Assignment 3.1 Web 2.0

Web 2.0 Screencast

Let Us Meet in the Cloud

Picture from http://www.gdocsdrive.com/

     Improving the use of Technology in the classroom is one of the priorities of our school.  That is why our school sponsored me and my colleague to attend the Technology Symposium last October.  We were also asked to conduct a teacher training about the information we learned from the symposium.  We learned more about Google Docs Drive and  Ipads in this seminar so we decided to create an interactive Presentation of these topics.  We used Google Docs Drive and created a PowerPoint presentation using it.  We edited it whenever we can.  It worked out great for us because we do not have the same prep period and it would be difficult to schedule a longer meeting.  Being able to edit the presentation and see what the other person already has added made it a lot easier.  It saved us time in finalizing the report because there is no need to compare notes.  We can see all changes we made to it.  Everything we do is saved in the Google Cloud Platform so there is no need for flash drives!

      Google Docs Drive is an excellent tool to use in the classrooms and at home.  The students just need internet to access their files anytime and anywhere.  There are several options available that the students can use in their classes.  For example, they can create documents, PowerPoint Presentations, Spreadsheets, drawings and a lot more.  There is an option to add more applications to the Google Docs Drive too.  It automatically saves the file in its Cloud Platform which can be accessed anywhere there is internet.  The files could be shared to the teacher, classmates and parents.  All the revisions can also be seen including who made the revisions.  This would be particularly good for group projects since the teacher will know who are contributing in the group.  The students can no longer say that they do not have their homework since their computer is broken or they forgot their flash drive or they forgot to print it because the teacher will see the files in Google Docs Drive and access it.  

      There are numerous applications that we can use just in  the Google Platform. Which applications would be the best ones to download?   It should be noted that not all the applications in Google are free.  If we are going to implement this is our classes, we should also involve the parents to make them aware of how to use these applications.  How do we plan our year to incorporate a little training for teachers, students and parents? This way we can all meet in the Cloud.