Thing 7

Google aps have certainly changed my mind forever about Google. I have always enjoyed the simplicity and accessibility of the search engine, but I had no idea of the many applications that were available. Two of my favorites are Google Calendar and Google Scholar. I have 3 very involved teens, a husband, and now my own schedule includes work and grad school. My calendar was challenging to say the least. I just started adding events and asked my 10th grade son to send me his Google Calendar to merge with mine. I have grandiose plans of having all 5 family members' commitments in one place. The best part is having it available on the web to the family. I plan on adding my wall calendar events to this new Google Calendar and having each family member create a calendar to share with mine. Right now I have made this public in order to share it for this post. After the grades are in, I will go back and make it private. This picture shows a sample of the great beginnings. The educational uses of this application might be to have a class calendar that is available to students and parents. I would also encourage students to set up a calendar among classmates to coordinate time available to work on projects or have a study group. My Destination Imagination team could certainly have benefited from a merged Google calendar to set up practice times.
Google Scholar has already helped me out with research for reliable articles for some of our discussions in this class. This would be a preference in research over students using just plain Google which responds too broadly for most students who need help in narrowing their focus.
Just an aside, I have started using Google Chrome as my web browser. I am amazed at its speed compared to Internet Explorer. I am learning more benefits of this browser every week or so, but it is not allowed by the Katy ISD web application for lesson plans.