50 Ways Google Can Help You Become A Better Teacher

by TeachThought Staff

While Apple products are known for their integration in classrooms, increasingly Google is the choice for schools and districts looking for something organized, useful, and inexpensive that’s available on tablet, laptop, Chromebooks, desktop, smartphone, and more. 

In fact, the sheer diversity of Google products might make them a more natural fit in the classroom in lieu of the iPad’s gravity. Below we’ve listed 50 ways teachers can get started using Google in the classroom. Let us know on our facebook page if we’ve missed anything.

Ed note: Update: This post has been updated with new tips, links, and resources to reflect the latest ways to use Google’s latest ‘stuff.’

Google In The Classroom: 50 Ways Google Can Help You Become A Better Teacher

1. Find YouTube channels to provide daily writing prompts, activity modeling, and out-of-the-box content area expertise that students find interesting.

2. Use Google Drive for cloud-based storage of critical curricula and other important files. (This one’s kind of obvious, but it’s among the most useful.)

3. Aggregate videos for blended learning via a YouTube channel.

4. Use Google Search to identify exemplars of project-based learning, blended learning, or mobile learning.

5. Use Google Search to source not tools, but reviews of tools–from curricula to apps, and other pedagogical tools.

6. Find curated collections of resources currently tucked away in the dark recesses of some obscure web page using expert keyword search tactics.

7. Check out YouTube for Teachers and their video resources.

8. Have students analyze emerging cultural trends using Google Trends.

9. Use Google Search to see how what other schools are doing in regards to school BYOD policies, technology in the classroom, or unpacked Common Core academic standards.

10. Have students use a combination of YouTube and Google Drive to create ongoing digital portfolios, that include their own reflections of the learning process.

11. Help students understand how to stay safe online at Google’s Safety Center.

12. Use Google Photos to quickly document and save student work samples for student conferences, portfolio pieces, and more. (Just be sure to not ‘publish’ the folder–keep it private and viewable only by yourself and/or parents of the student.)

13. Have students trace a fictional character’s journey through Google Earth.

14. Have students manage and communicate project-based learning work on Google Calendar.

15. Sync your browser tabs, search history, and extensions between devices with Google Chrome sync. 

16. Use Google Search to locate teacher professional development, conferences or online courses to personalize your growth.

17. Hangout+ with author experts via Google+ Hangouts—and have students do the same.

Snapshots Of Understanding? 10 Smart Tools For Digital Exit Slips

The TeachThought Podcast Ep. 173 How Can We Prepare Teachers For Deeper Learning?

18. Have students collaborate and published work to closed circles of peers on Google+.

19. Download mobile learning apps from Google Play to stay on top of the latest trends in mobile learning–The Sandbox, for example.

20. Use Google Drive to respond to student writing via comments, or collaborate real-time with distance learners.

21. Join Google to find communities and participate in a persistent professional learning community.

22. Find webinars, eLearning courses, and other professional development resources to self-direct your own educator training.

23. Source MOOCs to supplement and extend the learning of students.

24. Use Google Scholar to review research on learning trends and strategies.

25. Use Google Search to find a blog–like TeachThought–to do all of the above for you.

26. In #highered? Sign up for a free G Suite for Education.

27. According to Google, explore ‘User-powered coding environments, enrichment materials, and inspiration to empower diverse student populations.’

31. Help students understand YouTube usage and online safety.

32. Show students how they can ‘type’ with their voice in over 40 languages.

33. Use Google Expeditions to plan virtual field trips with/for students.

34. Use Google Keep to share simple meeting notes or key takeaways with colleagues.

35. Manage your own online identity–and that of your family–with Google’s resources and tips.

36. Explore case studies to see how other classrooms are using Google Chromebooks. Even if your classroom doesn’t use the Chromebook, almost any computer can function in the same way (on a Windows PC, hit F11 and you’re halfway there).

37. Certify yourself as a Google for Education Certified Innovator.

38. Or train others in their Certified Trainer Program.

Kellie Ady offered 5 more, shown below:

39. Use Google Forms to gather feedback or give assessments (and use the Flubaroo script to auto-grade).

40. Create a Google Drive series of folders (by topic, standard, content area, grade level, etc.) to share resources with your Professional Learning Network all over the world.

41. Use Google Sheets to create charts and graphs with data–or better yet, have students create and chart their own progress.

42. Use blogger.com as a class website.

43. Use Google Presentations to crowdsource ideas (and use the “Research” tool to find free images, quotes, & information for presentations with citations included).

44. Use Google Calendar to create “appointment slots” for writing conferences or parent conferences.

TeachThought Reader Nicole Naditz sent these recommendations:

45. Use Google Custom Search to create search engines which will direct your students only to sites you’ve vetted. (Love this one!)

46. Use Google moderator to capture student opinions, foster dialog and support analysis and synthesis.

47. Explore the most cited education topics and articles in the field of teaching and learning.

48. Use Google maps to tell digital stories with text, photo and video all embedded into a trail students lay on the map. With screen capture software, they can even narrate their “journeys”.

49. Connect art to your curriculum by creating and sharing galleries in Google Art Project. Or have students create, narrate (via screen capture) and share art galleries.

50. Use Google voice to have all students call and leave a short audio response to a prompt. (Make sure the google voice number is not forwarded to your cell phone!). Also great for providing students and parent with a number where they can call or text you without having your personal numbers.

© TeachThought

6 Messages Every Student Should Hear On The First Day Of School

by Terry Heick & Jackie Gerstein

For specific training and professional development around technology integration, contact TeachThought Professional Development to bring Jackie Gerstein and other TeachThought professionals to your school today.

I took an excerpt of a recent post by Jackie, 6 Activities I Use To Build Connections With Students At The Beginning Of The Year, because it seemed too valuable to get buried in a post on a different topic.

She was talking about messages she wants students to hear–to ‘start the year with.’ She didn’t intend for it to be an end-all/be-all of messages for all students everywhere, but rather the messages she delivers to her students in the context of what her students will be doing and how she will be teaching.

Because I liked her messages so much, I revised them a bit for a wider audience, which you’ll find below.

There are dozens of messages that students ‘need’ to hear, but I showed restraint (could’ve been 50) and stuck with six. If I did the post tomorrow, I may see it all differently. Feel free to add yours to the comments below.

6 Messages Every Student Should Hear On The First Day Of School

Beginning class with a focus on connections rather than content gives learners the following messages.

1. You are the focus of the class, not me.

2. You are important as a learner and a human being in this class.

3. You will be expected to engage in the learning activities during class time. You will be an active learner. I, as the class facilitator, will be just that – a facilitator. I will introduce the learning activities, but you will be responsible for the actual learning.

4. Everything you do–good or ‘bad’–affects everyone else in the room. That means everything you do matters because you matter.

5. Struggling is a part of learning. If it’s simple or simply done, you’re pr0bably not learning anything.

6. You are capable of anything. Your mindset matters more than anything you do or don’t know, are or are not ‘good’ at. 

© TeachThought

12 questions to ask your students on the first day of school

12 Questions To Ask Your Students On The First Day Of School

by Terry Heick

The premise here is simple enough, and I’ve written about this kind of thing before in greater detail (see 20 Questions Parents Should Ask Teachers).

You’ll likely learn their name, roughly be able to estimate their height, know what school they attended last, know what languages they speak, and get a sense of what school–at least so early in the year–seems to ‘mean’ to them. But what else should you know?

The big idea here is to use the first day (or week or month) to get to know the right things about your students.

We’ve shared 11 Simple, Back-to-School, Getting To Know Students Questions where Dawn Casey-Rowe takes a look at–well, the kinds of questions teachers might consider asking students above and beyond the common.

Below I’m going to offer up 12 more that you might consider. This is a scaled back version of 26 Questions Every Student Should Be Able To Answer.

How relevant they are depends on the student, their grade level, how articulate they are, how comfortable they are with thinking about thinking, and so on. Use at your own discretion, of course.

12 Questions To Ask Your Students On The First Day Of School

1. What do you love? What are you most proud of?

2. When are you at your best as a person? Student? Friend? Brother/sister?

3. How do you respond–emotionally, practically, etc.–when you’re challenged?

4. What do you need from me to be successful this year?

5. What does it mean to ‘understand’ something?

6. What should school ‘do’ for you?

7. What should you do with the things you know?

8. Are you a picky reader? What are your strengths as a reader (or ‘scientist’ or musician or mathematician, etc)?

9. Who are your heroes and why?

10. What do you want to learn about this year? What are you curious about? What can a person do with curiosity?

11. When are you most creative? Why do you think that might be?

12. What do you want me to know about you? What should I be asking you but I’m not?

Bonus: Do you think you’re a good student? A good learner? Is there a difference?

12 Questions To Ask Your Students On The First Day Of School

© TeachThough

249 Bloom's Taxonomy Verbs For Critical Thinking

100+ Bloom’s Taxonomy Verbs For Critical Thinking

by TeachThought Staff

Ed note: This post was first published in 2013 and updated in December of 2018

Bloom’s Taxonomy’s verbs–also know as power verbs or thinking verbs–are extraordinarily powerful instructional planning tools.

In fact, next to the concept of backward-design and power standards, they are likely the most useful tool a teacher-as-learning-designer has access to. Why?

They can be used for curriculum mapping, assessment design, lesson planning, personalizing and differentiating learning, and almost any other “thing” a teacher–or student–has to do.

For example, if a standard asks students to infer and demonstrate an author’s position using evidence from the text, there’s a lot built into that kind of task. First, a student has to be able to define what an ‘author’s position’ is and what ‘evidence from the text’ means (Knowledge-level). They’ll then need to be able to summarize that same text (Understanding-level), interpret and infer any arguments or positions (Analysis-level), evaluate inherent claims (Evaluation-level), and then write (Creation-level) a response that demonstrates their thinking.

Though the chart below reads left to right, it’s ideal to imagine it as a kind of incline, with Knowledge at the bottom, and Create at the top. You may not always need this kind of tool to ‘unpack’ standards and identify a possible learning sequence, but it also works ideally as an assessment design tool. If students can consistently work with the topic in the columns to the right–designing, recommending, differentiating, comparing and contrasting, and so on, then they likely have a firm grasp on the material.

While we’ve shared Bloom’s Taxonomy posters before, the simplicity and clean design of the chart format make it a bit more functional–even useful to hand to the students themselves as a hole-punch-and-keep-it-in-your-journal-for-the-year kind of resource. It also makes a powerful self-directed learning tool. Start at the left, and, roughly, move right.

Looking to bring professional development for using Bloom’s taxonomy in your school? Contact us today.

Knowledge: Define, Identify, Describe, Recognize, Tell, Explain, Recite, Memorize, Illustrate, Quote, State, Match, Recognize, Select, Examine, Locate, Recite, Enumerate, Record, List, Quote, Label

Understand: Summarize, Interpret, Classify, Compare, Contrast, Infer, Relate, Extract, Paraphrase, Cite, Discuss, Distinguish, Delineate, Extend, Predict, Indicate, Translate, Inquire, Associate, Explore Convert

Apply: Solve, Change, Relate, Complete, Use, Sketch, Teach, Articulate, Discover, Transfer, Show, Demonstrate, Involve, Dramatize, Produce, Report, Act, Respond, Administer, Actuate, Prepare, Manipulate

Analyze: Contrast, Connect, Relate, Devise, Correlate, Illustrate, Distill, Conclude, Categorize, Take Apart, Problem-Solve, Differenatiate, Deduce, Conclude, Devise, Subdivide, Calculate, Order, Adapt

Evaluate: Criticize, Reframe, Judge, Defend, Appraise, Value, Prioritize Plan, Grade, Reframe, Revise, Refine, Grade, Argue, Support, Evolve, Decide, Re-design, Pivot

Create: Design, Modify, Role-Play, Develop, Rewrite, Pivot, Modify, Collaborate, Invent, Write, Formulate, Invent, Imagine

© teachthought