Googley

There are many tools available to students and teachers through Google for Educators. Three classroom tools that I might use with elementary students are: Google Earth, Sketch Up, and Blogger. I would use Google Earth in the classroom to explore neighborhoods, witness geology in other parts of the world, and it can even be used to explore the skies with Astronomy units. Sketch Up sounds like a fun way to create 3D models for units of study. A few projects that come to mind are: landscape or gardening, architecture, and stores. Blogger of course could be a great way to get students excited about journaling. They could also share schoolwork and post messages. I'd say there's no doubt how well the Google tools can work for high school students, but a lot of it is appropriate for elementary too, like the ideas above.

Google Docs has several advantages. It's an easy and efficient program for all students to use without having to buy any software. It's accessible anywhere, so they can work at projects from any computer; home, school, or otherwise. Students can work on things together while physically separate.

On a personal note, I only recently discovered Google Docs when my husband suggested it for a project I've been involved with. My daughter's school has a big fund raising auction every year and for the past 4 years, I've volunteered to be the database person, which means that I enter all the donation entry forms. This is getting to be a very big job, every year the auction grows and now the school is growing too, so the amount of donation forms next year will be record breaking I'm sure. This year I was really groaning about how this is too much for one person, and my husband showed me Google Docs. In about 5 minutes he set up a template that everyone could use to enter their own data. Isn't this just a wonderful Google Docs commercial? Perfect info-mercial material! Anyway, I hope that people will embrace this next year so that one person will never have to spend countless hours again entering all that information, everyone can be responsible for their own! The database person's job would then be to oversee the entries, troubleshoot and fix mistakes. That sounds more manageable (especially for a volunteer position!)