Have You Tried Google Apps as an Educational Tool?
It has not just revolutionized the way we search on the Internet, but also made education more fun and relevant in today’s technology-dependent world. With Google Apps, teachers and students can set up their own account and use Gmail, Google’s instant messenger GTalk to chat with teachers and fellow students in real time, synchronize their calendars so that they’re able to keep up with educational events, lectures, tests and discussions, and use videos for real-time lessons or conference study sessions when they’re not able to get together in one room.
If teachers are apprehensive about providing students with their own email and chat ids, the administrator has the option of turning these off, as well as any other applications that they feel are not suitable. One particularly useful aspect of Google Apps is the document sharer Google Docs which lets you share documents. This is great for working on shared projects where each student has edit and/or read options depending on their status in the group.
Another good tool is Google Sites that allows you to create your own class site where you can upload all the latest information and news that can be read and accessed by students from within the application. Google Sites is also a great tool for developing your own wikis, mini knowledge databases that are filled with information and data relevant to your learning and education.
Google Apps is a great way to stay in touch even if your students are scattered over the country or across the world, as in a distance education class. They help keep track of assignments, lectures and discussions and encourage collaboration between students and teachers.
The best part of schools and other educational institutions using Google Apps is that there are new and innovative uses being thought of for this technology. Students are getting more and more creative and utilizing this tool to enhance the way they and their friends learn and develop on a personal level and as a group. And so we see how technology becomes a great asset in the hands of the right people who know how to harness its power and derive the maximum benefits from it.
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This article is written by Kat Sanders, who regularly blogs on the topic of top online engineering degree at her blog The Engineering A Better World Blog. She welcomes your comments and questions at her email address: katsanders25@gmail.com.
3 comments June 1st, 2009
