, document and forms. Those seem pretty commonly needed in any classroom and in lots of classroom settings that I can imagine. Any group projects, assignments, communication, etc. could become more efficient through the use of those tools. It's basically taking the things that we would normally do such as collect data, write documents, share information, read each other's work, etc. and compiling them in programs that make it all instantly accessible to multiple people, in a variety of places. So I can see it being used almost on a daily basis, whereas some of the other programs seem to be programs that I would pick out to use once in a while. Maps, Google Earth, Youtube, even Google Search Engine, seem really helpful but would be used for more specific units or projects. Overall, it seems that every tool could have some benefit inside the classroom, it's more a matter of when and how they could be used. Also, I wouldn't want to start using them until I had worked out all of the details and knew the well enough to use them seemlessly with the students.
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