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A Look At Google's Massive Library Of Free Lesson Plans

A Look At Google's Massive Library Of Free Lesson Plans
Did you know that Google offers a sortable library of lesson plans that are free to download and use? It’s part of the company’s big push into education (seems to be quite the trend these days) and involves thousands of free lesson plans just waiting for you to try out. Most incorporate Google products but then again so do most high-tech lesson plans these days. You can sort the listings by the type of Google product you want or, if that’s not your cup of tea, view the plans organized by subject. Ways To Sort By Google Product Apps Apps+ Apps & Earth Blogger Computer Science 4 High School Digital Literacy Docs / Drive Exploring Comp Thinking Fusion Tables Google Earth Google Lit Trips Multiple Science Fair Search Sites Sketchup YouTube By Subject Fine Arts Social Studies Language Arts Science Math Computer Science Research Physics Computer Design History – Social Sciences By Age Ages 0-6 Ages 7-12 Ages 13-18 Ages 15-18 Sample Lesson Plans Great Moments in Art View lesson plan Outbreak

OLPC Project Puts Tablets In The Hands Of Formerly Illiterate Children With Amazing Results The story sounded far-fetched: OLPC researchers, working with a team of technicians in Ethiopia, created a special “hut” covered in solar panels where the children of a few distant towns could go to recharge some toys they were given. The toys were boxed Motorola Xoom tablets and every child between the age of four and eight got one. The researchers were expecting the children to play with the boxes and potentially open them in the first week. Instead they turned them on in less than an hour and a few months later were modifying the settings and singing ABC songs. The hut became a focal point for the town’s children, and the kids loved their tablets so much that they slept with them. We first heard this story last week in Boston when we were touring the MIT Media Lab and it sounded too good to be true. I’ve been down on the educational value of “throwing” electronics at kids for years. Reading a book, he wrote, was hard. Teachers are important. Read the rest of the piece here.

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10 Powerful Ways To Use Google In Education For those of us who don’t spend our lives on the internet it is easy to forget the significance of being dubbed the number one search engine in the world. But spending just a few moments poking around Google will quickly remind you of the vast resources the site has to offer. Google in Education Not only can educators and students use Google as a search engine, they can also utilize valuable educational resources. In fact, Google has an entire network dedicated to education – Google in Education . The education section of Google is broken down into categories. For Students The students’ tab is full of useful links. For Teachers Google in Education provides a wealth of knowledge, resources, and tools for teachers. Professional Development Training and Development Connect and Share Grants and Support Classroom Tools Chromebooks – Schools can purchase laptops specifically designed for students and teachers. Where to Begin Taking a look at everything Google has to offer is quite daunting.

EmTech Preview: Another Way to Think about Learning Photos courtesy of Matt Keller Seymour Papert, a computer scientist and pioneer in artificial intelligence, once said: “You cannot think about thinking unless you think about thinking about something.” Does this apply to learning? Maybe not. Here is what I mean. As we industrialized learning and created schools, we needed to measure the system’s efficacy and each child’s progress. I believe that we get into trouble when knowing becomes a surrogate for learning. The closest I have ever come to thinking about thinking is writing computer programs. The gods must be crazy Have you watched a two-year-old use an iPad? The meteoric rise of modern instructionism, including the misguided belief that there is a perfect way to teach something, is alarming because of the unlimited support it is getting from Bill Gates, Google, and my own institution, MIT. One Laptop per Child (OLPC), a nonprofit association that I founded, launched the so-called XO Laptop in 2005 with built-in programming languages.

How Google Drive Makes It Easier To Teach Writing The Future of E-Learning is Crowdsourcing Call me a skeptic, but the idea of having random people from around the Web collaborating in the creation of e-learning content for accredited online degree programs seems absurd. I went to graduate school for years, read hundreds of books and thousands of articles, sat through countless hours in the classroom, participated in dozens of instructional design projects, created and taught several classes under the supervision of experienced professors, and worked with my classmates and people with real world experience solving actual problems in order to earn my Ph.D. and the right to be both a content area expert and an instructional design professional. And along the way, I learned one lesson which surpasses all the others: good instructional design requires a collaborative effort. What is Crowdsourcing? So, right off the bat, I need to correct a common misrepresentation that I repeated in my first paragraph. Image: fotographic1980 / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Reader (45) Blogging through the Fourth Dimension Making the Most of Google Docs: Tips & Lesson Ideas Since attending the Google Teacher Academy in April, I have been trying to learn as much as possible about each Google application. The result? I am realizing how little I actually knew about these tools and how tragically I was underutilizing them! Take Google Docs, for example. I have been using Google Docs for a couple of years, yet I had no idea how much I could actually do with docs personally or with my students. So, in this blog want to share some information on basic functionality as well as fun ideas for using Google Docs (now Google Drive for some of us) with students. Back to Basics Let’s start with a definition, Google Docs “is a suite of products that lets you create different kinds of online documents, work on them in real time with other people, and store your documents and your other files — all online, and all for free.” Types of Docs: Documents Documents are a free online word processor. Forms Use forms to: – Collect student data & get to know them better Spreadsheets 1. 2.

s Roundtable panelists see bold new horizons, old problems in redefining education Technology will open up unimaginable new horizons in education – but don't underestimate the power of people. That was a central message on Stanford's Oct. 22 Roundtable discussion at Maples Pavilion titled "Education Nation 2.0: Redefining Education Before It Redefines Us." Moderated by PBS' Charlie Rose, the panel included Reed Hastings, founder and CEO of Netflix; Salman Khan, founder of Khan Academy; Kim Smith, co-founder and CEO of Bellwether Education Partners and a founding team member of Teach For America; Cory A. The emphasis on technology was no surprise, given the presence of Khan and Hastings. But the optimism was perhaps more unexpected. Hastings pointed out that education America has been decrying its educational shortcomings for at least a century and tinkering incrementally with its educational system for just as long. L.A. Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J. and Stanford President John Hennessy Reasons for despair are many. "To be pragmatic, we need data," she said.

Google Drive and Docs for Teachers 2012

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