Google Apps Readings

Google Apps could have really helped me with group projects, especially in college. My statistics course in which we had to conduct research experiments comes immediately to mind. As a group, we were to get students to participate in our experiment, analyze the gathered data, and write a collective report. It would have been really useful if we could have posted the data to googledocs, so that each group member could have posted new participant data. Our participants were also motivated to be involved in as many experiments as possible, since extra credit was offered for participation. Google Calendar would have been an awesome way to share when we were running the experiment, and plan times to meet with our group members. Google Apps definately would have been useful, assuming all our group members and participants knew how to use it! Hopefully, in time, using these programs will become common knowledge. I also plan on using social bookmarking (probably de.lic.ious) as a way of tracking websites I'm interested in using for my class. My school has been making use of collaboration as a staff. We are expected to meet with people in our content areas (i.e. social studies teachers meeting with other social studies teachers) and discuss ways to improve our teaching. Tagging websites we find interesting can make it easy for us to stay on top of the best possible resources for our students. Teachers are also expected to give common assessments and analyze data. Google Apps could be used to do this as well. Again, this would have to mean that all of our staff is familiar with using the technology. If not to share with others, I can at least use tagging and Google Apps for my own organizational purposes. Social bookmarking will be a good way of saving websites until I'm ready to incorporate them into my classes.
The lesson plans I chose to print from the Google Apps link were not actually from my subject area (I couldn't find any for Spanish! No Fair!), but I can think of ways to adapt them and use them in my classes. The first is a Language Arts lesson plan called "Class Collection of Book Reviews". The students are expected to read a book and write a review of it in Google Docs, including information such as reading level, and a brief description. I would use this with short stories in Spanish or Spanish Poetry. The second lesson plan uses Google Calendar for a Social Studies plan called "History of Life on Earth". In this lesson students are to collectively report on the history of the earth (spanning 4.6 billion years) and compress this "Earth Timeline" into one calendar year. Rather than having my students report on the history of the Earth, I would have them focus on the history of ancient civilizations (Aztecs, Myans, Incas, etc.) in the now Spanish-Speaking world and the Spanish Conquests that took place in those areas. This would help to compress an excessive amount of information into one easy to process "calendar year," while holding students accountable for their groups research/work. Neat stuff!