7 Great Ways to Use Google for Education
GUEST POST BY: Ben Russel
The Google Apps for Education services were first introduced ten years ago. They aimed to increase innovation, participation, and creativity among the students and teachers. Since then, Google has worked hard to improve many of their educational products. Google Apps such as Google Hangouts have revolutionized the general view of what an app should do today. Recently, Google has launched a new set of applications called G SUITE for education that seeks to improve the schooling system. Below are some of the educational apps included in the package and how they can be effectively used to improve the education system.
Google Scholar is a simple search engine that is designed to explore scholarly
and educative material correctly. It is free to use and can be easily accessed
by a student, teacher or parent at any given time and location. Students can
take advantage of its great features to enrich their literature knowledge. It
allows students to search various forms of research material, be it books,
journals, articles or other works of literature. It can display links to
original books and articles from the libraries. Also, any student can save the
acquired material and reference for future usage.
2. Google Classroom
Google Classroom is a learning platform
for institutions and schools that seek to simplify creating, grading and
distribution of school work in a digital way. This program aims to remove the
tedious process of learning and also minimize the usage of papers and books used in our classrooms. Google Classroom takes advantage of Google Drive
features in creating and distributing schoolwork. Furthermore, it can be paired
with Gmail to enhance communication among students, school faculty, and parents. Google Classroom makes it easy for the teachers to plan their
schedule and communicate effectively to their students and parents.
3. Gmail
Communication between students and teachers has
never been easier thanks to Gmail. Gmail is among the best, secure, powerful
and free mailing clients on the Internet. Most people use Gmail for business
purposes, but it can also be used to enhance education. It is a very effective
tool to any teacher, student or parent because it offers online storage, device
synchronization and email alerts. Schools can use Gmail to easily relay
important messages to their students, parents and the school staff. Report
cards and school
assignments can be easily and quickly submitted through Gmail. Also, as
seen above, Gmail can be combined with more Google education apps to improve
productivity.
Browsing through the Internet looking for one piece of
information can be frustrating to most people, but not anymore. Google Alerts is a simple tool that allows one to get
notifications and emails on topics of interest. It can be a great tool for students when it comes to working on a theory
of knowledge essay, for instance, keeping up with current events and just
monitoring anything on the web. Like many of Google apps, this application is
free, and it is available to anyone interested. Also, this app can be paired
with Google Calendar which is also a great tool for both students as well as teachers.
It is more versatile than most other calendars providing different features
that enable one to create reminders, organize his/her schedule and also share
your events with friends and family. Google Calendar can be synchronized with
all of your diverse devices such as smart phones, laptops and tablets; this
enables you to keep track of any activity marked in the calendar. It is a nice
way to keep yourself on track and meet your goals as planned.
5. Google Books
Years ago we had no choice but to visit a library if we
needed a book, but now things have improved and we have Google Books. Google Books
is a book search engine, and it provides searches of full-text, magazines, and
books that Google has collected over time, scanned and converted to text. The
books are usually furnished by the publishers, authors or through the Google
Books Partner program. Google Books is a useful resource for students who do
not have access to a library and also to teachers who are planning their lessons,
and they need a quick reference.
As mentioned above, Google Hangouts is one the most powerful
applications. This app offers free video conferencing, voice calls and
messaging services. It is freely available to teachers and students. Google
Hangouts allows one to communicate with up to ten users at the same time. It
also allows remote communication between a teacher and a student; this means
that the teacher and the student can be from two different places but still able
to communicate and learn. Teachers can help their students on projects, or he
or she can pair up students to work on the same project together. Besides,
Google Hangouts gives a teacher the freedom of easily inviting guests to give
power speaks to the students through video conferencing.
7. Google Drive
The final and perhaps the most powerful of all apps is
Google Drive. It is an online digital file storage that allows one to store documents
and other files. Google Drive is so much more than a cloud base storage;
it packs a lot of important features that are a must-have for any student or
teacher. Some of these functions include:
• Google Docs –
Google Docs is a powerful word processing tool that is built in Google Drive.
It gives one an ability to create, edit and save any Word documents online. One
does not have to spend a lot of money buying word processors such as Microsoft
Word.
• Google Slides –
Google Slides is more like Microsoft PowerPoint; it gives one an ability to
create presentations.
• Google Sheets -
This is another tool inside Google Drive that provides spreadsheet functionality;
it is more like Microsoft Excel.
• Google Forms - This is a simple program that allows one to create surveys. A teacher can use
this program to evaluate the students’ moral, attitude and skills.
As observed above, all these apps have different roles to play;
if well utilized by a student, teacher or school in general, they can
transform the education system for the better. The advancement of technology
has provided new and effective ways of improving our intellectual ability. Many
tools are at our disposal and we only have to take advantage of them.
Author bio: Ben Russel is a blogger from SolidEssay. He is a
generalist and is often invited to share his knowledge on various topics
related to education, business, and marketing.
