Google has lots of tools! The first one I want to talk about is the google calendar. Our school uses google calendar and I started a calendar of my own through this class. I recently bought an iphone and downloaded an app so that I can access my school calendar, personal calendar, and phone calendar all at one spot. The app is called "Calengoo" and seems easy to use. With google calendar, I was able to combine the school calendar, my personal calendar, and a calendar of U.S. Holidays. Each calendar is a different color so I can easily see each day what is on my agenda for that day.
Other tools I explored include Google Squared. I searched "regular polygons" and it showed a really good square. It listed many polygons, the item names, the image, and a description of each. I clicked on "add a new column" and found the measure of each interior angle.
I looked up some books using Google Books. I searched for Geometry and lots of examples popped up, but nothing that I wanted to use in my class. I searched for "math is fun" and found a book called "190 Ready-to-use activities to make math fun."
As I explored Google Reader, I realized that it shows many of the pages of the book and I have the option to buy if I wanted.
I noticed that Blogs that I follow as a part of Blogger.com show up in my google reader. I recently started following a blog designed by our technology department. In the blog, there was a post about "PI" day - March 14 - that listed some comics that I shared with my class.
Google Earth is pretty fascinating. The first thing I did was try and find my house to see what it looks like from the air. I could incorporate this into my class by having students search for their houses and other St. Louis landmarks and using the latitude and longitude, have students use the distance formula to find the distance between each point. This makes learning more fun and real for the students. Here is a website that lists real world lessons that I can incorporate into my classroom. http://www.realworldmath.org/Real_World_Math/Lessons.html
Excellent! I am glad that you are finding google tools that are relevant to the course that you teach. As you expand your Personal learning Network, you will find some many other resources, and individuals to share and collaborate with.
ReplyDeleteI recently used the google url shortener and that is VERY useful. I took my students to the computer lab for an activity that had a really long website (or multiple clicks to try and get to it.) By using google shortener, kids can easily access the websites.
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