Google is an American multinational technology company specializing in Internet-related services and products that include online advertising technologies, search, cloud computing, software, and hardware.
Larry and Sergey (the founders) named the search engine they built “Google,” a play on the word “googol,” the mathematical term for a 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google Inc. was born in 1998, when Sun co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim wrote a check for $100,000 to that entity—which until then didn’t exist.
You can learn more about who they are on the Google, Inc. company page or through Wikipedia's entry on Google.
Check out my Getting to Know Google slide presentation to learn more about Google's mission statement, education programs, and implementation!
The images to the right are the most basic, default collection of Apps offered by Google for consumer (anyone's) use. You can click on any app name below to open it!
If you want to learn more about these, we discuss each one a bit more below. You can also visit Google's web page that has more information on each as well. https://gsuite.google.com/
The video to the left is a quick pass through of what the Google suite of tools now includes. There is also some brief discussion on the differences between Google for consumers and Google for Education.
A brief description of Google Apps for Education:
Google Apps for Education is a suite of tools that can help you increase opportunities for critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and creativity, all while 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.
To learn more, watch the video or continue reading to the wall of text.
You’re probably already familiar with Google Search, but did you know that Google offers many other tools that are useful in the classroom?
Let’s take a look at the Google Apps for Education suite, starting with the tool purpose-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 finished. 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 files - stories, designs, drawings, recordings, videos - anything! As part of Google Apps for Education, Drive has unlimited storage, so you and your students don’t have to worry about full disks, deleting old files, or losing anything when a computer crashes. You can access your files from any device, and, best of all, you never have to save: Drive automatically saves every time you make an edit!
Google Apps for Education 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.
Additionally, Google Apps for Education includes tools that can be used to save you time and increase student engagement. These apps include:
Finally, Google has other tools outside of Google Apps for Education that can be used in the classroom, which you may be able to access with your same username and password. Remember that these are consumer products and are not covered by the Google Apps for Education Terms of Service. They include:
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 meant as an introduction. We will go into many of these tools in depth during the weeks to come.
(information from Google Educator Training course, edited)
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