Thing #7: Cool Google Tools

Cool Google Tools....have any of you tried SAYING that out loud? If you're successful, try saying it three times in a row without ending up with your tongue in a knot. Now on to the serious stuff:

Wow! Who knew there was more to "googling" than just simple searching? I have to admit that this is something I played around with the last time I tried 23 Things, but I only got as far as Google Documents and Google Calendar. I could spend another week checking out all the other great things Google has to offer.

First, in terms of the "simple" search, are all the little shortcuts and tricks. For example, type "define: beauty" to get a list of definitions for the word beauty from different websites. Searching has become so complicated, I think all students should have a class in just SEARCHING. It's the basis of about everything we do on the Internet, and yet so few REALLY know how to do it. Not many even understand how search terms work.

Google Documents: What's great about Google Documents is that your work is web-based so it can be accessed from anywhere. Recently, my fifth grade son was working on a big project at school that involved a text document. He needed to work on it at home, but barring my buying him his own flash drive (which I'm sure he'd promptly lose), he had no way to get his file from school to his home computer. The school district (not SBISD) wouldn't let him use his yahoo email to email the file to himself. If only his work had been done in Google Docs....(I suggested to the teacher that he could copy and paste his work into Google Docs, but she told me in no uncertain terms that she knew nothing of it and that was the end of the matter. I ended up buying him a flashdrive, but what about those who can't afford to go out and buy things like that spur of the moment?)

And don't forget Google Earth. It's another way for students to gain map skills, but more interesting. It's more concrete, and can really show them the relationship between continents, countries, states, cities, neighborhoods, streets, and so on. Our SIS has even used it to illustrate writing concepts, such as narrowing a topic or even the idea of details and exploding the moment.

And that's just a few things Google has to offer!