I
would like to use this blogpost to encourage other teachers to use
Google Drive. Google drive is a “Cloud” where you can create and
edit documents, presentations and spreadsheets. On Google Drive you save your work
online, making it possible for you to access your, your colleagues or
your pupils work from anywhere in the world. At my school we use it
as part of our internal-communication as well, for organizations
Google have an free of charge product called Mapps.
Looking
at the different programs on Google Drive I would like to first
compare them with the programs in Microsoft Office, which most people
are familiar with. Documents, the word processor, is basically the
same as MS-office Word, Presentation works as PowerPoint, Spreadsheet
as Excel and so on. So all of the benefits you have from working in
Microsoft Office, you will have at Google Drive as well. Of course,
there are some differences, but if you have something made in Word,
it is possible to upload it to Google Drive and keep on working on it
in Documents.
However,
to be able to use Google Drive you need an Gmail-account. This is
free of charge and it is possible to get specific account for
organizations. At my school we use this as our internal
communication, both with pupils and staff.
Using Google Drive while teaching
I find Google drive very usable as a teacher. Both
while working with my colleagues and in class. I will focus on the
advantages on working with Documents and Presentation since these are
the ones I use the most.
Google Drive allows realtime interaction in a single
document, making it possible for pupils to create a story together
while working on different tablets or computers. This realtime
interaction also makes it possible for direct peer-assessments while
working on a text. Working in the document is a format that most of
the pupils already know, making it easy to get started.
Below I show how you could work with tricky pronunciations and Tongue Twisters.
Since the document are saved in a “Cloud”, online, on the Google server, it is always possible for the teacher to take
part of the work their pupils are making. It is easy to make
assessments without sending an e-mail back and forth. And together with
the class it is possible for the teacher to create different
exercises in real-time or making a presentation.
With Presentation you can create a slideshow before
class, which the student can make their own texts about, directly in
front of the class, individually or in small groups. If you work with
a tablet, which also is compatible with Google Drive, you can take
pictures and upload it to Google Drive. This will allow you, or the pupils, to create
slideshows of the pupils own pictures.
Since I began working with my class in Google Drive
we never looked back, the pupils enjoy it and so do I.
/Christoffer Hejdedal
My school has also just started to use Google Mapps for internal communication and it is interesting to read about what else you can do with it. We are going to use the calendar-app to create calendars for each class with dates for tests, assignments, meetings and more. Both students, parents and other teachers have access to the calendar, but it is only teachers that can add information to it.
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of pupils writing a text together in real-time in the same document. One thing I thought about is that the students would need to have access to computers in the classroom to be able to use this at its full potential.
One advantage with everything being saved in the Cloud is that no one can “forget” their documents at home or somewhere else.
As I wrote in my blog post about iPhones and Skydrive, it is very handy to upload photos or movies from a phone, or tablet to the Cloud. One advantage when everyone uses the same cloud, like Google Drive, is that you easily can share your photos or documents with others.