Oodles of Google

http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=154
Sharon Betts


This series is about everything that Google has to offer in the terms of collaborative services. In order to use these services the student must login into their account, and make sure they have register for their services they want to use. Google offers such services as Notebook, Bookmarks, web history and Google Docs. In her first series she shows how easy it is for students to drag pictures from one window into Google Notebook. The picture appears in the notebook and has a link to where the picture came from. You can also add text from websites by copying and pasting information. Web History shows the history of where your notes came from. So as you drag or copy text into your notes it puts an entry into the Web History log. You can delete notes, print notes and export notes to Google docs for further editing. Google docs lets you collaborate with students or colleagues by sharing the document over the internet in a refined editor.

Using Google docs you can create presentations just like you can in powerpoint. It has all the normal features you would expect in a presentation program. As your running this presentation you can send the URL to other people and they can participate by asking questions or critique the presentation. Just like Google docs you can share your presentation with others for collaboration.

Page creator allows you to create webpage’s using a WYSIWYG editor. You can create links and insert pictures into the page. The editor allows you to change fonts, font colors and the overall look of the page. This would be great for publishing reports online as it integrates well with Google docs.

The final application she talks about is the groups application. This service lets you create groups that can be used for collaboration. You can also create a forum where members can upload files and write each other to collaborate in a discussion forum.

From what I have seen so far Google is offering great web 2.0 tools that just about everyone can use for free. Even if your not into the whole collaboration thing, you can use Google docs as an online document editor. The great thing about it is the ability to role back the file to previous revisions. Overall I feel that Google has a lot to offer to classrooms that wish to work collaboratively.