Reflections on Kern Kelley's "The Google Gamut" presentation for the K12Online course, 2010.

1. Reflections on Kern Kelley’s “The Google Gamut” Strand: 2008: Getting Started URL: http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=272 Thomas J. Ehrensperger, July 25, 2010

2. Overall Concept: “Cloud Computing” Instead of creating documents on your own computer, with local software, Google’s many web based applications let you create and modify documents of many types on line, so you can access them from any computer (or other device) with internet access. This also allows collaboration and sharing, without an endless exchange of emails with revisions.

3. Gmail We just switched over to this at Woodward, from M.S. Outlook Convenient threading of related emails Lots more space, so the mailbox will almost never fill up (something that happened to me more than once using Outlook!)

4. Google Docs Probably the most important part of the “Google Gamut” for my purposes here at Woodward Academy Word processor (like M.S. Word) Spreadsheet (like M.S. Excel) Presentation maker (like M.S. Power Point)

5. Other Handy Items Google Gears – tool for working on documents locally, even without internet access iGoogle – easily create and post web pages Easy to create and post blogs at blogger.com Picasso – store and publish pictures Reader – an RSS feed reader Thesaurus, dictionary, templates (handy tools for use in creating documents)

6. Questions or Ideas for Further Exploration How helpful will the collaborative document feature be? Will the ‘Revision History’ feature keep all this straight? How easy is it to “work together” on documents online, rather than face-to-face? Are there any disadvantages to the whole “cloud computing” concept? What’s RSS like? (not really a Google question, per se, but just something I haven’t really looked into yet)

7. Contribution to My Professional Development Woodward just switched us over to Gmail, and is encouraging use of Google Docs. This may help me “get on board”! The four of us who teach physics here in the Upper School have been discussing what changes we might be making in out curriculum, particularly since we’re changing to an electronic text. We already have a Google Docs document “floating around”, and I need to have more facility with working on this with the other teachers.

8. Ideas for Applying These Tools to Teaching There are times when it’s useful to combine lots of students’ lab data in a spreadsheet (larger number of data points gives more statistically significant results). In the past, I’ve either had students come forward and type it in Excel, or I did it myself. Now they could contribute online! I could take advantage of Presentation Maker to post presentations on-line. Most students have Power Point anyway, but this would give them access on any internet device The RSS feed tool may make available some useful publications. I need to look into that!