Google Apps
This
week’s assignment was an exploration into the world of Google classroom and
some of the many applications available from Google that can be used for
education. I must start out this blog by
saying that I am an Apple iOS person. I
have an iMac desktop computer that I love to use (although I use a Windows PC
at work and for most of my school work).
I have an iPad mini that has a Bluetooth keyboard that I use heavily for
taking notes at meetings and for scheduling.
My phone is an iPhone 6 Plus (I no longer have a home landline) that I
use for just about everything from banking, to web-surfing, email, gaming (sometimes),
dictionary, photography (I actually own a Nikon camera, but use the iPhone for
taking most pictures), home control (I can control my houses temperature,
lighting and other functions remotely), travel (reservations, boarding passes)
and many other functions. I have an
Apple Watch (great piece of technology).
I even have an Apple TV component for my television. So as you can see, I am an Apple technology person. Now that we have established my belief in
Apple technology, I can discuss Google’s applications that can be used for
education.
Although
I am an Apple technology person, I have used many of Googles application in my
daily life and for my educational work.
I have used Google Drive many times for my TAMUC classwork. I have used Google Earth for classwork in
other educational endeavors before starting the TAMUC program. I have used Google Docs in a TAMUC class. I found Google Docs to be an amazing
collaboration application. My group (there
were 4 of us in the group) used Google Docs to remotely and simultaneously
collaborate and edit our project document.
When I say remotely and simultaneously, none of the group members were
in the same location, literally, but we could actually see what the other
person was typing and editing to the live document. Talk about virtual classroom, what about
virtual study hall! I recently used Google Scholar in another TAMUC class. It was a good source for scholarly
references. Many of the scholarly sources were available in PDF format, so they
could be downloaded for reviewing and printing later if needed. I use Google Gmail (which I think a lot of
TAMUC students do) as one of my email accounts. I use Google Maps on my iPhone instead of the
native mapping app that comes with iPhones because it is a better app and I can
save my favorite places for use later. I
have used the Google Chrome web browser and if you have used YouTube to view a
video (like I do on a daily basis, sometimes multiple times a day), you are
using a Google app. If you are reading
this blog post, you are viewing it using my Google Blogger account. I just recently downloaded the Google
Hangouts app for exploration. I will let
you know later what I think of it.
I presently
work for a higher education institution that has not adapted the Google Classroom.
However, I did explore the Google Classroom website as extensively as I could
without creating an account. I found it
to be a very dynamic application that, if I were an educator in the classroom, I
would definitely petition for it to be adapted by my school. My pedagogical stance would be that the adaption
of technology by my students, using the affordances allowed by the Google
Classroom suite of technologies, would greatly enhance their ability to
construct and adapt to real world professions, through the daily interaction
and collaboration with myself and other students. The learning outcomes would be the use and
integration of technology using the Google technology tools to create documents,
collaborate with other students on live documents, integrating pictures,
videos, map drawings and locations into those live documents, translating
dialog from others students in other cultures, researching scholarly references
to be included in those documents and using the many affordances allowed by the
Google Classroom technology. Students would learn how using these technologies
with such affordances could not only allow remote collaboration among
classmates (virtual classroom), but remote access to the teacher as well. Students would also learn of the ecological benefits
of a paperless environment, the ability to store classwork on remote servers
for use at a later date, bookmarking subjects for later use, and using media
sources like YouTube for additional learning while studying.
The one
drawback with using a technology such as the Google Classroom is that some
students still need the interpersonal face to face interaction the comes with
in person classroom learning. For these
students, using the Google Classroom technology will not be a good fit.
Hope you find some interesting information in this post.
David
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