Thing 29 - Google

The first activity, Google Tools, would be an interesting short video to watch with students. I think this would be a great way to discuss the issues surrounding copyright, and plagiarism. I do think that they need to be able to navigate the woderful tool that Google is. The more they know about all of the features that this innovative service has to offer, the more efficient and productive their researching will become.

The Twilert is also an innovative way for students, and everyone else to stay up to date on topics of interests. I also think this would be a good resource for researching. One concern that I have about having all of this information available to students is information overload. That is, I think they may get overwhelmed with the vastness of information available to them. Today, in class, I was working with a fifth grade class doing a research and writing project on a place. Over the weekend students were suppose to locate books of their location. About half of the students came with books or articles on thier topic. The students that did not have sources of information were permitted to use lap tops to find information and to begin recording facts and information for their writing project. The students with the internet access accompleiched much less in this 90 minute period than did the students pulling information out of books and articles.

If these same students were trained on the use of the search wiki in google, there time today may have been better spent. They would have been able to look through many sites, comment on them, and return to them later to search a few sites in more depth.

Requiring the use of g-mail for e-mail usage would result in a familiarity in logging into a google account. Once logged in on a regular basis, students would be more likely to begin to use all these features on a more regular basis.