1. Application of Google Tools in POGIL Nicoline Kiwiet Adjunct Professor Chemistry SUNY Ulster Community College Stoneridge, New York 239 th Conference San Francisco March 2010 Presented at the Symposium on Computers in Education
9. How We Used Google Tools Glue Projects Course Info. Link to Pre-Lab Team Pages Pieces Course Documents Lab Reports GOOGLE SITE GOOGLE DOCS Spreadsheets Lab Results Forms Share information Google Chat Virtual Office Drop in for Qs
14. Google Spreadsheets Class Lab Results, can be shared easily with shared spreadsheet. Simultaneous entry in class or via a form
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Editor's Notes
POGIL is a student centered instructional approach, that is based on the active engagement of students through guided inquiry materials and group learning.
My interest has been in investigating software tools for collaboration outside the classroom. The goals being to allow student to easily share information and work on projects together, for me to monitor students contribution, and also to keep it simple.
There are a number of software tools used today in Education for sharing information with students, as well as networking. At SUNY we use the course Management system ANGEL, as mentioned earlier today WIKISITES is quite popular, as well as MOODLE for secondary education. In addition some are starting to use “Second Life” to create a 3d world to explore education. Then are Microsoft Office Products, and GOOGLE Aps that I’ll discuss today.
The difference with the other software tools is that Google Offers Cloud Based Applications, not just access to a web site or documents.
Here I briefly compare the functionaility of these various tools. Basically all of these tools are web based and allow for a personalized web page, discussions. The ones most widely used in education are Wikisites, Moodle and Google. The difference of Google Application is that it not only offers a web interface, that you can provide links, monitor edits and attach documents. If offers a whole suite of Applications in the Cloud.
Traditionally desktop applications have been on the computer, Google provides for them in the cloud. With Google Docs , the equivalent of MS Word, Google Presentations the equivalent for Power point, and Google Spreadsheet the equivalent to Excel (with the powerful feature of being able to use web based forms to populate the spreadsheet) And of course you have all the other communication tools , email, chat, and their latest Google Wave.
Drivers for cloud based computing, from a business perspective, cloud based computing means less infrastructure to maintain locally, which gives a company flexibility w.r.t. to tools, so it is driven my cost, timing and flexibity. For the consumer, cloud based applications allows them to work / anytime anywhere and have access to all their docs. And for a Classroom , aside from all the above, cloud based applications, especially when we are referring to desktop applications, it means that all students have the same version, the same programs, and if they are using Google for them it’s freee, and to top it off it allows for Collaboration. from consumer trends is the _____ for Portable, Anytime and Anywhere Business Drivers are - Cost , Timing and Flexibility. If the applications are in the cloud, there is less infrastructure to maintain locally. For CLASSROOM: SOFTWARE ACCESSIBILITY, SAME VERSION, SAME PROGRAMS, FREE
Just to give you an idea of how we used Google Tools to support Collaborative Learning. In the first place, Google Site, it’s the place for Course Information much like a Course Management System. I just find that I can more easily adapt and add things to the course page then with a CMS. Also more interestingly, anyone in the class can , and in addition I can restrict access to just the site information. For collaborative learning I liked that each team member could make his/her own page. Google Docs were the pieces of the work we did in class. If I handed out worksheets or labs, those would all be in a document folder. My aim was just to share the documents with them as much as possible with out excessively printing out paper copies. The best part here were the lab reports, allowing the results to be shared. The part I didn’t really anticipate was Google Chat, that becoming my virtual office, students drop by and talk.
Google Sites, I consider the glue for what ever work I’m doing. The Course Information site, it is very easy to set up. I can limit access to who can access information, I can add power points and video, but most importantly the students can add their own page and I can monitor who is contributing what. I can also revert to an older version of the site if something happens.
As part of the Google Course Site, there were also TEAM pages, where students would add information about themselves. Which I thought was fabulous, because it provided another means for me to get to know the students and for them to get to know eachother. And this is possible because each student can add /edit their own pages. I can set it up so that I’m alerted via email any time there is a change made to the site.
Highlights for course work, used for organizing course info, Students Can Add Pages Revision history can be Monitored FREE Private Access Insert text, images, powerpoints and video
Google has brought DESKTOP application to the CLOUD with GOOGLE Docs. This is a suite of programs, that can be used and shared, without attaching to emails. These are free, and anyone with access to the internet can access them.
Not much time to go into this, but Google Spreadsheets allows for the sharing of class data. For lab many of the experiments have the students do relies on analysis of class results. Google spreadsheets allows for this as well, just like google docs. A powerful feature of this that students can enter results at the same time or forms can be automatically generated that allow form based entry into the spreadsheet.
