Google has become a terrific teaching and learning partner to me over the years which is one of the reasons I was excited to become a Google Certified Educator (GCT). Now, one year later, I am reflecting upon my Fav Five (and freee!) Google educational tools and then I’ll give ya a peak into how they can be used to enhance classroom instruction.
Translate - View web pages or any text in other languages
SMS - Use text messaging for quick info about anything you can imagine
These are incredible tools with amazing educational value, but you’ve heard that before about other technologies, nodded your head in agreement but perhaps also wondered…how???? I’ve collaborated with some colleagues to come up with a couple classes that show exactly how these tools can be used to enhance teaching and learning.
In this class participants discover how various Google research tools can enhance their ability to use the inquiry process and build understanding. The Information Fluency Continuum is used as a guide to thinking about these research tools. Participants leave able to use a Google collaborative document to develop and share thinking, and tools to discover and create knowledge including Google SMS, Google Scholar, Google Books, Google Blog Search, and Google Translate. Here is an outline of each session.
In this class participants become hurricane detectives and discover how to use Google Apps, such as Google Earth and Google Collaborative Docs, to support a “Severe Weather” unit of study. Here is an outline of each session.
Google Me at... In this class participants discover and explore how they can create an active digital footprint that will impact how they are seen by Google.Here is an outline of each session.
*Note: this class has yet to be created. If you are interested in collaborating to create it go here.
Innovative educators can access all materials in these classes for free and use them to enhance teaching and learning in their own communities. If you do, or plan to, please comment here to share your plans or results.
You have read this article Educating Innovatively /
Google /
Google Earth /
Google for Educators /
Google in Education /
Google SMS
with the title . You can bookmark this page URL https://benncam.blogspot.com/2008/05/five-googley-ideas-to-engage-learners.html. Thanks!
I am offering a class through the Office of Instructional Technology this Friday that among other things shows educators how to use Google SMS to enhance teaching and learning. When participants ask questions and colleagues (in this case the class facilitators) send emails like this one or this one that inquire why I offer a class informing educators how to use sms texting as an educational tool even though cell phones are banned in NYC schools, my answer is easy. I am fortunate to work in an office that believes in being leaders rather than followers in providing innovative support to educators. With technology changing at lightening speed, many of our educators don't yet know what it is they need to know in this vast and ever-changing 21st Century landscape and it is the responsibility of our office to help inform the educational community.
So, even though cell phones are banned (and I don't endorse not following a mandate), I promote teaching how technology tools can be used to enhance teaching and learning because we must prepare our students and teachers for the world of today, not the classrooms of yesterday. Even if our teaching is guided by certain mandates that cause the world inside school walls to be very different from the world students encounter after dismissal, part of our job as educators is to help prepare students to succeed outside the classroom. Once they leave the building many students plop down their 3 bucks to bodega owners to collect their stored phones and jump on social networks that they access outside of school on a filterless internet. (Note: Imagine what else that $15 a week could be used for: home internet, college fund, books???). If we don’t teach how banned and filtered technologies can be used then we are not empowering students to operate in safe, appropriate, and acceptable ways with or without technology whether inside or outside school walls.
Additionally, teachers need to experience, understand the educational value, and be comfortable with technology tools before using them to enhance teaching and learning. If we are exposing teachers to ways in to incorporate cells into the classroom, we are providing that teacher and classroom with tremendous power and access and an ability to model for students how to use a cell phone as a learning tool. At a recent school visit Will Richardson wowed students when he took out his phone and had them ask a question that they thought he wouldn’t know the answer to. After a few colorful attempts the question ended up being “What’s the population of Spain?” They watched as he sent a text message “Spain population” to 46645 (GOOGL) and got the answer back about 10 seconds later. Amazement ensued as Richardson showed them how they had the access to nearly any information they wanted in their cell phones…unfortunately they wouldn’t be able to reconnect with that learning until they handed $3 over to the bodega owner who stored their phone while they were in school.
Some teachers I speak with think they have a case against using technology in education after they explain that if students have access to all this information they’ll be able to cheat on tests and other assessments. I tell these teachers that in a “Whole New Mind World” we need to begin engaging in “know where” (to find it) rather then “know what” (the answer is) teaching…meaning it is more important to teach students how to access any information rather than memorize it. Ideally they’ll do something with the information that is more meaningful and authentic then placing answers in a test booklet. The other big argument is about safety and that technologies such as cells can be used to coordinate fights or drug deals. Yes, this is true. This is one way they can do it, laptops are another, word of mouth is another. Perhaps one of the most popular ways of coordinating the details of a fight is communication via passing a paper note. However, educational technologist Alan November once shared an interesting observation. If students were passing inappropriate notes in school (about fights, cheating, or anything else) should schools ban paper???? Banning the tool rather dealing with the actions may not be the best option.
Educational gaming expert Marc Prensky joins me in encouraging educators to reconsider their view of using mobile technology—and to imagine a pedagogy that embraces this potential. Essentially small computers, cell phones can support language lessons, display animations of medical and chemical processes, be used for polling and testing, serve as the gateway to larger learning resources—and so much more.
He also explains to educators that in a Flat World, while U.S. educators are busy banning cell phones in schools, millions of students in China and Japan, the Philippines, and Germany are using their mobile phones (respectively), to learn English; to study math, health and spelling; and to access live and archived university lectures. Prensky shares that the average cell phone now a days has more computing power than many of the computers of 10 years ago. He goes on to ask, “how can we harness that power in education?” Below are some ideas.
10 Ideas for Using Cell Phones in Education
Student response polling or pop quizzes (no need to invest in additional devices)
Use sms to find definitions, currency conversion, math equations, translation and more
Use as an internet browser to access endless information
Research
Read news articles and current events
Read books
Download and use education programs such as Google Maps and use as GPS
Use as a digital or video camera to accompany school projects, publishing, etc.
Educate students on appropriate and acceptable social use
Use the voice technology to share engaging lectures or lessons
Here are a few places educators can visit to learn more about how to use cell phones to enhance teaching and learning.
5 Resources for Educators Interested in Enhancing Education with Cell Phones
Should we teach educators and students ways to unleash the educational value of technologies even if they may not be accessible in schools?
How will schools be impacted that are a part of Bloomberg’s pilot program that provides every student at certain schools with cell phones in an effort to increase student achievement? Should those phones just be seen as a reward and a tool to use after school or should those teachers and students have an opportunity to learn about, model, and implement ways to use these devices as powerful learning tools?
Should the decision of use of cell phones and other technologies be at the discretion of the mayor or should informed educators and building leaders be empowered to determine if they want to employ such a policy?
Should educators and students be encouraged to make an educational case for allowing various technologies to be used acceptably, appropriately, and educationally in schools?
Join the Conversation Leave your comment on this blog. Join the Classroom 2.0 conversation. Join the New York Times Pogue's Posts conversation. For further viewing visit The Natives are Restless: Deneen Frazier, Educator/Actress Take a uniquely entertaining and enlightening journey into the minds and hearts of today's digital natives. Using recent research, Deneen portrays a riveting cast of characters to reveal the students' struggle to connect what they do in school with what they do in the world.
You have read this article Cell phones /
Cell phones in Education /
Educating Innovatively /
Freedom of Speech /
mandates
with the title . You can bookmark this page URL https://benncam.blogspot.com/2008/05/the-value-of-using-cell-phones-to.html. Thanks!
Comment left on My Page Maria said… Thank you, Lisa, very much for creating this site. It is so needed. We, teachers, don't always have a chance to exchange ideas with each other. I have to also add that the quality of your work is very high. Thanks again :)
From the Science Forum Discussion Board Reply by Maria Thank you :) this is the best question an elementary science teacher could ask. I am bursting with answers and shaking. I hope I will be finally heard. Thank you.
These comments literally gave me goose bumps!!! How amazing is it that there is now a forum that caused an educator to be bursting with answers and shake with excitement that she will *finally* be heard??? This is why I promote the idea of teaching educators to use social networks and other 21st Century tools.
After I first wrote about Social Networking for Innovative Educators many of my colleagues like the one in this email asked why I advocated using technologies that are filtered in most schools and can be used inappropriately by students. It's comments like Maria's or the one a principal recently shared with me that make it clear. As this principal shared, “We wouldn’t remove stairs from a building just because students can fall down them. We teach them to walk, not run. Use the handrail and have signs for an up staircase and down.”
Teaching educators how to use technologies like Social Networking is important for many reasons including the fact that we must prepare our students and teachers not only for life within schools walls, but also for life outside the school walls. Additionally to be cybersafety-minded educators, it is important to be comfortable operating in environments in which our digital natives students are fluent. It is also important that we model safe, acceptable, appropriate, and professional use. Additionally, I’ve had the opportunity to inform teachers about the little known fact that most districts have a block or unblock a website form and I share the NYC DOE link on how to do this with them.
Giving educators an ability to use technologies that enable them to connect with others with whom they can begin building personal learning networks, is powerful. Perhaps even more important is that technologies like blogs and social networks provide educators with a much-needed, but often missing voice, that is kept that way in school districts like mine that have mandates in place to ensure this. But now Maria is bursting with answers and shaking with excitement that she will *finally* be heard. Doesn't that say it all???
You have read this article Educating Innovatively /
Freedom of Speech /
Personal Learning Network /
PLN /
social networking
with the title . You can bookmark this page URL https://benncam.blogspot.com/2008/05/reasons-to-promote-engaging.html. Thanks!
the reasons I was excited to become a Google Certified Educator (GCT). Now, one year later, I am reflecting upon my Fav Five (and freee!) Google educational tools and then I’ll give ya a peak into how they can be used to enhance classroom instruction. 
