Google Apps for Education Conference Day 2

I decided to continue to learn everything I could about using Google apps for creating a LMS. I went to four good sessions and I feel like I now have a pretty complete picture of how to do almost everything except threaded discussions. Daniel Russell presented the keynote for the day on what it meant to be literate in the age of Google, which was great!

My first talk was by Tim Welch called Google Classroom for Higher Ed. His notes are here. Basically, Tim put together an empty shell of a site for his college level course and had students research and contribute to create the textbook as they went. I learned a lot about setting permissions and organizing folders from Tim's presentation.

The second session I went to was 25+ Ways to Use Google Tools for Online and Blended Learning by Chris Bell. You can find his notes here. This was probably one of the best sessions I went to at the conference. He really had a lot of practical ideas for every Google Tool and you could tell that he had a great deal of experience working with kids. He had some great hints, like submitting math homework by inserting an image from the camera on your computer of the handwritten work. He also showed us how to set up "office hours" on Google Docs so that we could have students select and schedule appointment times.

My third session was Forms Plus Site Gadgets by Roni Habib. His notes can be found here. The most important gadget he talked about was iFrame, which allows you to embed an outside site in a "frame" into your Google Site so students can access other sites right from your class home page.

Lastly, I went to Teaching to the Common Core Standards Made Easy with Google Apps by Catlin Tucker. You can see her notes here. Catlin brought a lot of enthusiasm to the last session of the day and it was encouraging to hear her speak of the Common Core with such a positive vibe. She shared a number of ways to use Google Docs to teach language arts. Most could be shared docs that you link to in a Google Site.

I feel like I left the conference with a much stronger picture of how Google apps could be used to support learning. It was great to be at the conference with colleagues from my school and be able to talk to one another about our sessions.