Google has made an impact in many areas of my professional life. In addition to teaching high school English, I have stepped into a new role this year: instructional technology coordinator. This new role gives me the opportunity to work with other teachers and their students as they utilize instructional technology. Due to my enthusiasm about Google Apps for Education, most teachers have come to me for help with Google. Since I am lucky enough to still teach three classes, I am able to share firsthand experiences with my colleagues about how I am using Google Apps in order to enhance my curriculum and engage my students. Due to my excitement and push for the use of Google Apps, I am now known as the Google Girl.
With the success of Google in my classroom during our second semester last year, I decided to start the new school year with a full week of Google implementation. Students were exposed to many of the features associated with Google Apps for Education: Gmail, the Drive, and Blogger. In addition, my students learned that our classroom would be a paperless classroom. All major assignments would be created, completed, submitted, and graded using the Google Drive. While they were apprehensive at first, my new sophomore and junior students have learned to appreciate the many features of Google, and they prefer to complete work on the cloud.
I am excited to report that more and more teachers have jumped on the Google train, and this has caused me to reflect on the past year and the progress our school has made.
Last year, a small group of teachers from my school stumbled upon a Google script that has now taken our school by storm. gClassFolders is a public script that allows teachers to create and share a class edit and view folder with a group of students. In addition, this script creates individual assignment folders for each student in a class. The script will automatically share these folders with students so that teachers do not have to manually enter each student’s email address. This script gives teachers the opportunity to have a paperless classroom but also provides the organization and efficiency that all teachers need to survive.
Most teachers and students at my school were inexperienced with Google last year; consequently, only a small number of teachers incorporated the folders created and shared by the script into the classroom. Luckily, these teachers were excited about the possibilities the script offered and bragged about the script to their colleagues. In turn, I am proud to say that teachers in every department of our school are now using the Google Drive and have created folders to share with their students.
I realized the shift during one of our first computer lab work days. My sophomore students logged into their Google accounts and unlike last year, most of them knew the purpose of the Drive . Also, as I scanned the room, I noticed that students had multiple class folders (a few had 4 or 5) in their Drive, not just the folders I shared with them a day before. This is when I truly realized that a shift in instruction was happening at our high school.
The first month of school has passed by quicker than ever, but I cannot express how excited I am about our school’s progress with technology like Google. While I know technology, and incorporating it into the classroom, is time consuming and intimidating, it can be used to promote production, efficiency, collaboration, and eventually, student growth. More and more teachers are interested in what Google Apps for Education has to offer, and their interest has motivated me to continue experimenting with different aspects of Google in my classroom.
New year.
New students.
New curriculum.
New role.
New risks.
New challenges
New triumphs
New name...Google Girl
Click here to view my Google Resources folder.
