Google Apps for Education
We try to be careful not to align ourselves with a given company in a way that might imply we have made a special commitment to the resources that company sells or even provides without a charge. Mostly we attempt to meet this goal by featuring a variety of companies. Google offers schools a collection of resources, within the framework of what is labelled Google Apps for Education, that may appear to test this commitment. Included are a variety of productivity tools and if Google is willing to offer a useful collection of services in a way that we feel is sensitive to the needs of schools, we feel it is appropriate to recognize this program. It is very possible you may already be studying at a university or college that has taken advantage of this program as it is implemented for higher education. So, our focus on Google products results from our reaction to the quality of products themselves and the efficiency available in using the multiple products comprising the suite rather than dealing with multiuple tools that work in slightly different ways.
Google Apps for Education K-12 offers schools free (and ad-free) access to multiple tools that would allow a teacher to implement many of the project ideas we describe here. Included in this collection would be tools such as Gmail, the email, instant messaging and voice/video chat tool; Google docs, the word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation tool; and Google sites, a versatile tool for creating web sites. In addition, each student user would have at least 7 gigabytes of online storage that could be used to store any type of digital content. The tools and storage provided could be used to support “authoring to learn” and the student communication experiences later chapters explore. You may be surprised to learn that Google offers special arrangements for educational institutions. Anyone has access to this same list of resources without being a student or educator from a participating school or college. You can explore the applications we describe whether or not your institution has made a commitment to Google apps for Education by creating a personal account and we highly recommend you do this. However, when an educational institution makes use of Google apps as a group, important security measures are available to the system administrator. For example, sharing options can be set to determine whether the authored documents are private, can be shared by the author with others within the district, or more widely. Similar safety options are available to any individual using Google services, but schools may want to intervene to control such options in order to assure a desired level of security.
Google docs
Google docs is a suite of web-based applications presently consisting of word processing, presentation, spreadsheet, form and drawing tools. We say “presently” in recognition that Google is continuously experimenting with its online offerings. We will explore several of these applications in this section. The first thing you might notice, if you have previous experience with similar applications run as software on your personal computer, is that there is very little difference using the corresponding Google app from within your favorite web browser over the Internet. We cannot claim that there are not differences to be found, but if you take a given activity, say writing using a word processing application, we bet nearly everything you have used the software on your computer to do as a student you will be able to you online. In addition, the online apps offer some unique features of great potential benefit in an educational setting.
What are some of these educational benefits? First, files you create reside on the web. Initially, it might seem better to be able to carry your work around on a flash drive or to keep your stuff on your computer. However, some students do not have their own computer, particularly in a school setting, and many of us now work from multiple devices during the course of a day. Having a file “out there” that can be reached from any device with Internet access can be quite convenient. There is also the matter of security. Ever lose your flash drive? Who do you think is more likely to lose your data - you or Google?
Second, documents within the Google environment are shareable. You can take advantage of this or not. You can keep your work private or share with others as editor or viewers. Of course, you could share documents in other ways, such as by sending a document to a colleague as an email attachment. However, the nice thing about a single online document is that you do not have to worry about who has the most recent version. No more trying to patch together suggestions made by multiple partners and then sharing the possible changes back with them. The online document is simply the composite of work done by the group. We imagine having students share with other students in the class or allowing the teacher to watch as student work, but these are the obvious opportunities. Documents can be shared with parents. Documents can be shared with students in different classes, classrooms in different schools, or classrooms in schools in different countries. Begin with the words edit, collaborate, and publish and see what options come to mind when a group can be given access to a common document. So, if you have not tried Google docs, lets take a look and see how a document is shared for purposes of viewing or editing. The following demonstration should also allow a glimpse of just how similar writing in Google docs would be to existing experiences with word processing software.
Tutorial - collaborative writing with Google docs [Video]
Be patient if nothing appears in this space - a video file is downloading in the background. This video requires the Apple Quicktime plugin (download).
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