7. 10 Creative Ways to Use Google Tools to Maximize Learning

Most people are familiar with Google, but Google is so much more than a search engine.  Google continues to produce wonderful tools to make the web a more user-friendly place.  The article 10 Creative Ways to Use Google Tools to Maximize Learning, co-authored by EdTechTeacher’s Beth Holland & Tracy Sockalosky, reviews some of the tools that Google has to offer for teachers and students.

By now, many of us have used Google Docs.  Google Docs is a great tool for collaborating on a paper with other people or sharing documents with other people for review.  The authors point out that Google Docs could also be used as a community note-taking system in the classroom - the same notes are created or provided for every student, with the option of allowing editing.  While reading about this suggestion, I thought to myself: "What a great idea!"  For those of us who may miss things while listening to a lecture, this use of Google Docs could be a lifesaver.  The article goes on to describe many of Google's other available tools: Google Forms, which provides the utility to construct forms and collect information; Voice Comments, which helps to bridge the distance between teacher and student in an online setting; Research Tools, which helps to simplify the process of doing research on the Internet; WriteSpace, a simple and customized text editor that helps to remove distractions; Google Dictionary and Image Dictionary, helping to connect new vocabulary to detailed text and visual definitions; Read and Write, which helps to facilitate ease of reading and writing using a computer; VideoNot.es, as a virtual lecture system; Google Moderator, which recreates the round table type discussion; and finally Templates, a tool that provides templates for various types of documents to help with classroom organization.

This article only scratches the surface of the utility of Google's tools and their potential uses for education purposes - for both teachers and students.