TOOLS

Here are some of the ways I want to implement Google tools into my teaching-

Google Images, Google Video, You Tube:
I would use Google images in descriptive writing lessons by pulling up an image and having the students describe them in writing, like the following:I would also use image and google video to help illustrate lessons like helping kids get a better understanding of Shakespeare. I'll be careful about you tube, because I know several districts don't allow it.

Google Maps and Google Earth:
I think I will actually use these a lot in pointing out where a story takes place. Often times this is very helpful in understanding a story. For example, when reading a slave narrative, I could show students where ocean slave routes were, or getting a picture of the distance escaped slaves would travel to have to get north would be helpful. Also they would be helpful in getting a more clear picture of a different culture in a story.

Google News:
For my students, I can use google news to look up current events. I want to have a class discussion every week about current events and google news can provide a quick reference if I said I wanted students to look up information about the middle eastern revolutions, they could easily look up the content without having to wade through a bunch of irrelevant other stories. I could use it personally to keep abreast of things happening in education, especially legislation.

Google Translate:
I would use it as I prepared lessons so I could look up some words in Spanish (or whatever other language my ESL students spoke). I think it would be most beneficial for my students though, as we would be reading literature that would be new to most all of my students, especially those ESL students, in understanding the vocabulary and the context of the stories. For my ESL students I would give them vocabulary words to take home and look at using google translate.

Google Books and Google Scholar:
As an English major, I already use google Books and Google scholar quite frequently to find references and articles for papers. I would help my students do the same, especially when teaching about essay writing. I love google books because you can search directly for words or phrases to use for sources and Google scholar will be important for my students in learning the difference between an academic source and one from Wikipedia.

Blogger, Google Reader, Etc:
I will honestly probably use blogger the most to keep in contact and post things for my class, even more than a class website, just because it's so simple and straight forward and gives students a forum to be able to easily post ideas and assignments. Checking out peoples blogs is one of my favorite hobby's, especially art blogs because you get to see what creative people are doing all over the world. I'm always checking the personal blogs of artists like Pixar animators, because it gives an intimate look at the process behind their craft. I'm excited to show my students how to search for blogs that interest them and how to keep track of their favorite blogs with google reader. Their are so many cool things available to students on blogs, from career information to crafts to fan-fiction, etc.

Google Calender:
I've used iCal before and I like that google is pretty much the same only you can access it from anywhere, and I like how detailed you can make it with all the little separate calenders and to-do's and reminders. To be honest though, I probably won't really use this accept on my class website for my students. I think it will be great for my students to be able to see what the schedule looks like and important reminders from home. Until I get an iPhone though, it takes too long for me to type all my to-do's and appointments, and I can only check it when I'm at a computer. Right now I'm more of a day timer pen-and-paper kind of guy, as it just seems a little more practical for my lifestyle right now.

Google Docs:
This is by far one of the coolest things I have found in a long time, being able to create documents and access them anywhere. I wish I had learned about it a long time ago because it would have saved me many hours emailing and going back and forth between computers! I am very excited to teach my students about this if they don't know about it already and will probably suggest that they do their papers on google docs so that they're always available. The presentation option is awesome and I will definitely have my students use that for book presentations rather than the old book report.

Google Groups:
For my other tool I would like to try and get my students into Google groups so they could collaborate on group projects at home and easily communicate and share all their information.