Teachers Teaching Teachers 02.14.07
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For our Valentine's Day webcast, Teachers Teaching Teachers is seeking stories. We want to hear STORIES about how you have used any of these Google Applications and Services in the classroom with your students. Successful or not.
Alerts
Lee ~ I receive alerts for my Google calendar to remind me of our weekly webcasts, planning sessions and collaborative teachers schedules.
from Chris: I use Alerts along with Reader to teach students how to conduct current events research.
Blog Search
Blogger
From Chris: My students use a blogger site to post their media that can't be included in the newspaper (i.e. video and audio)
Book Search
Calendar
From Lee: I schedule events on Youthbridges which students can also use to add events. We do not have to worry about meeting to add events because we are able to share the management duties on the calendar.
Our SpaceCast crew uses a Google Calendar to share our teaching schedules for our webcast planning and I used it for scheduling our Yearbook picture shoots at my school. I was able to shoot a picture of it using SnapZProX and inserted it to in an email for the school to see. We do not have alot high level of technology use so I needed to make it very easy. Everyone wanted to know what I used for my calendar! My explanation was not as big a hit! I also use it for my personal school schedule for meetings etc. from
Chris: My classes keep a calendar of writing contests. When we're done
students have over 50 student-friendly contests they can enter. Some
of my students even win the contests
From Sharon : I just recently discovered how I could upload my Outlook cms file to google calendar and then embed the calendar into my blog. Now this is the fastest way for me to compare calendars with collaborating partners and share my schedule with others : http://www.mtl-peters.net/blog/?page_id=123
Co-op
Directory
Docs and Spreadsheets
Kevin Hodgson introduced me to google docs last November. We were going to be co-presenting a session at the NWP conference in Nashville. What a great way to plan and share agenda ideas! I couldn't believe it when I realized that Kevin was in there with me writing at the same time. Three months later, it still amazes me. I now use this tool for any kind of collaborative planning.
I haven't used it with students yet, mainly because of email issues. But I am hoping to learn more about how NWP TL Joe Bellino uses it with his ELL students. Teb has mainly used google docs in the educational setting when working collaboratively with other teachers. As a teacher that works with elementary students, Teb has found it difficult to balance the inherent "openness" of web 2.0 apps while maintaining a level of security with which the entire school community is comfortable. Using MediaWiki and ELGG has been a suitable solution. Unlike google docs, when an ELGG or MediaWiki is installed on your domain, you control the configuration files and databases making it simpler for an administrator to setup and maintain a level of protection for his or her students.
I would love to use Google Docs with my sixth graders, but I worry
about management of Email accounts. My students, for the most part,
don't have email, and I seem wary of signing them ALL up for Gmail
accounts. If I do so, am I then responsible for those email accounts? I
haven't figured that out yet, so Docs remains unused in my classroom
for students.
Personally, I use it all the time. I showed the other teachers on my team how to use it, and now, before Parent-Teacher Conferences, we collaborate on comments about all of our students (we share about 75 students). We used to sit for hours in meetings talking about each one, and now we are streamlining our meetings because we can just refer to the collaborative documents. Very successful! I am also using Docs for two book projects -- one that I am co-editing on technology and composition, and the other is a Monograph book project for the NWP. Docs has provided a very valuable sharing space. -- Kevin H. Joanna Bueckert, Nancy Brodsky and I have set up the participants in the NYCWP Satellite Institute to use Google Docs with the writing they are doing. They have all uploaded their first drafts and invited members of the writing groups to work as collaborators with them. Since the course only meets once a month this is a convenient way to be of help to each other in the time between get togethers.
The NYCWP has also begun to upload all of the protocols, hand outs and workshops it has developed over the years so that teacher-consultant can have accesss to them wherever they can have internet access. --Joe Bellacero
From Sharon: I have used google docs in many ways. I had the students use it for a collaborative project with GlobalSchoolnet to generate ideas for the Global Warming Speakoff (published in USA Today). For another class, we had a little contest of which group could find the definitions for vocabulary words the fastest (would like to try that again, a big hit!). Unfortunately, our school now does not permit email access on campus, so we need a workaround. Our family used google docs for our Christmas lists and our family vacation. I have also used google docs for my personal CV (with some help), personal biographies, conference proposals, and collaborative online projects between partners.
Earth
From Chris: Here's a link to a kmz file of a personal history tour I did using Google Earth.
From Lee: We did a collaborative GIS project with our World Studies teacher. During this project we used Google Earth.
Our geographical location was not very clear when we zoom in for a
close up shot since we are so rural but it was fun for my students to
see the students in New York close up.
From Sharon : We have exchanged kmz files with our collaborative partners in two other geographical locations. Students love to see the visuals! I also have used the kmz files to create coordinates for meetings.
Gmail
Lee~ I am new to gmail but it proves to be quite handy to stay in touch with the teachers I am working with on projects who also have gmail accounts. The fact that it ties in so well with the other Google applications saves alot of time usually wasted in going back and forth between different applications that are not Google.
From Sharon - I have been using gmail for about 2.5 years. My bro-in-law works for Google and invited me a couple of summers ago. I LOVE the amount of space they provide and their easy search engine for mail. I wouldn't go back to anything else - they have the best spam and virus filter in the world!
Groups
This is a story about my work with a team of researchers engaged in program evaluation for a not-for-profit agency. I recently joined the team and my task is essentially to "research the researchers." While the other members of the research team are doing this work as 3/4 to full-time, I'm doing this work as 1/46th of my job. Needless to say, these researchers "talk" all day long via email - filling up my mailbox and requiring me to process everything before making decisions about what to do with the mail. I convinced the group to let me start a google groups for them to use. Now, I can keep my mailbox uncluttered (or relatively so) and look at the email when I have time. It's a great archive and they can load their data files into the group's space without sending them through the mail and filling up my mailbox which already nets me weekly threats from the computer center people.
In addition to using Google Docs, the Satellite Institute is using Groups. For a session this past Saturday, we uploaded questions about teaching writing that the participants had generated at a previous session, then we had them reply to each other with comments and ideas. -- Joe Images
News
Notebook
TeachersTeaching Teachers uses Notebook or Docs to plan for our weekly sessions. This session for example is created using Notebook. Often we will write on Docs and transfer data into Notebook. The homepage for TTT shows the full list of sessions created on Notebook. The links are on the right hand side bar.
Page Creator
Personalized Homepage
From Chris: My students like how they can add widgets and move the page elements around easily.
From Sharon: I love the personalized homepage and have my google reader right there where I can check both email AND rss feeds. It is the quickest way for me to stay in touch with my peeps!
Picasa
From Chris: Here's a link to a Picasa album of some photos I shot of the flowers in my backyard throughout the growing season last year. You only get 250 MB of space, so it's not really a long-term storage solution. But it is an easy photo editor, and does a lot of the photo editing that most people want to do.
Reader
From Chris: My journalism students used to sometimes turn in research stories where the research was dated. My students now use Reader as a way to conduct current events research.
From Sharon: Google Reader is my rss feeder and I recommend it to both teachers and students as the easiest way to have an rss feed.
Specialized Searches
Scholar
From Sharon : I used Scholar for both my M.A. thesis research and to teach my students one more way to access good research information.
SketchUp
Talk
From Sharon : Google Talk is now how I communicate with my husband throughout the day. We used to use Yahoo msg, but now we use this instead of the phone or even email. My oldest daughter uses it during class to get tutoring from her father DURING math class as she is introduced to new concepts (back-channeling).
Video
I haven't used Google Video directly with my kids yet, but later
on this year, when we do claymation digital stories, we will use
GoogleVid to publish our stories to our websites and to share with
others. As the teacher, I have used GoogleVid to publish some student
work for parents on a Homework Blog site, and to a Youth Radio project,
in which my students wrote stories of the Underground Railroad, and
then we chose images to put behind their narration of the stories. I
like GoogleVid more than YouTube because there seems to be less
likelihood of kids moving into inappropriate video. (You can watch the video) --
-- Kevin H. from Chris: We use Google video to post our student media, but we're exploring other options since Google video is now blocked from the students on our own campus. Note to Google: figure this one out. If Google video or YouTube have a future in schools, there's got to be some kind of way to tag legitimate educational content like the documentaries and films students make.
From Sharon : I like your point, Chris. We need to show educational institutions that Google Video has a legitimate place in the classroom. Today I embedded a youtube video my students made into my blog - wow, it meant the world to them! Students are producing amazing content ON THEIR OWN and uploading it. We need to take advantage of this creativity. Another example of student creativity from Google Video is also posted on my blog - three Israeli students who went out on their own to northern Israel to interview those who endured the war last summer. Student initiative is amazing!
Web Search
I have not worked in a classroom, college or as a high school literacy coach, where I could or did turn to a computer and click on any of these options online, but I take my notebook computer to tutoring appointments, both in students' homes and public libraries. About half the time, something comes up, for example, was Erich Maria Remarque a soldier in WWI or what are some examples of literature in India's Gupta Dynasty, and we google it thanks to widespread wireless connectivity. In a public library, of course, we'd have other resources to answer these questions, but my computer is right there so we google it...we also connect to the library's website and find books and get them from the shelves, but more commonly we google to answer discrete questions or identify resources. Margaret Fiore
From Chris: For tips about web search and other Googology, you should check out Patrick Crispen's Advanced Googology presentation and other goodies on his site.
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