Indian summer has finally arrived... 80 degrees in October just doesn't sound right but I think I speak for everyone when I say "We'll take it!" If only it stayed daylight until 9pm once again.
The last few weeks we have really explored some fun technology to incorporate in a classroom. I am officially in love with Google and their Doc offerings! Having had a personal Gmail account for the past several years, I periodically would catch wind of applications Google was creating. I have experimented in the past with Google Spreadsheets and the sharing option. The wonderful thing about it is the simplicity of the application. Spreadsheets doesn't have quite the functionality or options of MS Excel but it has the base functions to effectively create a working and visually appealing spreadsheet. The best component by far has to be the automatic save feature that I wish Excel had.
I had never built a form to administer a quiz or poll. Even if I had, I wouldn't have thought to leverage Google to manage that form. What a great idea! As I was looking through the tutorials and creating my "quiz", I imagined myself creating polls in my school to collect school-wide opinions on particular matters. After I get settled in a school, I have a vision to start a cycling club with a math component that examines the geometry of a bicycle. Using a Google Form such as the one we used would be a great tool to gauge the interest level of such a club. The summary feature within the forms application is a wonderful add-on. The summary was well formatted and provided a great snapshot of the form's data at a single click of the mouse. The automatic grading script, Flubaroo, was much easier to use than I anticipated and the grading was flawless. This is something I would have never thought to seek out on my own. I'm glad I know about it now. Overall, I can't wait to explore more with Google Docs...and I know the applications will only improve in functionality over time. Very exciting!
The Inspiration software was fun to use too and was beneficial in assembling diagrams although I wasn't crazy about downloading in onto my computer. I like the web-based media at this point where I can save and access everything online. I wonder if Google Drawing can perform the same type of diagramming as Inspiration? ...there's only one way to find out!
Seeing that I officially have one follower, even if it is my girlfriend, I think I need to post this on my Protopage :)
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