TECH
I had never explored the features of Google. I knew there were applications available but I had not taken the time to explore them. I can see how many of these applications could be very beneficial, especially in the education field. As an increasingly collaborative field, many of these features such as e-mail features, task lists, calendar sharing capabilities and document sharing would make life easier.
Gmail offers a variety of organizational features to streamline your email. You can add labels to your e-mails to categorize them into folders such as family, work, school or vacations. You can have contact lists that can also be categorized into groups. As a teacher, having group lists is very helpful for sending e-mail out to parents of your students. E-mail is a great way to communicate reminders and helps save paper. The ability to create a contact list saves you the time of having to enter the addresses multiple times or even just remember to enter them individually. I have sent many e-mails out to parents but have never taken the time to make a group. I just mentally go through the list of students to make sure I get it out to everyone. Finding this feature is going to be of great benefit. Gmail also allows you to personalize your messages. If you need to have a professional looking page with a signature on it, you have that option. If you prefer a fun, whimsical page, that option is available too. Of course, these features are not necessary to the content of your message but sometimes adding personalization to you e-mail can make it stand out. Another personalization Gmail offers is to generate a vacation response. This feature could be useful during times when you are away from your computer such as teachers meetings or on days you have a substitute teacher.
Google calendar also has a lot of features to offer as well. I could see it being very beneficial to schools. Office administration could easily use it for teachers so they could schedule faculty meetings, school events, field trips, or even days that teachers would be out of the classroom. Personally, I could also see it being beneficial for family use. For a busy family with kids going in all different directions, having a central schedule for everyone to post their events could help maintain organization. Other than the calendar's ability to be shared computer to computer, you can access it on your smartphone. You can also sync the calendar with other desktop applications such as iCal. Another feature I find particularly enticing about Google calendars is the RSVP feature. You can send an invitation to an event to your contacts and they can RSVP as to whether they are available to come to the event. This creates an easy way for your recipients to let you know if they are able to join you for the event. You can also add a task list in the calendar application. You can make multiple task lists but only one will show on your calendar. Adding a task list can help to organize your to-do list through the ability to add notes and dates to the list.
Google Drive, formerly known as Google Docs, appears to be a great way to share documents. I found the template and features to be user-friendly. I also found that there were many font options and template options. The benefit of sharing a document in such a way is the ability to collaborate on a document. I know first hand this feature is used by scientists at NASA. They are able to share documents while working on papers for publication. The ability to work collaboratively helps in smoothing out the process of writing and re-writing.
Overall, I found the Google applications to be very user-friendly and I can see the benefit of incorporating them into the field of education.
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