Google Part 1

What? In class we learned about Google documents and presentions and how we can use them to work collaboratively with other people. We also learned about Google calenders and iGoogle.

So What? Knowing this information is really helpful for me as a student right now. I have already started using Google documents in other classes to work on assignments with other classmates. It's a really helpful way to work on the same document without having to email it back and forth to each other. Using Google documents and presentations is also helpful to me because I can publish documents for others to see if I need to.

Using Google calenders is really helpful for me because it is a great way to keep track of my schedule. I think the feature where it will text you when an appointment is coming up is a very good idea and something I will use. iGoogle is also a very helpful tool to use to organize my homepage and organize it with websites that I go to often.

Now What? I think knowing about these Google features will help me a lot in the future when I am a teacher. I could use Google documents or presentations to collaborate and create things with other teachers or I could use it to create things to help teach my students. I could also use it to keep parents informed about how their student is doing by writing letters to email to parents. I could also use documents and presentations to have my students work together to create an assignment. If they had access to internet at home I could assign something to give them practice working with other students. They could create a presentation about something that we have been learning in class and send it to me to get feedback before they present it in class.

I could use Google calenders to keep track of events coming up in the school such and parent teacher conferences, assemblies, or birthdays. I could make a public calender for all my parents and students to view. I could let them know when assignments are due, when field trips are coming up, etc.

The world is becoming more technology oriented and I think a lot of parents would appreciate having a calender right online to look at to find out what is coming up and what their child is learning about in school.

Video: I think it's good that the President takes the time to specifically talk to the young people and to relate things to them. I think it is motivational to students to hear the President of the United States talk specifically to them and to try to motivate them to stay in school. I think that he gave a lot of good advice to students by telling them to stay in school and telling them to find the things there interested in and to do well in all of their classes. He made it seem like each student is important, not just the smartest of them. I could show this video to my students when teaching about Social Studies and when I'm teaching them about the President.