Before Google is a different time. Going to the library, asking a friend, teacher, or even your parents for information that was on your mind. If they didn't know the answer, you didn't know. Today, there is a seemingly endless amount of information available to us and Google is finding new ways to help us store this information and use it in our daily lives. Documents that can be updated by multiple collaborators, shared calendars, surveys, and tools that help connect us all can not only be used in our daily lives, but also in education. In a digital age where kids as young as six have a cell phone, why not teach them in ways that are new as well?
Depending on the Google tool that you use, you can cover multiple learning styles. If giving students a choice of assignment or proficiency is the new way of learning, then Google tools is the way to go. Reading a book and demonstrating your knowledge can now happen in multiple ways.
Blog your responses and include relevant pictures or video using Blogger.
Map out and give points of interest about the characters using Google Maps.
Find news from when the characters were living and make a newspaper that one of the characters would have read using Google News.
Create a class wide editable document where students can post ideas and comments about the book using Google Documents.
They can even preview books before choosing what book to do their report on in Google Books before any of this happens!
You can potentially cover all of the National Education Technology Standards for Students using Google tools. Research and Fluency comes into play with Google News, while Digital Citizenship is important when dealing with a class wide Google document. If you're giving students a choice, then representation is built right in, and students can express their creativity in ways where they are most comfortable. Because we are dealing with so many applications, it would be impossible to describe here where each tool fits into the NETS and UDLs. The key is that Google tools allows multiple representations for students.
What did we do before Google? How about what will we do with Google?
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