Last week I integrated Google Docs into my classes. It worked very well and I feel it promoted a much more collaborative approach to group work. Part of me always felt that when assigning students assignments to do on Word or Power Point that I would get students working separately and not simply combining their work. With Google Docs I felt more conversation and engagement were present and it led to more student learning. I also plan to integrate blogging into my classes to allow students to connect and apply what they learn to their lives. In my World Cultures class I will be using blogging in the unit I am currently teaching. We are studying South Asia and they will be asked to connect concepts that we have studied to their current and future lives. In my US History class we are studying the Cold War and students will be asked to explain how what happened in the Cold War impacts their lives. I am very excited about using it in the classroom.
Using Dropbox has been an interesting experience. I like being able to have the continuous access to my files without transferring my flash drive. I have also had computer crashes in the past so the long term security of my files is now something I hopefully can feel a little better about when I transfer them over. I have never used Skype before so that was definitely an interesting experience. As of right now I do not have any classroom application capabilities due to the major limitations I have for technology at my school but it is a tool to keep in mind for the future. I am hopeful that social bookmarking will make it easer for me to access and share the many links that I come across (many of which I lose or forget).
Josh- I missed you and Michael this week :) Dropbox is a very very great service they provide for free. I was mentioning on Lawrences's blog that the free storage services they provide are wonderful. I love it! If I was in your class I think I'll be excited to use the Google Docs tool. There will be no excuses on how many people helped out on the assignment. Just being introduced to new tools is cool.
ReplyDeleteI am a fan of Skype, but I don't think there's that many reasons to use it in the classrooms just yet. Skype is good for personal use rather than school use right now. Adding blogging in your classroom will be fun for the students to do. Keep up the good ideas for your classroom. I'm sure the student's would not want to leave your room.
It is great that you already were able to integrate some of these things into your lessons. I am working on incorporating Google Docs into my Friday spelling tests but need to iron out a few things and want to make sure that I am not pushing my students too far, too fast. As third graders, they have been so excited to comment on our classroom blog's "Question of the Day" or one of the other posts. It would be a simple and quick way to incorporate technology into your classroom as well.
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