Last month we ran a competition to win a copy of Michael Graham’s excellent book - "Google Apps meets Common Core." It is an excellent read and has taught me a great deal about using Google Apps for practical teaching and learning.

We had three copies to give away and here are our winning entries who had to explain their innovative use of Google Apps for Education

Diane Gibson

“I work for an online university instructing preservice teachers. I have been using Google documents and video as a way to create Knowledge Base documents and videos for my class. The links that are created allow me to share them easily with my students, updates are instant without having to post a new link or document. I recent have started to an application call You Can Book Me that will sync with my outlook calendar so students can set appointments on their own without having to contact me, they just schedule right on my calendar. My students use Google documents when working on a task so that they can share their work with me to start the brainstorming and collaboration process, this allows us both to see the work in real time. As a faculty we use Google Doc so that everyone who has vested interest in that particular document has access to the information and the real time updates instead of multiple emails to update the information, it increase the productivity.”

Amber Whipkey

“I use Google Docs as a way for my students to type their essays and submit them to me electronically. This allows me to go through their papers without lugging them back and forth and type comments on what they wrote. Typing the comments in takes much less time and provides more instant feedback to my children. I also use Google Translate for some of my students who do not speak English. Although Translate is not fool-proof, it at least gives my Spanish-speaking students a starting point for what to write. They simply translate their responses and copy and paste them into a Google Doc. I then have bilingual students go through the paper with them to make sure it makes sense. Also, my students use Google Docs to create presentations to show to the class and Google Forms to vote for Student Council members.”

Bill Robson

“I use it in a variety of ways. Firstly in my classroom I use Google Docs for group tasks. The students share the document with both their partner and myself. This allows me to see which student completed which work and mark accordingly. It also allows me to keep track of where as student is up to in their work and I can see them if they are falling behind or lacking detail in their responses. I also use it for submitting work as I can download it directly to my iPad and mark it on there. We also use forms in our faculty to keep records of students completing homework and bringing equipment to lessons. We can then follow up if there are regular problems.”

Well done to our winners and thanks to everyone who entered.

Big thanks to Michael for supplying the books and I would strongly encourage you check it out if you haven’t done so.

Don’t forget to keep those Google Apps ideas flowing also.