Google Apps for Education

This year we have moved to Google Apps for Education. All children have a Personal Learning Space on Google Drive and all classes have a blog. 

Katie and Clive are also trialling Google Classroom and the children in GRi11 have their own blog. As part of this learning, the children have also developed their understanding of Digital Citizenship. It has been very exciting to see how the children in GRi11 have significantly increased their ability to use Google Apps since the start of the year. The majority of the children now easily: 

• Log in to 'Drive'.
• Create new folders, docs, slides etc.
• Share docs.
• Upload shortened URLs to the class Fast Track.
• Post on their blog.
• Comment on others' learning.  

All of this has taken a considerable amount of time (and some very patient teachers) however the children are now well set up to use these tools and skills to support their learning for the rest of the year.  One of the biggest issues we face is the difference between using Goggle Apps on a computer compared to on an iPad.  The majority of our BYO devices are iPads so these issues need to be worked through on a daily basis.

Clive and Katie attended the Google Apps for Education Summit in Auckland at the end of the Term One holidays.  They returned inspired and full of lots of new ideas!