Thing 10

I like the calendar, but still need to work out how to add docs to it and how to indicate to students there are docs attached.

We have a lot of trouble with attendance. These calendars will help me make sure students know what we did in class and access documents as needed. There's nothing like having someone come in after a week's absence and ask, "Did you do anything while I was gone?" Hard to answer that without being really sarcastic :-)

Anyway, I see this as a way to communicate even better with students, as well as a way to let my administrator know what we are doing. And it is easy to update. I like that, as my lesson plans always end up getting rearranged! (some things take longer, less time, etc).

I can point students to the calendars from my school web page, too, or imbed them. Since I only have to update them in one place, I can have them imbeded in several places and it's no big deal. Not bad.

Thing9

My first reaction, "Not another e-mail!" But the Google mail has a lot more flexibility and more options that the other e-mail I use. This forces me to decide if I should keep all of my e-mail accounts!

Also, this account is for school. I also have another (personal) Google account I started last year.
This one (the school one) I access via the school web page under the resources tab. I cannot log into this Google account straight from my browser and access it.

So...if I want to keep some contacts in the future regardless of whether I am in the same job or not, should I direct my SPS google account to share with my personal Google account? Or should I add those contacts on my personal Google account manually? Hmmm.

Thing 8

I like the concept, but need more practice. I couldn't find our group presentation when I went on my computer at home. I need more time to explore the different things you can do within a presentation. Also, if a class broke up into small groups and each group did a presentation, is there a way to share with the whole class without having to list everyone (create a group that automatically sends shared docs to everyone)? There must be. How does that work? Also, if a group makes a presentation, wouldn't you just have one person in the group go through the process of sharing with the rest of the class? Otherwise, wouldn't people end up with the same doc 3 or 4 times?

Thing 7

I like the spreadsheet but am thinking about practical applications for sharing this and other forms at school. One thing we could do is have the kids put the log-in names and some other basic info all our teaching staff could use, then share it among the teachers at SCC.

Again, we'd have to identify what we really want to know so we weren't just creating a form with no real purpose or value, just for the sake of creating a form. One thing we could do is collect information like when the student expects to graduate (we have alternative high schoolers, so our classes are a mix of different grade levels), what career plans each student has, whether the student has a child (or children), etc.

We could use this for the yearbook, etc. to collect data. We could create a poll and use the spreadsheet to see how many people responded a particular way. I could see doing that in my social studies classes. It is something like the Forum in Moodle, but more concise and easier to compare responses.

Thing 6

I like it that any Google docs document I update is automatically updated on my blog and anywhere else I may have put it. The spreadsheet showing responses to my form is great, although I think I need to be thoughtful about what questions I ask to really get the data I want and I think it good to know ahead of time what I plan to do with whatever data I collect.

Collaboratating on a doc was OK, but somewhat limited. I couldn't access the slide show we were working on as a group when I got home. I told my son, Paul, who just graduated from SAU, about the things we were doing and he was really interested in learning how to us the Google docs, etc.

My next step will be to look over the content of my first trimester courses and decide how best to use Google docs in class.

Form for visiting teachers

Thing 4 Google Start Page

The Google start page allows me to customize information I want, like local weather, etc. I like the variety of things available. I have stuff like weather, art and news, but also a gadget that allows me to watch videos on-line. I can see how this could be useful with students, but if I were trying to have them keep up with particular sorts of information, I'd have to go through and find what's available first. I'm sure they'd like the games, etc., but if I want them to follow the economic news or delve into something else relevant to our classes, I'd have to tell them what to add.

There are SO MANY things to choose from, that could be problem. It can take a lot of time to go through all the posibilities, and sometimes gadgets don't work. I expect this is fairly rare, but it does happen. I deleted a couple of gadgets that didn't work. The other challenge is making the google start page relevant as far as a tool for class...to really accomplish an educational goal with it. It is easy to be distracted by the daily cartoon, joke, games, etc. I would need to give students a PURPOSE before sending them to the Google start page, or they could waste a lot of time playing around.