What it is: Google is more than just a search engine, at www.google.com/educators you will find Google Tools for your classroom along with great ideas others are using Google in their classrooms. Google’s classroom tools include book searches, Google Earth, maps, news, iGoogle (a place where you and your students can collect useful content from all over the web and view it in one place), web search, custom search engines, Google notebook, Blogger, Calendar, Docs and Spreadsheets (free!), Groups, page creator, picsa, SketchUp, and more! All of these tools are free to use and exceptional! Google tools make it easy to stay in contact with your students and families.
How to integrate Google for Educators into your classroom: Use Google Earth for real world geography lessons, have students pinpoint places in history and add relevant information and picture to Google Earth. Create a custom search engine for your students when research is required. Use Google groups to connect your students outside of the classroom. Create a web page for your classroom where you can easily update students and parents. Use Google Docs and Spreadsheets in place of costly word processing programs. Google Educator has fabulous ideas for integrating each of their classroom tools into the classroom.
Tips: Create your own custom searches for the elementary classroom, this will protect your students from inappropriate content that they may run across in a general web search. Use Google Docs and Spreadsheets so that students can save their work online and access it from home and school. Browse the classroom activities on Google Educator, there are some great ones!
