I Love Google

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Comment by Dan Storchan on September 5, 2008 at 1:27pm

Hi, I just posted a blog looking into Google Tools and the proprietary rights of its users. Any feedback would be much appreciated.

Comment by Karol M. Donaldson on August 18, 2008 at 10:26am

Google has been a great tool for my personal experience as a first year teacher and I love it :)

Comment by Chris Johnson on May 7, 2008 at 9:08am

I think Google is increasing its focus on educational uses. They just sent out the following which highlights some of their offerings for educators:
Hello and Happy National Teacher Day,

In 1953, Eleanor Roosevelt persuaded the 81st Congress to recognize teachers with a celebratory day all their own. Since then, the date of National Teacher Day has bounced around a bit until 1985, when the National Education Association declared the first week of May National Teacher Appreciation Week and the first Tuesday of that month National Teacher Day. If you'd like to know the whole story, check it out here: http://www.nea.org/teacherday/index.html

On that note, we'd like to invite you to come celebrate and learn with us at the next Google Teacher Academy, scheduled to take place at the Googleplex in Mountain View on June 25th, 2008. The Google Teacher Academy is a FREE professional development experience designed to help K-12 educators get the most from innovative technologies. Each GTA is an intensive, one-day event where participants get hands-on experience with Google's free products and other technologies, learn about interesting and new instructional strategies, receive resources to share with colleagues, and immerse themselves in an innovative corporate environment. Upon completion, GTA participants become Google Certified Teachers, who share what they learn with other K-12 educators in their local region. This time around, we've listened to your feedback and opened up the application to all teachers everywhere. As long as you are willing and able to get yourself to the Googleplex, we'd love to have you. For more information about the GTA, please check out our full information and requirements page: http://www.google.com/educators/gta.html

The team of people thinking more about teachers everyday is growing here at Google. As such, we're introducing a new section of the Google for Educators site - dedicated to using our popular Geo Products. Here you will find information about using Google Earth, Maps, Sky, and SketchUp in your K-12 classroom. Along with some of the great classroom activities we've collected over the years, we've also included starter kits which feature "cool and easy things you can do" with each product in your classroom. Check it out here: http://www.google.com/educators/geo.html

Lastly, but never leastly, a few months back, we asked you to share stories about using Google Docs with your students. You told us about the power of introducing collaborative writing to your kids, you mentioned using our presentation software in class, keeping students engaged with the "chat" feature, and you told us how much you like to be able to drive success throughout the writing process, instead of just grading the final product. http://www.google.com/educators/p_docs.html
While we were reviewing your stories, we realized that Docs may be a bit intimidating to the uninitiated so we developed a "getting started" guide - with step-by-step instructions for creating accounts, sharing and collaborating, editing and organizing your work. Now there's no reason to be scared, so give Google Docs a try: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dcdn7mjg_72nh25vq