Journal Number Eight

An Evaluation of Google’s Education Portal

Google has announced a new education portal for teachers called Google for Educators. This new portal provides eleven programs that will help bring more information and technology into the classroom. The website also provides information about each of the tools and lesson plans that might help incorporate these technologies. Educators can share their opinions of the products and how they use them with their own students.

Google Earth is a program that can be used to view different places all around the world, using satellite images. You can view the whole Earth, specific countries, buildings, roads, and even plant and animal life. The user can even find out specific information about specific areas, such as population, and with specific tools you can make your own graphs. This would be an amazing tool for a geography class.

Google Book Search is a program that allows teachers and students to search the full-text of books to find information. This allows access to information that may no longer be available because it’s out print, or may not be available in your area. This tool can tell you where to find the actual book in your area and allows students to search thousands of books that can help their research projects.

Google Calendar is a tool that allows students, parents, teachers, and administrators to have a community calendar that is available online. Teachers can make a calendar for each of his/her classes and any changes he/she makes are visible to those who subscribe to it. This is a great place to post information regarding school holidays, fieldtrips, and assignments. This way if a student is absent, they can still get the assignments they missed!

Picasa allows students and teachers to “find, edit, and share pictures on your PCs.” Once installed, the program automatically organizes all the pictures in your computer into albums. You can always create new albums and students can access the pictures to use in various class projects. Web albums can also be created to allow access to the pictures from home.