EdTech Avenue

Monday, 3:00 p.m.
Cristin Frodelia & Andrew Chang, Google

This session was not live-blogged due to the lack of Wi-Fi in the theater. It surprises me that after all these years, NECC still struggles with getting dependable Wi-Fi at every session. It’s really too bad. I like to be able to go directly to referenced websites during a session so I am in line with what the presenter is showing me as well as to see if I need to take notes on everything or if some items are on the session information page. I would think it would have been especially helpful in a commercial session for online tools…

This is also the first time I’ve had to plug in my laptop today. It lasted two full sessions as well as a few times throughout the day, I’d say at least 3 full hours!

Technology needs to keep up with how we are working today. Collaboration is key but is difficult when working with technology. Building infrastructure for a network to create a system for sharing documents was expensive and a lot of work. That’s the idea that pushed the creation of Google Docs and got them into education.

“Cloud Computing” is Google’s term for this - data and applications are available on the internet for multiple devices and operating systems.

Security Concerns?

• they will not share your data unless you ask or for necessary infrastructure necessities, or if something harmful is found
• keep your data as long as you want
• remove your data when you ask
• enable you to use your data elsewhere

Free Apps:

• Docs (Word Processor, Spreadsheets, Presentations) for collaborations and version control
• Mail, Chat and Calendar

Paid Apps for security compliance - not sure what this is; they didn’t expand on it

Google Apps for Education

• free for all of your users
• No advertising for students, staff and faculty
• 6.8 GB (and growing) mail quotas
• domain name
• phone support

I can see applications for my school right away - faculty committees, teacher web pages, faculty collaborations, curriculum maps, lesson sharing…
Can create documents and sites, assign users and rights all in one place. It’s user-controlled.

Arizona State University is using Apps now with 65,000 students. It took 2 weeks to deploy. Opt-In User Migration was student-driven. It saves them about $65,000 annually.

Huge benefit is with support and upgrades - online apps update automatically without extra work for me, short of training on major changes. Support and maintenance is done by them.

Docs works with any device with any internet connection on any internet browser. Don’t have to email them back and forth or worry about which version is the most recent. No worry about version variations between home and school. For me, that would also eliminate students moving files and folders around on the network and “losing” them. It saves changes automatically and logs who made what changes, so teachers can track who worked on which part of a project. Teachers are hearing that students are more engaged when collaborating online - that’s what they’re used to doing right now. Students can then invite the teacher to view the document (hand it in) and the teacher can work on reviewing, commenting and grading it from their own computer wherever they are. If students are directed to save a specific way, documents can be sorted by the teacher. You can see when students have worked and saved and track progress. Students can then easily publish their work to the web, accessible to the class, school or to the web. I would bet we could create groups for parents to see their child’s work too. All of these features are available not just with word processed files, but also spreadsheets and presentations. Forms can be emailed and automatically processed in the spreadsheet! Presentations can be played by all students individually with a chat window to ask questions and make comments - students are engaged. Spreadsheets make planning & admin tasks easier. Sheet with each student’s name, then from class to class a teacher can make notes about good work by students; admin can look at the end of the day and announce good work. I would be able to use this for data about students who register and/or withdraw throughout the year.

Organize field trips - teachers could check students off and admin can see it. We might be able to use this for our school lunch program!