Tag: Google

Is a Google Teacher Academy Really Such a Good Idea?

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Over a year ago I began writing about how disappointing it is that in the UK and Europe there isn’t a version of the US Google Teacher Academy (GTA).

Since then we have started a UK group, with over 120 members and much discussion has taken place. It is that discussion and debate that I want to focus here in this blog post.

Some consider Google to be a heavy handed corporation, riding rough shod over it’s competitors and assimilating those it can’t compete with.  José Picardo wrote about the way the Etherpad situation was handled and points out that:

Google makes its living by offering free services with the only aim of attracting huge amounts of users to whom Google can then show their customers’ adverts and sell their premium services.

My dad used to tell me stories of free cigarettes being given away by tobacco companies outside the school gates to pupils on the way home. Google’s strategy surrounding free web apps for education is very similar: hook’em while they’re young.

He goes on to qualify such a comparison by saying that,

the desired outcome is the same: to get young people conditioned to using a product from an early age.

Marketing Google Apps for Education is a long term strategy to bring in younger users of Google tools, to create habits in work and life so that eventually more ads can be clicked, maybe years later. That’s surely the bottom line.

So is it right that we are using Google tools at all in the classroom? I rarely get into this sort of territory but we have been using Google tools in a myriad of ways in the classroom and I think it is worth debating.

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Google logo render – Mark Knol by mark knol
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Many people have questioned whether a GTA is a good thing as we may just be perpetuating the “Googlisation of Education“, as Josie Fraser puts it. Is it right to hold a professional development event purely based on one company’s products, especially one that reaps a huge proportion of it’s revenue through adverts?

On the other hand Google has produced some of the most powerful learning tools currently available in the classroom. A GTA in the UK would be a great opportunity for teachers to learn from each other and find out about best practices.

The event should be clearly focused on learning and the ways that Google tools can enhance that. But it would also be a good opportunity to further debate the title of this blog post and the privacy issues surrounding Google in education and the ways young learners use their products.

I would focus on the ideas and the learning at such an event and not get too bogged down with whether or not it is right or wrong.  Are you going to stop using Google products in the classroom altogether based on your moral objections? I would prefer to see Google tools and services just one part of a broad and balanced approach to web products in the classroom. Perhaps the event should be similarly balanced – but then it wouldn’t be a GTA it would be just another conference and could be about thousands of web related products.

What do you think? Is a Google Teacher Academy a morally flawed concept or a long overdue professional development event for UK teachers?

10 Improvements to Google Squared

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Google Squared is a wonderful search tool, undiscovered in my opinion, for the primary classroom due to the structure it provides – but also because of the flexibility to work directly in the search environment.

(Read Google Squared: A Complete Guide for more information about how to use it in the classroom.)

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Ponte stretto by DanielaNob 
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License

As it is still in the Labs I think it is important to contribute in a small way to the changes that could take place so based on my classroom experiences, here are mine:

  1. Search for values and add back to the square – would be great for children to decide that the presented values are not accurate enough, go to a regular search and then have a little button beside the source to ADD TO SQUARE.
  2. Change source for images too – when values have other possible sources we can change them. Sometimes the image is not as useful or appropriate as it could be. Would be useful to change the source or select a different image. Would also be great to integrate Creative Commons licensing for the images.
  3. Confidence rate the data used – some of the values presented show a confidence rating, would be useful for us to be able to rate that info too. If it isn’t relevant to the search we have done then we can say.
  4. Colour change for added search – when you “Add to Square” it would be useful to be able to have a visual cue to the separate searches you have added.
  5. Embed – would be great to be able to grab the code to embed the Square in a blog or other site. You can do it from the exported Spreadsheet but would be nice to be able to add it straight from the Square.
  6. Send the Square – would like to be able to grab the link or email directly from the Square.
  7. Suggest a category from a duff search– rather then having to build from scratch after a duff search – it would be good if Squared was able to suggest a category from what you added. Did you mean…
  8. Other media – please add Youtube and audio clips – we have been looking at Whales using Squared and would have been great for the class to see and hear these amazing animals right there in the search results. Maybe you could add Twitter as well – tweets from users about the category. “I just saw a humpback whale on our boat trip…”
  9. Description source – changing the source of the description would be useful to allow greater access to the text. Especially useful when using Simple Wikipedia for example. Perhaps you could also change language as well for the whole Square.
  10. Fix the Image insert for exported spreadsheets – when a Square is exported to a Google Spreadsheet the image appears as the URL. As Spreadsheets supports images it would be great to see these right there in the sheet so what you Square is exactly what you export.

I hope that the engineers at Google find them useful. Please let me know how you think Google Squared might be improved, especially in light of classroom experience.

Google Search Curriculum and the Apps Education Community

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Where we would be if say tomorrow you couldn’t access any of the tools provided by Google. None whatsoever, how would our classrooms change? How would our work as teachers be effected? Interesting thought eh? Obviously we would cope right?(!!!) But it certainly highlights how important the tools they provide are to the way we access and organise information and the way our children do the same.

In this post I wanted to quickly summarise some Google related developments that have caught my eye recently and may have an impact on the classroom.

Google Search Curriculum

This was announced during the recent NECC conference in Washington DC (Checkout these Google related presentations from the NECC conference). When I first saw this Tweeted I thought it would be a bit obvious, but clearly there is much more to it when teaching it in the classroom.

There are three modules covered: Understanding Search Engines, Web Search Technique and Strategies and Google Web Search Features. Each course has lesson plans that are detailed and differentiated: Basic, Intermediate and Advanced.

Furthermore the lesson plans provide a variety of links to specifically created presentations that support the lesson. For each lesson there is reference to the ISTE Standards for Pupil and Teacher. I have not used these before but they look straight forward enough and would be easy to tie into what is happening here in the UK, whether skills based or through the National Curriculum.

My Year 5 children are very good at using online resources to find information but I think that they could be much more adept. They could certainly cope with the the Advanced level lessons and I think there is lots to offer, especially in the third module about different types of searches as it doesn’t take much to scratch the surface beyond a basic keyword search.

They have been created by teachers and seem to be well worth a look and I hope to find some room next year to incorporate some of the ideas.

Apps Education Community

The support for Google Apps Ed users has finally graduated out of Google Groups and now has its own dedicated community space. (Powered by Google Sites of course) It is early days yet but they have currently added areas for:

Tutorials & Tips – “View videos and tutorials on how you can use Google Apps at your school and in the classroom. Have an idea? Submit your own tips & tricks!” Not much here at the moment other than existing Google tools videos. There is a link to a webinar about Ed Apps that goes into great detail about the tools and platform available. I think the idea is that users will begin to generate video content – maybe I should resurrect some of my ideas and stick them in a film!

Join the discussion – “Participate in the Community Forum by reading posts, asking questions, helping others, and choosing and sharing the best answers to your questions.”

Google Apps in Action – “Vote and submit on the best examples of using Google Apps in education.” An interesting concept using the Google Moderator tool. Submit an idea and then the community are meant to vote on it. Yet to see really whether it works, I suppose the better ideas will surface to the top.

Along with being able to add your own details to a map, you can also stay up to date with Ed Apps news and spread the word about the site.

One feature that is worth looking at is the Apps Lesson Plans, a link is provided on the left menu. Each lesson plan is linked to a Google tool if appropriate and although they may not all be appropriate for all age ranges, it is worth looking at some of the ideas and concepts explored. This will certainly help you to find the most appropriate ways to use the tools in the classroom.

Google Earth is our Paper – Part 4: Improve the Story

Google Earth, Literacy, Mapping, VoicethreadPublished onUpdated onLeave a Comment on Google Earth is our Paper – Part 4: Improve the Story

In today’s literacy lesson, the third in our Google Earth storytelling unit, we made the leap from audio or spoken parts of the story to some written work. 

The use of the mapping in this story has provided us with a structure through the escape route we chose and also it has provided us with a rich visual stimulus for story content. The bushes James has to break through in his bid for freedom have caused scratches and bruises and ripped his clothing. The building site we have seen has caused James to be covered in dust and mud. In our story he hides between two large lorries and we stretched out with our senses (Jedi style!) and saw workmen chatting on a tea break, heard drills banging into the ground and the smell of diesel fumes from machinery. All of this has been generated from studying the satellite imagery in our story location.

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Over the last few days we have been working on generating a bank of good vocabulary for the escape, which we have on our WOW WORD display. Through discussion and thesaurus work we have gathered lots of verbs and adjectives that have already proven valuable for the children to use in their stories. We have also tried to generate lots of different alternative sentence openers – many of the recorded audio sentences began with “I”. We used the verbs we had generated and coupled them with adverbs to generate powerful sentence openers. Again these are displayed on the wall for the children to see and use in their work, and in fact many of the improvements made today included many of the examples you can see.

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Today the children used this language work to improve the sentences they had begun in their Vocaroo audio. Underneath the code for the Vocaroo player they added <p> for a paragraph and then wrote an improved version of their audio. We encourage them to make small changes to the original sentence, so just add a WOW word or begin the sentence in a more interesting way.

Here is an example of what one of the placemarks looked like and a second image of what the same item had included in the placemark properties. You can listen to the audio for this example here. The children coped well with writing in this way and had no problems with the coding as it is so simple.

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The combination of audio and written text has allowed the children to really improve their writing. I have always been very encouraged when the children have used Voicethread and I think that a technology based audio element can be a powerful way to scaffold the writing process.

I believe that in this unit there have been a few ingredients that have contributed to improved storytelling:

  • Google Earth’s imagery provided the class with ample inspiration for what to be creating in their story – they could see and explore it in front of them. They were not looking at a piece of paper and trying to drum up something.
  • The confidence and comfort that they have with the main character and the background to the story.
  • A clear and purposeful backbone to the tale – James is escaping.
  • An agreed escape route. The whole class can then discuss the various moments in the escape. The sharing and peer support is vital.
  • Easy audio recording has provided the children with a quick avenue into generating story content. There is no password/login/signup/complex method/knowledge/skill barrier to using Vocaroo. The children were recording their ideas immediately.
  • Audio and text situated on the image at where it happens in the story brings, often disparate, storytelling elements together.