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10 Free Google Tools For Teachers

Published Date | Written by Frederick Vallaeys | Hits: 212
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  • Google Scholar lets you limit your search to scholarly literature, including journals, patents, and legal briefs, ensuring that your results will be of the highest quality.
  • Google Trends lets you compare how popular different searches are, and gives insight into what the world is thinking. Google even uses this technology to predict where there are outbreaks of the flu.


Google+
  • Google+ makes all of Google more social and circles allow you to define your social circles. Make a circle with all your students and then use it to share interesting articles with the whole class and start a virtual discussion about it.


YouTube

Earth and Maps
  • Google Earth helps people of all ages explore the world, the sky, the Moon, and Mars. Now you can even go underwater, see terrain, explore 3-dimensional buildings, visualize historical changes at a location, and see real-time data from sources like the USGS and real-time flight paths.
  • Custom Maps makes it possible to annotate Google Maps with your own data to make virtual tours that you can share with your classroom. Have your students create their own maps with highlights from their trips.


Google Apps
  • Google Docs is a web based office suite that lets you create presentations, documents and spreadsheets using your computer’s browser or on a mobile device, like a tablet or mobile phone. Collaboration is very easy and you can see edits being made by other people in real-time. In case there’s ever a change you wish you could undo, we automatically save all versions of your documents so you can revert back to any older version in seconds. You can share the final result by sending someone a link to your doc or by publishing it on the web. Everything you do in Docs is automatically stored and backed up in the cloud so you can access your work from other computers with your Google account; and if your computer ever breaks or is stolen, all your hard work will still be safe on Google’s servers.
  • Google Calendar puts your calendar on the internet, making it easy to share with others. You can even keep different calendars for the different elements of your life. I have a work calendar, a personal calendar, a travel calendar, and a calendar to follow my favorite sports teams. I can toggle each of these on and off and I can also selectively share these, giving me complete control. A newer feature is the ability to add appointment slots which indicate my availability to people who may want to meet with me. If they find an available time that works, they can book it on the spot and it immediately shows up on my calendar, too. It’s a great way to schedule office hours with your students.
  • Google Sites lets you create websites to share information. You can easily create static pages of content, but my favorite feature is that it’s easy to include dynamic content, also. For example, I can easily embed spreadsheets, docs, calendars, etc. So, now when I make a change in a spreadsheet, it’s automatically reflected on my site as well.
Category: Tools

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