5 Days of Google – Knowschools
I really like Google. Except for the ads now appearing on my blog! I know I am not using it to near its potential so I took a Knowschools course on it to increase my Google knowledge. It was an amazing 5 days of learning in a well presented on-line course. Sharon Betts did an amazing job. (As I visited her site I was sidetracked into her blog on her solar home. For those interested in solar energy see here.) As usual in these courses I ended up with a degree of information overload, but managed to pull back and figure out what was important for me.
1. Google calendar - I almost managed to miss my registration for the final semester of TLITE! Far too close for comfort. This little tool should be very helpful since my 2 luddite day planners and 1 desk calendar do not seem to be doing the trick!
2. Google search and custom search - I did not know how to search efficiently at all and I am holding a postion of a Teacher-Librarian. This was actually the top of my list of reasons to take the course. Not being proficient at this is not acceptable to me considering my new teaching position. I learned to use things from quotation marks, to site searches. This was incredibly valuable and should make searching for educational research papers much more effective than in the past. I also added a custom search into my Book Bin Blog. Custom searches limit the search for more exact topics, in the case of The Book Bin, books reviews and soon other great library blog sites. I thought this search would be very valuable to use with my research groups at school.
3. Google Docs – I have used this myself only once this past summer as part of a co-operative mini research project on cyberbullying. It was an interesting experience, and Sharon’s activity gave me an idea for my last action research project – using Google Docs with one of my research classes. Listening to other course participants discuss their classes using this was exciting. Co-operative learning is a big part of my classroom teaching and finding a way back to it for prep relief teaching with technology was great. The students are able to work on a research paper collaboratively and simultaneously, email it to each other, share their ideas/knowledge and really own their own learning. I thought this was an incredibly powerful learning tool for teaching. Explore: http://googledocs.blogspot.com
4. Google Notebook – I really saw the power in this for myself as I work through another action research project and another research readings summary. This Google tool allows you to collect notes, browse, clip and organize information online. A great way to organize my reading notes. Also a great way to keep track of blogging posts that push me to write a post on. This tool allows you to create, manage, tag, export, share and bookmark the notebook. If this appeals to you here are some helpful links:
http://googlenotebookblog.blogspot.com
http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=how+to+use+google+notebook&emb=0&aq=f#
http://michelemartin.typepad.com/thebambooprojectblog//2008/04/using-google-no.html
January 2nd, 2009 at 9:49 pm
Sounds like you got a lot out of the course Cindy. Great job sharing the highlights here too. Thanks. I haven’t tried Google notebook but you certainly make it sound worth exploring.
January 3rd, 2009 at 1:07 pm
It was a really interesting course where I learned a great deal about Google. I’ve become a Google fan. I’ve decided to use Google docs as the tech part of my last action research project for TLITE and Google Notebook for the research reading summary.