Change can be difficult... A few years ago, our district decided to switch our email to Gmail. At first it was met with much trepidation. Looking back, I don’t think there is a staff member that could imagine a time when we didn’t use Google. Gmail was the gateway to using Google Drive. Again, angst was felt by many (myself included.) Then I realized that because it was cloud based that organizing our grade level work was going to be so much easier. I tend to do my planning at home, so I realized quickly that my days of relying on thumb drives and Dropbox were over.
Since then, I have seen how helpful Google Docs, Presentation, Forms, Calendar and Spreadsheet for my work at school. I will say that as a Kindergarten teacher, that most of my Google work is for planning, implementing and tracking progress of my students. The students are not at the stage where they are using these tools yet. I know that the staff at our school uses these tools with the older students to help them organize and share their learning over a variety of platforms.
Here are the results from my Google Survey. This is the first time I have created a Google Survey myself. We have used them at school for parental feedback. After seeing how easy they are to use, I cannot wait to use them with my parents for feedback purposes during the year. I think I would like to do a survey about the amount of parent/teacher contact that we have.
Jenn, I enjoyed your post and survey as well! I agree totally with your feeling that change can be difficult (cool video!). It seems that this is not limited to various forms of technology either. Whether it be a new reading program, administrator, or something as small as a minor schedule change it seems that there is always at least some trepidation and even sometimes resistance. I wish my school district would adopt Gmail!
ReplyDeleteI also enjoy the fact that Google Applications mainly cloud-based and I can work from anywhere with Internet access. I enjoy the fact that Google has also updated their iOS application to work better with iPads as I constantly use it to enter my grades and student performance reports!
Hilarious video! Love it. I am glad you use google for planning and keeping track of students. I love that we have google now in our school and the kids all have gmail accounts. It is amazing.
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