Thing 45: Anything Goes Google

The first thing that caught my eye in this assignment was "How to Create an eBook with Google Slides." When I saw it I had visions of having my students write and illustrate their own books and then create them in Google Slides. Which is still something I could see myself doing with my students, but this article wasn't very helpful. I thought it would have tips on how to format the pages, how to create and import illustrations, the best way to add text, etc. But instead it just taught how to change the size of the slides (which I'll admit is something I didn't already know) and how to download the slides as a PDF. Then, the author plugged her book, which she created with Google Slides. I thought there would be a sample eBook I could look at. There wasn't. I could pay $10 for hers, but no thanks. It's still a great idea and I'll keep it in mind for a project for my older students, but I'll have to practice it myself and see what I can create.

I then moved on to "Primarily Google" since most of my students are PK-2. There were a lot of good ideas, many of which I can see myself doing with my 3-6 kids rather than PK-2. One in particular was the Multimedia Text Sets made with Google Drawings. They are something my 5th and 6th graders could create and I could then use with my PK-2 students. I like all the templates in the article, especially the self-portrait idea, but as with anything Google related with PK-2, there is still the issue of getting the kids logged in to their Google accounts. Even with my 3rd and 4th graders, when I have them log in to Google, it takes the better part of the period to get them logged in and to reset passwords and look up ID numbers. But the templates are things I could use on the Smartboard with the whole class.

Lastly, I looked at "Hipster Google," which had a lot of really cool ideas I can use with my older students. Some of them I already knew about, such as Google's reverse image search. That has proven useful for disproving unresearched memes on Facebook. But there were a lot of new ones I am excited to show my students. Be Internet Awesome's Interland looks vaguely minecraft-esque, so it'll instantly be popular. My students love looking up where they live on Google Maps and Google Earth, so all the apps related to those will be popular. They'll also be useful since my school does Montessori Global every year, where the whole school researches one country or continent or state and puts all their projects on display for one day every May (this year we're doing Europe). I've been doing a lot with 3D printing recently and hadn't heard of Poly, so I'm excited to explore that and see if it's something I can use with students.  Mystery Animal, Quick Draw, and AutoDraw are ones I'll add to my Destiny page as options for students to play if they have extra time during class.