7-4: Google Apps

Google started out as simply a search engine back in the year 1997. Over the next 15 years it has grown beyond just a search engine and became a publicly traded company worth over $93 billion! Many of the products offered by Google can be beneficial in the classroom. Here is a small sample of the many applications offered by Google that cold be beneficial in education.



Calendar-  Calendar is just that; a calendar. The beauty of this calendar is that is web based, meaning you can access it from anywhere and effortlessly sync it to your phone, computer, or tablet's calendar.  It is also great tool because you can share your calendar
with others. One way educators can use this is to share their calendar with their class to keep students and parents informed about assignments and upcoming school events. You can also embed your calendar into your website or blog.



Picasa-  This is a great tool to organize and manage your digital photographs. Once you install Picasa onto your computer, you can upload your photos to Picasa Web and easily share with others though their web albums as well as other social media sites. Not only is this a good way to back up yourmemories, but you can also use Picasa for basic editing purposes.  Students could use Picasa to organize a collection of images for a project, to create a web album, or to put together a collage with their peers.


Google Drive- This application can be used on numerous occasions to produce documents, spreadsheets, presentations, forms, or for cloud file storage. Students are able to easily produce, store, and collaborate on documents which eliminates the need for installing expensive, proprietary software, flash memory drives (which are always misplaced, lost, or forgotten at home), or emailing documents. Because students will not be using memory drives in different computers, it should reduce the spread of viruses/ malware. Another great aspect of Google Drive is that it is also web
based, meaning that it allows students to work from any computer, tablet, or phone. I use my Google Drive to store and back up my files for work, school, and home so I can access them from anywhere. Furthermore, you can share the items that you create with others (full read and write access, make comments only, or just allow others to view the item). This can allow students and colleagues to work together collaboratively at the same time. I have worked with other colleagues and classmates to critique and comment on each others work, work together to create lesson plans and/or presentations.

I recently have been introduced to Google Forms which is also a part of Google Drive. Forms allows the user to quickly put together a survey, questionnaire, or even a quiz. When the user is fished designing the survey, they are given a link which they can post or send out to everyone who they want to complete or fill out the form. Once someone submits the form, the results go directly into a spreadsheet. Take a look at a survey I created and the preliminary results from it!