Google Apps Appeal us11cep810

The author here discusses some ways to use tools in Google Apps to standardize some of the project-based learning process. This post is one in a series about Google Apps and PBL and you can find others by selecting posts in the author's "Google Apps" categoy. I'm not a fan of standardization, but when it comes to managing the PBL process, some useful forms and templates are great to have. One she mentions is a "team task sheet" for planning each member's role in the project as well as observation, question, and research forms. This post deals with using Google Sites not just as a replacement for the usual "project poster," but as a more living space for the PBL group and its project.

This is an example of an ambitious geography project carried out by a team of 7th grade teachers. Students created a class globe/atlas with Google Maps and kept an explorer's blog about their "Amazing Race" circumnavigating the globe. This project integrates a lot of content while also being student-directed and offering some choices. 

This is a more research-heavy link about integrating web 2.0 tools, like Google Apps, into a project-based learning environment. It's a heavy read, but offers a lot of deeper thinking around the concept of PBL and some great bibliographic resources. One of the most intriguing parts of the paper for me was the distinction made between what constitutes a web 2.0 tool versus a web 2.0 activity, which should guide us in the way we implement Google Apps. Should these just be replacements for traditional, 20th century activities (ie: a Google Site becoming a digital poster-board project), or should our decision to implement these tools be something more? This is the quote making said distinction: "From this definition web 2.0 is understood as a set of technologies, but also as a range of activities with certain characteristics. In this way we can distinguish between web 2.0 technologies or resources as e.g. blogs, microblogs and podcasts and then web 2.0 activities or practices such as blogging, podcasting, and micro-blogging. This distinction has been further explored by Dohn (2009) who has defined web 2.0 as a range of activities or practices, rather than technologies, which she characterises in the following way [10]: 1) collaboration and/or distributed authorship, 2) active, open-access, "bottom-up" participation and interactive multi-way communication, 3) continuous production, reproduction, and transformation of material in use and reuse across contexts, 4) openness of content, renunciation of copyright, distributed ownership, 5) lack of finality, "awareness in practice" of the "open-endedness" of the activity, 6) taking place on WWW, or to a large extent utilizing web -mediated resources and activities."

This is an extremely basic template of a PBL project using Google Sites. The person who created the template included sections for daily plans and parts of the project. The great thing about the template marketplace in Google Apps is that if I wanted to use this template myself and edit it, I could select the button at the top that says "use this template." In many ways, Google Apps offers chances for teachers to learn from each other and avoid reinventing the wheel unnecessarily.

This is a basic article overviewing the reasons why schools are turning to Google Apps

Article discussing 10 reasons why it's beneficial to switch to Google Apps for you school.

Great article with numerous ways Google can help you become a better educator. The really beneficial thing about this resource is that it is divided into numerous categories: General, Collaboration, News, Search, Communication, Organization, Maps, Books & Literature, and Images.

This is the education marketplace for Google Apps for Education. These are optional apps that you can install to be a part of your Google Apps suite. The Apps marketplace offers a number of tools that teachers could integrate in their classroom management, including gradebooks, lesson planners, and assessment building tools. There are also apps that can streamline certain aspects of projects, such as EasyBib for creating citations, or creation of e-portfolios. Many of the Apps also have reviews from those who have implemented them so you can help sift the duds from the stars.

Google-compiled listing of model Google Sites by educators. This is a great space to visit for inspiration and "new ways" of using the tool. Often times we use technology to replace a process or system without considering if that process or system is really the best way of doing things. Looking at models and searching for "out of the box" uses or hacks with tech tools can offer new insights into tech integration. I found the Reading Workshops to be an interesting use of Google Sites. Fifth grade students read a book and then created a Google Site to post their projects. Google Sites is collaborative and allows many teachers and students to contribute and edit the pages, much like a wiki.

This post from the Google for Students blog is a great introduction to how to manage group communication and deadlines as a member of the group using Gmail and Calendar labs and tricks, but these tips can also be used for teachers looking to manage and assign groups for projects. The author recommends creating a contact group for each member of the group and creating a shared calendar with those addresses. Teachers can use these same grouping features in Gmail to easily communicate with whole classes. For example, I might want to send an email to my first block English students but not any of the other blocks - I can easily do this by grouping those students in a "Contact Group." I can then share the class calendar with them and filter their emails using Gmail filters. And the organizations and taxonomies can go deeper from there.

This is an interesting discussion, albeit from 2010, about the pros and cons of Google Apps for Education. The author, Karl Fisch, is discussing the long-term effects of a Google Apps domain log-in (versus @gmail.com) and how it can prevent students from creating a sustainable digital footprint. Google Apps is a powerful tool in education and can open many doors for collaboration and content creation, but Fisch raises an important point about the apps and the very crucial email log-in that comes with installing them in your institution. Should we instead be asking students to create their own GMail log-ins and avoiding the Apps altogether?

Tons of information about a lot of different Web 2.0 resources. There are many resources that we have learned in class, including building a PLN, blogs, etc. In addition, there are numerous blogs and posts about adding Google Apps into the classroom that we might find useful!

This site gives a helpful rundown of 50 Google Apps. I like this site because it's very easy to scan through the list of google apps. Each app is described in just two sentences. The first sentence gives a basic definition and the second sentence gives a specific example of how the app is used.

In the course of projects and project-based learning units, reflection should be an important part. Students can reflect in any number of ways, but this post from MSU's own Leigh Graves Wolf offers a way to use Google Docs as a powerful reflection tool. The "developer's notebook," as she calls it, offers a doorway for the instructor to the thought processes and ideas of the student during the course of the project. In this case it was an instructional model being developed in a graduate level course, but the principles of this notebook can be easily scaled back to a secondary level course. This post even offers a tutorial of how to implement such a feature in your course. 

Interesting uses for Google Translate. As an international school teacher, I'm looking at ways to use the tool not as a crutch in language learning but as a way to support a student's mother tongue. The cross-language search is really interesting for research purposes. You can use the search to let Google translate other webpages that might be pertinent to your query and show them in the results - versus just getting an English result from your English query.

This site is very similar to the above link posted, except this resource is full of videos that show you how to use Google Apps. Again, this site is arranged so that you can select your specific app and learn more about it.

Most of my links are ways that teachers can use Google Apps in the classroom, but the students are the ones actually using the Apps. This website provides a slideshow showing ways that students AND teachers can use Google Apps. There are many things students can build, create and present, but there are just as many ways that teachers and school personnel can use Google Apps, too. There are ways teachers could use Apps for Meetings, Communication with Parents, and even Grades!

The Langwitches blog is a great resource for language arts and technology. In this post, the author discusses how to use Google Maps as a digital storytelling tool. Students can use Google Maps to tell personal stories, create scavenger hunts, map the settings of stories being read in class, and more. 

What a fun resource! The Atlas of Fiction is just what its tagline describes - an atlas of real places imagined by great writers. You can check out a world map and see pins of works set in various spots around the globe. This could be a great way to find setting-specific literature for a unit plan. Studying Africa? How about finding a novel to read with students set in Africa? 

Google has made it a point to create resources for educators and curate models of how educators have used their tools to help inspire teachers new to the apps. On this page, Google has created a list of models and ideas for using Google Maps in the classroom, including a getting started guide. Check this page for a few ideas and for ways to submit your models.