5 Ways to Use Google for Teaching You Probably Didn’t Know

Michelle Brooks
Jul 28, 2017 · 3 min read

Google is no stranger to education. Teachers have been using its products for years. Every time a new tool is launched, they discover creative ways to enhance the teaching-learning process.

G Suite for Education includes Classroom, Mail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Slides, Sheets and Sites. See how you can implement Google in your classroom in 5 meaningful ways!

1. Assignments management

  • Schedule Ahead

With Google Classroom, you can draft announcements and assignments and schedule them to be posted at a specific date and time. It is easy to set up your whole week of tasks on Sunday afternoon!

  • Individualize Instruction

Google Classroom gives you an opportunity to differentiate assignments for students by learning styles or ability.

  • Collect Assignments

Sharing documents can be a management challenge. Create a Google Form that can be used as an In Box. Students submit links to their projects. A teacher keeps track of assignments and easily accesses them for grading.

2. A students’ personal assistant in academic essay writing

It helps a learner at every stage of creating a paper.

  • Research

Students can use Google tools to search topics by quotes, images, Google Scholar, and other options.

  • Template Gallery

A great alternative to spending time messing with the laborious formatting of an APA, MLA, or Chicago Style text is to download a Google Docs template for academic paper writing.

  • Making PDF Files Editable

Optical Character Recognition enables converting PDFs (even scanned ones) into editable texts that are easy to insert into a document.

  • Bibliography

EasyBib is a real writing assignments support. It allows a student to generate citations quickly.

  • Revision

Google Docs provides Grammar Check feature integrated with the Spell Check function.

3. Collaboration Facilities

Group projects are easier to handle with Google.

Open any file (a word processing document, presentation, spreadsheet, or drawing) and see the people who edited it, and the changes they made. Both a team and a teacher can track each student’s participation in a project.

  • Sharing and Collaboration

Multiple students can work on a group project or collaborative research taking advantage of the “Share” button at the top right corner of the document or the “Share” settings in the drive.

  • Comments

Learners can write notes to a collaborative document so other members can see them. You can observe their work and give feedback in progress.

4. Assessment

  • A Quick Online Assessment

Create a Google Form quiz for comprehension. This can be a rubric, multiple-choice test, short answer, or other options. Google will even grade the form for you.

  • Peer-to-Peer Quizzes

Ask students to create a Google Form quiz for each other based on a material they have just learned about.

Please note: To prevent students from public humiliation and hard feelings make sure they password protect their privacy.

5. Soliciting Feedback from Parents and Students

Parents whose children are at school like to be involved. Use Google Classroom to “Invite Guardians”. When they join, they receive regular, automatic email summaries for each of their students.

In the end of the year, parents will be able to provide you with quality feedback via Google Forms surveys. You can also gather students’ feedback in regards to your teaching. The respondents may remain anonymous. That will help them to be more open and honest. Their comments will help you grow as a teacher and make your lessons better.

As educators, we support using technological innovations in the classroom. Effective technology integration is a powerful way to way of improving the student learning and teaching experience. It maximizes output by minimizing workload. It saves our time, makes learners more productive, and alter the educational experience altogether.

Academic Writing Queen

I provide advice on creative writing, e-learning, general education and student’s life

Michelle Brooks

Written by

Academic Writing Queen

I provide advice on creative writing, e-learning, general education and student’s life

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