Todays Meet vs. Google Moderator- Creating a backchannel during classroom lessons

Really quick post tonight. I'm presenting at our teacher technology carnival tomorrow and Thursday and needed to add this!

I wanted to talk about TodaysMeet and then I came across this blogpost from Teaching Like It's 2999.

I am going to try Google Moderator and love all of the things that it can do like participants voting on posts to rate them.

I can't wait!
Jen

Google in Education Lesson Plan Search

While I was looking around the Google education website I came across this search engine of lessons using Google tools.  You can search the lessons available and make them fit with your curriculum.  Two ideas I saw that I would like to use are using Google calendar as a timeline project for Geologic Time and using spreadsheets as a introduction to data collection for the scientific method.












Each lesson has a grade or age range (which I think most of the younger grade level lessons can be used for middle and maybe high school depending on concept) and is written out with an Overview, Materials List, Instructions, Related Links, Video Tutorials, Evaluation and Standards.  They are written out very well with a lot of information.  I really like the tutorials and related links and think they would be very helpful for students.  Check out these lesson examples.

Science: Lesson Plan: Introduction to Scientific Method - Marble Stacking Using Google Spreadsheets

Language Arts: Lesson Plan: Historical Novel

Social Studies: Lesson Plan: The Great Immigration Debate

Math: Lesson Plan: Slope and Y-Intercept

Some of the lesson plans on the site also include Google Earth lesson plans.  Since I teach 6th grade science, I am really excited about the plate tectonics and food chain lesson plans!

I encourage you to go to the lesson plan search engine in the link at the top and click on a subject (I wouldn't narrow the search much more than that since the age and grade ranges are flexible). Look at all of the available lessons and you might find something you can use with the Chromebooks.

Happy Browsing!
Jen

Google Tools Day 6- Templates

Instead of starting from scratch with a document, spreadsheet, form, presentation or drawing, Google templates offer pre-made templates for the user to just fill in.  There is a "Student and Teacher" category that offers a variety of templates ranging from certificates to lesson plans, rubrics, presentations, and project planners.

Thoughts

There are so many templates I find it easier to use the search bar at the top of the templates page.  This would be a good place for students to start when first using Google docs since it will give them some guidance on creating their own.  I also like that within each category you can narrow them down by the type of doc you need to use. Some of the templates are too specific and would need editing but that is what is great about these too, they are editable.

How I have Used It

At this point I have only used the templates for ideas and have not directly used one.  Looking through what other teachers and students have done helps to get my thoughts flowing on how to use them for my classes.  

Enjoy!
Jen