I can think of a time that I was working on a group project at Albright that involved a Power Point presentation. If we used Google Apps we could have all collaborated and put our setting on private as we wrote our sections of our assignment. We could have given each other more immediate feedback by using this tool instead of working around each other’s schedules, meeting and then making our changes. Our group also did not live near the college, we had jobs, and families to think about so scheduling meetings was quite difficult. We also may have been able to get feedback from other if we were not logged in as private. Perhaps someone could have offered us an idea that they used and we could have tweaked it and used the idea.
There are endless ways to utilize Google Apps in the classroom especially if you have easy access to computers. Of course, this will depend on the school district that you are teaching in and availability. Overall, I think Google Apps fits right into the Digital Native learning style. After viewing the lesson plans on Google Apps it made me think the traditional way of teaching that is done in most schools can be some what boring. On the other side of that…. as I read about all the possibilities, it seemed a little overwhelming! I particularly liked the idea of being able to get feedback from students about their group members and how they think their project is going. Some students may pick up the pace in a project if they knew their group participation was being discussed with the teacher in this way. I also thought it would make the traditional paper and pencil peer editing a lot more exciting. I would use Google Apps for writing assignments because it would definitely help students who don’t like to write and have trouble spelling. I think it would be an excellent way to integrate math into other subjects utilizing graphing/data. Using Google Apps may seem a little time consuming at first until I use it a few times and work out the bugs.
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