Educational use of Google's apps - Part 1 - GMail

It's all well and good to tell people about technology-based solutions that are available for use in the classroom, but it's also important to report out on our experiences using the tools, too. I've made a big push recently to use Google's office apps in my 10th grade Biology class and in my 9th grade Integrated Science class. Given that Gmail accounts can act as a common sign-in for all Google services, and that signing up for a Gmail account in class provides an opportunity for students to get themselves an e-mail address they can feel good about putting on a college application, I started off by having all students sign up for Gmail.

At the beginning of this school year, Gmail was still an invite- or cell phone-only service, but recently they opened up the service so that you can sign up even if you don't have another e-mail account. I survey my students at the beginning of each course, and most (sometimes all) have an e-mail address, but the accounts aren't always accessible by the web and the names are not always the most ... academic. Having the students sign up for Gmail opened up a conversation about the differences between personal and professional internet use, and students seemed surprised to learn that things like e-mail addresses and social networking pages can affect the way a college might perceive them in the admissions process. Only one or two students ignored my advice to keep their account name purely academic / professional, but even these resistant students didn't choose accounts that were inappropriate, and they did have some aspect of their name involved. I guess you can't win 'em all...but overall, the experience was pretty easy, and I'm hopeful that they'll continue to use the account for their college applications.

The actual process of signing up is relatively straight-forward, but I did encounter a bit of a difficulty - when my students from my second biology section attempted to sign up, they got errors saying that a new account had already been set up and directing them to sign in. On the day that I brought my Integrated Science students in, about 20 were able to sign up before others received the "already signed up" error. I collaborated with our technology coordinator and even after clearing the caches and cookies on the school's internet server, we still couldn't find a work-around. Perhaps there's an issue on Google's end with regard to a limit on new accounts within a short period of time from a small number of closely-related IP addresses? In any case, sign up went fine the next day.

Once the students were signed in I had them send me an e-mail so that I could add them to my Contacts and start a Group for each class. I also had them send e-mails to each other to get familiar with the interface, and they quickly discovered the chat feature which I think has a lot of potential good use (I especially like how chats are automatically threaded into related e-mail conversations) but of course, a lot of potential for distraction. I used their exploration as a good time to talk about learning to be able to use chatting for academic purposes and not getting distracted from educational goals by social opportunities. As we continued through our work (which I'll describe in more detail in Parts 2 and 3), I didn't notice too much distraction - I generally found that the students seemed to enjoy the inclusion of technology enough to stay on-task (and combined that with good monitoring by walking around the room and making it a point to acknowledge that I'd be looking at everyone's screen as I did so).

Once in Gmail, I also had the students use the navigation links at the top left corner to explore Calendar and Documents. I didn't give them any specific tasks other than to "poke around a bit to check things out". Some found the Calendar app interesting (generally they were the ones who seem to be ahead of their peers with regard to time management skills), others didn't care too much about it. All of the students were intrigued when I mentioned the collaboration features on Documents - they played around a little, ran into some bumps, but I knew the exploration would make using Documents easier as it became a formal part of our work.

As a side, but important, note - our school's Technology Committee is currently discussing how we can adapt our policies (while complying with laws like the Children's Internet Protection Act - see the ALA's page on CIPA for great information) to make the best and safest use of these tools with our students. It appears that the situation is favorable to revise our school's policy against students using e-mail at school, but we also need to touch base with other parts of our community, particularly the parents.

In Part 2 of this series I'll talk in some detail about how I used Spreadsheets with Charts with my 9th grade Integrated Science students. In Part 3 of this series I'll describe how I used Documents and Blogger with my 10th grade Biology students. Stay tuned!

P.S. Check out this article for more cool ideas on how to integrate technology in the classroom.