Week 6 Reflection

This week was probably my second favorite.  One of my favorite things about technology is Google!  I ask myself on a daily basis what did we ever do before google?  I truly don't know!  To top it off, not only can you find an answer to ANY question you our your students could ever ask, but they have apps to make your classroom experiences more functional.  I currently use google docs and gmail.  I use gmail for my primary email account because it has a huge amount of storage and I am terrible about deleting my e-mail :-)  I also use Google docs for my website.  I like to upload important notes and study guides so that the parents can download them in an easy to use format and then link them to my website.  I have found in the past that I love to create documents in Publisher, but not everyone has that program.  With Publisher I can save it as a PDF, upload it to docs, and link it to my website so that everyone has access to it.  However, I learned this week that with Google docs students can work collaboratively on an assignment and both be working on it at the same time (a feature we don't have the way our server system is set up).  While I don't know that this is ideal for elementary students, I do like the idea that I could post resources to Google docs and all of the students could access them at any time (instead of looking for a handout that has been lost in their desks).

The other Google app I am interested in is Google calendar.  I love the idea that I can post things and the parents can download the calendar to their mobile device.  I look forward to trying out this app this year and have it up and running for the next school  year.