Google Apps for Education (GAFE) is a free suite of products offered by Google specifically for educational use. Aside from Gmail, there are many other great tools such as Drive, Docs, Blogger, YouTube, and many others. These tools can be used by both teachers and students and can provide a great opportunity for collaboration, communication and critical thinking.
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This year, I had the pleasure and the challenge of introducing the students and many teachers of my new district to Google Apps For Education. Although it has only been about 6 months since it was first implemented, it has slowly become part of the student and teacher culture. Teachers in 4th through 6th grade have begun sharing templates with students and having them use Google Drive to turn in their assignments. Additionally, we piloted a COW of Chrome books in the high school English department with great success.
One of the great benefits of GAFE and cloud computing is the fact that students are no longer dependent on the server to store their work, and can quickly access their work in the classroom, at the computer lab, at home or even on the go.
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Additionally, teachers in my district have used GAFE to participate in professional development, including a half day of self guided learning using links to YouTube and the expectation that afterwards the teacher will apply their own learning to create an artifact.
Personally, I love GAFE and prior to joining my district, I had used Gmail for almost 10 years. I created documents in Docs but not having others actively using GAFE I had't used it much for collaborating. Now, however I love using features such as comment to give students feedback or sharing documents with teachers in the district. Overall, it is a great free tool that can be used to enhance teacher and student learning experience.
You can also checkout the following tutorial I created, introducing Google Drive:
Like you, I had used gmail for quite some time before starting to utilize the different Apps. Once I started using the tools collaboratively, I became more motivated to look into the potential for using other tools. While some of the Apps are a little cumbersome (compared to the higher cost alternatives), the Apps are free, single location offering, that allows students and teachers so many options for creating and collaborating in and out of the classroom. I enjoyed hearing that your district allowed for a self-guided exploration as PD! What a great way to allow users of different learning the levels, the freedom to grow and learn.
ReplyDeleteHello, Jess! Love your page - the graphics are so supportive to your message and I appreciate that information. I like the directness of your message and I believe the term, "KISS" (well, minus the last S applies here). I will take note from your graphical approach and make my presentation one that promotes greater engagement! It is fascinating that all of these tools are now free, safe, and also freely supported.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed your post. I liked the fact that your included the tutorial video. I have never used google docs or much other technology. it is good that we have so many educators excited about using it n their classrooms.
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