Alternatives to Google Apps for Education

I have been pushing my school districts for the past few years to adopt Google Apps for Education as an alternative (not a replacement) to Microsoft Office. It is also a great way to give students space to store and share documents online. The Gmail package, calendar, and Google Sites are also impressive. Finally, around the holidays, our Sparta Area Schools was set up to use Google Apps for Education. I was pumped. My freshman classes were studying careers, so I set up a project utilizing Google Apps with career exploration. Here is what I found. Google Apps is not very good and my students hated it. There was a huge uproar as students begged to use their Office products. Be careful for what you ask for I guess.




However, this raised a question in my mind. I had heard so much about Google Apps for Education and districts adopting it and using it all over the nation. But, was there something out there in the cloud that was better? That has been my quest lately. To find alternatives to Google Apps for Education. I don't know that I can find the total package the Google offers of Email, calendar, productivity tools, Website builder, Forms, etc. But, I feel that I can find alternatives to some of these tools that are easy to use and offer more robust features.

Check back in the coming weeks to see what I can find. Thanks!

Web 2.0 and Social Studies

Definition of Web 2.0:  The term Web 2.0 is associated with web applications that facilitate participatory information sharing, interoperability, user-centered design,[1] and collaboration on the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as creators (prosumers) of user-generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (consumers) are limited to the passive viewing of content that was created for them. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mashups and folksonomies. Definition from Wikipedia.

Great information
Social Studies Central
Tech Learning 2.0 - Social Studies
Favorite Web 2.0 Apps of Social Studies Educators
Social Studies « Web 2.0
A Day in the Life of Web 2.0
Monday Models
Web 2.0 Dashboard
Googlios
Top 1000 Web 2.0 Sites
21 Things for Teachers
Jenison Public Schools
Cool Tools for Schools
The Ultimate Web 2.0 Sites Listing
Blogs, Wikis, and Google Docs Oh My!
How to Teach with Tech Tools
Common Craft (Videos for those of us who don’t know anything about specific Web 2.0 tools)
Paul and Todd’s Excellent Ed Tech Adventure (Become a follower) (Lot’s of Google info)



Great Places to Begin

Get a Gmail account: It is your ticket to everything Google and there is a lot of good stuff!

Sign up for Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Sites, and Blogger. (With your Gmail account)

Get a SharePoint site at Sparta. Student drop boxes, Web space, Wikis, and more! (Todd or Paul can help)

Find class materials on YouTube. There is probably something you could use there right now.

Google Forms

Want to survey people? Want to gather some data? Do an online test or quiz? Google forms comes to the rescue. Forms are a part of Google Docs. Watch this great video now!



Pretty slick huh? But that's not all. Creative teachers around the world have used Google Forms to create online quizzes and tests. Some of them will even correct themselves. Here is an online form I created for my freshmen to use as a reflection tool and check-out at the end of one of our projects. Guess how I learned how to do this? I watched a few YouTube videos. Here is one of them.



Finally, in Google Docs you can search for templates of forms that other people have already made, and you can save them and reuse them. How perfect is that?

Give it a try!

Google Calendar

Welcome back! We are continuing our trip through the land of all things Google. If you haven't been following along, we have visited Gmail, Google Docs, and sharing documents on the Web with Google Docs. Today, we are talking about one of my favorite Google tools, Google Calendar. Here is a quick video introduction:



Pretty easy. I use Google Calendar for a couple of things. I am in charge of the Web site information for the football program. I have separate calendars for the high school teams and the middle school teams. I can easily embed them in the Web sites (blogs or wikis too) so parents and players can stay updated on events. I also have a personal calendar that is synced up to my iTouch. The beautiful thing is that you only have to have one Google calendar account, but you can make several calendars with it. A family with several children can actually have a calendar for each child, but have all of their events show up on a master calendar to keep track of everything. Google will even let you color code each calendar. Nice!

Your calendars can be private, you can share them with specific people, or they can be made public. The option is yours.

If you don't believe me, here are seven great reasons to use Google Calendar. It is easy to get started and easy to use. If you stumble along the way, they have a great calendar help section.

Give it a try!

Google Tools for Teachers

Everyone has heard about Google, the world's most popular place to search the Web. But, Google offers a lot of tools that many educators will want to explore and use in their classrooms. Each week for the next several weeks, I will explore a new tool for you to try out. Some of the items I will be test-driving for you are:

• Gmail
• Google Docs
• Google Calendars
• Google Sites
• Picasa
• Google Groups
• and much more

Did I mention that Google also owns YouTube and Blogger? We will have a lot to explore in the upcoming weeks. If you would like to join in and try out some of the cool features that these Google applications have to offer then get a Gmail account and follow along. Many of the tools I will be discussing require a Gmail account log in. Super easy directions to sign up for your account are below. Plus, it is always a good idea to have a back-up E-mail account to use.

If you don't have a Gmail account, get one! Why you ask? Here are 10 good reasons. Sounds good, huh? Click the "Create an Account" button, fill in some basic information. You will be in your very own Gmail account in minutes.

Good luck and I will talk to you soon!