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Fundamentals Training / Get Familiar with Google Tools for the Digital Classroom

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Get Familiar with Google Tools for

the Digital Classroom
By Google for Education Published: Jan 12, 2021 20m Beginner (14)

 Expected Lesson Time: 23 minutes

Go through the sections below, then test yourself (and get credit) by
doing the Lesson Check.

Introducing Your Google for Education Tools

You’re probably already familiar with Google Search, but did you know that Google offers
many other tools that are useful in the classroom?

Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals is a suite of tools that can help you increase
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supporting the learning objectives that you have for your students. These tools are free, ad-
free, reliable, and secure. They are already used by millions of students in schools around the
world. Of course, free is great, but the best thing is that these tools are relevant to students,
easy to use, and open doors to many new ways to learn.

Let’s take a look at the Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals suite now, starting
with the tool built for schools - Google Classroom.

Google Classroom is a collaboration tool for teachers and students that helps organize and
streamline the classroom experience. With just a few clicks, you can create a class, add your
students, and create assignments or announcements. You'll be able to see who's completed
an assignment, who's still working on it, and assign grades when it’s nished. You can also
instantly offer feedback to students, and see their questions or comments on their
assignments.

Google Drive is like an online hard drive where you can store all your les - stories, designs,
drawings, recordings, videos - anything! You can access your les from any device, and, best
of all, you never have to save: Drive automatically saves every time you make an edit!

Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals also includes a number of Google products
that promote collaboration among students and with their teachers. Students can work
together, in class or at home, to complete assignments and group projects. All of their work is
auto-saved, and they can even edit without WiFi.

Google Docs: documents come to life with smart editing and styling tools to help you
easily format text and paragraphs. Choose from thousands of fonts, add links, images,
drawings, and tables
Google Sheets: spreadsheets for analyzing, visualizing, and charting data
Google Forms: quick & easy surveys to gather information
Google Slides: a presentation tool that makes it easy to tell stories
Google Drawings: Graphics and owchart creation with shapes, text, and images

Additionally Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals includes tools that can be used
to save you time and increase student engagement. These include:

Gmail: Email, contacts, tasks, and communications

Google Calendar: Scheduling, calendars, and appointments
Google Meet: Live video conferencing and messaging
Google Sites: Webpage creation and publishing
Google Groups: Group communication and web forums

Finally, Google has other tools outside of Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals that
can be used in the classroom, which you may be able to access with your same username and
password.  We will discuss these at times throughout the course, but remember that these are
consumer products and are not covered by the Google Workspace for Education
Fundamentals Terms of Service. They include:

Chrome: Internet browsing

YouTube: Online video hosting and sharing
Google Maps/Earth: Interactive maps and satellite imagery
Blogger:  Publishing blogs

It may seem hard to know where to start. That’s the purpose of this lesson – to let you know
what is available so you can consider how you might use each tool in your class and how they
can enrich the experience of your students. This is just an introduction – the remainder of the
Fundamentals and Advanced courses will go into detail about how you can use these tools in
the classroom

Selecting the Right Tools

There are two factors to consider when choosing technology for the classroom: your learning
goals and your basic understanding of what each Google tool can do.

Your learning goal will rarely be “Learn how to use the technology.” It is more likely to be
something like “identify the elements of the periodic table” or “present research ndings”.

The second factor for choosing the right technology is that you need a good grasp of the basic
things particular tools can do. Once you have these two things – the learning goal and basic
knowledge – you can choose the right tool for the task. The good news is that once you know
the basics, you’ll think of other creative ways to use a particular tool.

Let’s take a look at six highly exible Google tools. As you review each, think about how it
could be applied in your classroom.

Click on each card below to get started.

Classroom Google Docs

Google Forms Google Slides

YouTube Google Search

Getting Creative with Technology Tools

Let’s identify some ways you can use Google tools in your school. Each of the three scenarios
below poses a question about how you might use a Google tool for a particular subject area.
For each one, identify at least one way you could use the tool. Try to keep it relevant to the
students you teach, and if you don’t teach that subject area in the scenario, then pretend you’re
helping a colleague. Don’t worry, even though you’ve only had a brief overview of the tools
available, we’ll be exploring them more in later lessons. For now, just consider the basics of
what each tool does. Could you suggest some ideas for these situations?

Before your class starts, you hear students excitedly talking about a video they saw on
YouTube. You are teaching science concepts and begin to think, “How can I use YouTube
to get my students talking like that about science?”
Google Drawings gives students creative tools using shapes, images, and text. How can
you help students improve their Language Arts skills using Google Drawings?
Nutrition is an important part of your health curriculum. Can you think of some ways that
you might use Google Sites in a unit on healthy eating?

After recording your ideas for each situation, read on for ideas from other teachers.

Use this as your temporary notepad, or jot down your ideas on paper.

Save Clear

See What Other Educators Said

I was watching morning television with my daughter and I realized

that sometimes the laws of science are broken in cartoons. You see
characters defying gravity, having unbelievable strength, or super
powers. She was totally engaged and laughing, especially when
something unexpected happened. That got me thinking about my
science lesson. What if I found a few clips where the science
concepts we were studying had been “broken”? Like when a
character runs off the edge of a cliff and hangs there for a couple of
seconds before gravity takes effect. Is it possible to “not fall?” Or
when a superhero can breathe underwater – what does he need to
make that possible? At the beginning of each unit I start with
Cartoon Science to get the kids talking about what we’ll be studying.
A lot of times they end up talking about what we’ll be studying
without even realizing it.

I like to get my science students talking with their parents about

what we are doing in class. I also want them to understand that
“science is everywhere,” but that a lot of times we take it for granted
or don’t realize it. Our students were given the task to go out and
take pictures of people or the world around them that were using
simple machines like levers, pulleys, and inclined planes. Over the
course of a few days, they got photos of kids playing on the
playground, the pulleys used to draw curtains closed, and people
changing a car tire. We put these together into a slideshow using
YouTube editor. Students shared the link with their parents, who
then left comments about the science around them.

Graphic organizers are a big part of my class. I love how students

can create visual representations of the storyline of a book that we
are reading. From our class blog, students can click on a link to
make a copy of the graphic organizer template that I have created
using Google Drawings. They can ll in the components of the story
arc with text or images. Their nal drawing is then embedded on
their personal Google Site along with a written piece about the book.
Students then get creative and brainstorm what the story would be
like if one of the points of the story arc was altered. How would the
rest of the story play out?

Our students have their own Blogger blogs that we use as a learning
portfolio and writing journal. One of the rst things they ask is how
they can customize it to make it their own. Using Google Drawings,
they can create a custom logo that represents themselves. Some
insert their own photos from Drive, others search for Creative
Commons images using Google Image Search, and a few found
great stock images right within the “insert image” dialog box. They
love the crop and image-adjustment tools as well. This year the
recoloring settings were a hit with their school pro le pictures… who
doesn’t like to see themselves with green skin?

I’ve been using Google Forms for a while now with my middle-
school students in our health unit. They have been collecting data
from their family members on the types and amounts of food
consumed over a month period. It’s always motivating to students if
they can have a real audience to share their learning with. This year
we’ve created a class Google Site. Students each have a page where
they add their data that was collected in a Google Form. We’ve set it
up so that they can only edit their own page. What’s great is that
they can embed a graph from their Google Sheet directly into the
Google Sites page. This is a live graph, so if the data changes, it is
automatically updated in their site.

We have thrown away the physical textbook in my class. Now I have

students work together to build a Google Site that acts as our class
text. During each unit we assign roles so that each kid has a task
that they need to look out for. Students nd the information they
want using Google Search, and then add it to their section of the
site. Students also embed YouTube videos that support the content,
along with an Announcements page that acts as a mini-blog. Google
Sites is a great way to collect and display information from a variety
of sources.

Lesson Check

Now let's do a quick check to make sure you got this lesson (and that we give you credit for it)!

1. When selecting a digital tool to integrate into your class, where should you sta ?

With the features of the app

 With your learning objectives

With your technology acceptable-use policy

With a project in mind

Check Answer

 Correct!

2. Which app allows you to analyze data?

 Google Sheets

Google Forms

Google Docs

Google Gmail

Check Answer

 Correct!

3. If you wanted to create a custom logo for your blog, you could use:

YouTube

 Google Drawings

Google Sheets

Google Docs

Check Answer

 Correct!

4. Which is not an advantage of the Google tools?

A wide array of relevant tools

Integrated login

 Only available o ine

Check Answer

 Correct!

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