The Interesting Ways series of resources continue to grow as the community add ideas from the classroom. Below is one of the most popular with over 70 ideas shared by teachers for using Google Forms in a range of different ways.

Make sure that you explore nearly 40 other crowdsourced resource like the one above – you can see the full series of resources on the Interesting Ways page

I discovered the Google Ngram Viewer from this TED Talk by Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel who are both fellows at Harvard University and Visiting Faculty at Google. They created the tool to analyse the millions of books being digitised by Google to allow them to search for cultural trends.

Using the Ngram Viewer would certainly be an interesting data handling lesson for children!

By analysing over 500 billion words the Google Books Ngram Viewer allows you to compare the history of terminology and language from approximately 5 million digitised books.

The graph above shows my search for the terms “teaching” and “learning” in publications between the years 1500 and 2010.

What fascinates me is how the popularity or usage of the different terms climbed and fell throughout this period. The term “Teaching” has been used more frequently since the turn of the 18th century, somewhat settling into a plateau in the last 60 years. In comparison the term “learning” seems to have more of a rollercoaster frequency in the last 500 years.

References to “learning” from 1800 fell notably in the following 100 years, to a point where “teaching” was referenced more. And then began a 75 year period where “teaching” was clearly more frequently used or referred to in published literature. Why would there have been such a decline or change in frequencies?

If you look at the references to “learning’ there seems to be some peak and trough pattern amidst an upward trend. I wonder why this was the case? Similarly why did references to “learning” fall away at the turn of the 19th century only to climb steadily again in the last 100 years? What perceptions of “learning” or cultural differences were there between the 1700s (“learning” references increase) and the 1800s (“learning” references decrease.)?

I am no historian and I am sure many of you reading this will be able to explain the information better than me – needless to say it would be interesting to explore any broad reasons or background that might effect such results.

Google Earth was one of the very first pieces of software that I began to create educational resources with. As I put it in one of my first ever blog posts 5 years ago: ”This app won me over straight away.” The engaging environment really struck a chord with me and I remember fondly my first forays into using it to support learning.

It has developed so much over the years – I remember using it for a Geotweets lesson, when we had to track down people replying to us on Twitter and find their exact location in Google Earth.

It feels like a true Autumnal day today in England – despite the temperature anomaly we had just recently – which again reminds me of one of the first resources that I thought was truly magical from the Forestry Commission here in the UK. It was a network link in Google Earth that showed the colour of leaves at different sites around the UK and the icons would change colour accordingly. I loved how the information was live and changing constantly.

Nowadays the Forestry Commission has moved the Autumn Leaf colour project to the Google Maps platform which is similar to what I did with Maths Maps in the end.

I found this old image of Google Earth which was the starting point for Maths Maps years ago – a car park in Las Vegas. The original resource in Google Earth explored the rudimentary 3D shapes layer as well as webcams that could be viewed to count the frequency of cars on Las Vegas highways!

Google Maps in the end added the collaboration that I was seeking, that made it much easier for people to add resources and ideas – and to share amongst a class. Google Earth kmz files were much more complicated to work with. And so I moved the Maths Maps idea across – you can see them all here or use the link at the top of the page.

One of the most fun uses of Google Earth is the Monster Milktruck. I used as a starter to a maths lesson exploring different types of 3D shapes which we spotted as we drove around San Francisco.

Another memorable use of Google Earth and a successful writing project in my class was creating an escape story based on James and Giant Peach (make sure you follow the links to the other 4 posts). I found that so many children found it much easier to write about what they could see as they navigated around our story location in Google Earth. The engaging visual imagery helped them make a start in their story and seeing the progress or journey of our character reinforced the story structure.

Before the Roald Dahl inspired piece, I was using it to plot the course of diary entries we wrote with a Year 6 class as they took on the role of Mina Harker from Dracula who set sail from England to track down her stricken husband Jonathan in the depths of Transylvania. I later used the story maps idea in my session at the Google Teacher Academy in London.

One of the most impressive resources I have seen was the Ancient Rome 3D model that you could download and explore in Google Earth – allowing you to explore the ancient streets and buildings. I recall one morning starting the day by exploring the 3D model of the Collosseum and drawing lots of wows from the class. A stunning resource that brings the ancient city life for students.

I also really enjoyed the 3D Google Earth model of the tomb of Tutankhamun, which was the first time I think I saw the textures being rendered on the shapes – again such a rich resource for helping children better understand the topic. We of course used the models of pyramids well in our lessons on shape properties in maths too!

It is great to hear that Google Earth has been downloaded over 1 billion times – amazing.

Designed By JESS3 from visual.ly

You can explore all of my archived posts I have written about using Google Earth use in the classroom here. And don’t forget to explore more ideas for using Google Earth in the classroom in the Interesting Ways presentation – as well as the Google Maps version too.

This is the second in a series of 3 posts I wrote for the Official Google Docs Blog – in this one I share some common challenges teachers face when students begin working together on collaborative projects.

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Communication is important, not the tool

The success of our own class projects was not influenced by how well the children could use Google Docs. After all, it is not really about the tool — it’s about the group’s ability to work together as a team. My class found this difficult throughout the year. I did not expect that just because we were using technology that the outcome would be any different. In fact even though each child was engaged with a role within the group and a task to complete, the technology exacerbated the lack of communication. The groups were plodding on with their own tasks and when it buffeted with someone else’s they would get upset. They may be working in the same online space, but that does not automatically indicate they are collaborating well.

With this in mind we raised the profile of the sense of communication within the groups and discussed with the children their teething problems and how we can best resolve them. With every resolution I drew it back to the idea of better communication. The class had a fuller understanding from these discussions of what they were doing when working together in Google Docs and some of the ways that their own communication was causing problems. To reinforce this in future sessions I would regularly stop the class to talk about an excellent example I had overheard from an individual or a group. One such example was when the children in one group lowered their laptop screens so that they could discuss the progress of their work so far. I raised it with the wider group ,we briefly discussed why it was such a good move, and through this we then saw the majority of the groups adopting this strategy.

How student personalities and familiarity with technology affect group work

You know what it is like: you try and balance a team and consider the characters that you put together in a group, but within moments they are falling out! I suppose using Google Docs does not make the task any easier. Out of the 5 groups in my class, 2 worked very well together, 1 was OK and the other 2 had lots of problems and struggled. On reflection, the groups that worked least well together were made up of perhaps 2 or 3 strong personalities that would naturally like to take a lead and this caused conflicts and problems as it has in other activities. When the children have their own laptops and a clear contribution to make within a document, that is appropriately structured, in my experience it can help a group work together.

I had children in my class that were very capable at using technology and were motivated and enthused at its use in our lessons but who often struggled with their literacy or maths, they were more confident when collaborating with Google Docs because of their own personal comfort with technology in the classroom. They pushed themselves forward to take a lead and be more involved when in a more traditional paper-based activity they may not have done. Similarly, the flip side of this is children who are very confident and capable in literacy who perhaps have less confidence when using technology. Even though composing groups within your class to collaborate is similar for any activity, it is important to consider the type of characters who grows in confidence when embedding technology in their learning.

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Next: Interesting Ways to Use Docs in the Classroom

In 2008 I was invited to write a series of blog posts for the Official Google Docs blog. I have decided to repost them here to highlight some of the challenges I faced at the time and in an effort to help you, not only with the use of Google Docs but also other online collaborative tools.

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Modelling expected behaviour and good practice first

As our first Google Docs project began to gather pace last school year, I realised that the children were finding it difficult to work together. With hindsight it is easier to recognise that the children were not only being introduced to a new piece of technology (the Docs tool) but also their traditional way of working was to be challenged by the new concept of working collaboratively in an online document.

It was clear that the children were unsure about the way they should be working together. They were each working on their own laptop and it was not the technical side of things that they struggled with, it was the fact they were expected to interact with others in their group as well as use a screen. I found it very useful to model the process. Just as I would if I were showing the children a style of writing in Literacy or a type of stretch in PE. I worked with a colleague on an example document and gave the class a running commentary as to what we were doing. As we worked we talked to each other and I underlined some of the key features of what made that short demo collaboration successful for us.

I think that every class of children will respond differently to the challenge of working together in an online doc, but it proved incredibly valuable to our classes to model what is expected of them. In September, I’ll have a new class and I will be keeping in mind this idea from the outset. Another idea would be to encourage the students to demonstrate the concept to the class – this is much harder to show but valuable nonetheless. I will be planning in time to model the technical and communications side of working together and also reflective time with the groups throughout the project to discuss and review the process of collaborating.

Introducing group collaboration: entire class, working in pairs, and groups of four

With the 9 and 10 year-olds in my classes, I found it valuable to take small steps towards an open collaborative project with 4 or 5 group members. As I introduced Google Docs to the class, we began to work together on documents that everyone could contribute to, revealing the ways that it worked and how it updates. In many respects this could be labelled as modelling the process that the children will in turn use later on. It proved valuable to be able to prove the concept to the children in a simple “step in, step out” controlled type contribution, nothing protracted. We added ideas to a large grid within a spreadsheet, with the children being told to choose any cell to write in – you could also invite them to fill in some information about themselves next to their name in a class list document. This single contribution to a whole class document was our first step.

It was followed by children working together in pairs on one document – a laptop each, sitting next to each other and sharing the document between them both. Finally the children worked in a larger group of 4 in a more lengthy collaboration as part of a Geography project. I believe it is important to progressively build up to bigger group collaboration and for this coming academic year I will be taking the same approach in developing the children’s collaboration experience over the first 6 weeks of term.

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Next: It’s About the Communication Not The Tool

It has probably been around for a while but I have just spotted the Google Image Search within a Google Document. But more significant is that the images are automatically filtered according to a commercial re-use license. Whatever you find there will be acceptable to use. 

You can see how the image search box within Google Docs works below and I have highlighted the small note explaining the license.

Many early users of the latest platform for social networking have begun sharing their ideas about the potential for supporting learning. There is much to be anticipated – I always believed that the community element was missing from the use of Google Apps for Education.

Perhaps Google+ could provide the platform for schools to help positively teach social networking and tie in the use of the different apps more seamlessly together.

Take a look at what educators think so far and feel free to share your own ideas with the Google doc, or leave them in the comments here.

Since leaving the classroom I have had the opportunity to read more widely then I have done at any point over the last 10 years. The work I am doing now takes me down paths including design thinking, business, social media and of course education. It is the variety of new domains of information and perspectives that I have found so engaging.

Not only have I been able to work with and immerse myself in ideas from outside of education but I have begun to see ways learning can benefit from them.

I have seen Twitter grow and grow into a huge global tool for educators. However those of us using it are still, for the most part, in the minority. However difficult it is to admit it, teachers using any digital tool to connect with fellow teachers are still in the minority. The prospect of a new social tool, such as Google+, was hugely exciting to see. It was great to start in a fresh space with the customary intuitive interface we have come to expect from Google products. So all rosy? Well not quite.

My main concern is a key difference between Twitter and Google+. When Twitter users connect with each other they basically ask themselves is this person interesting or in my line of work? Yes = follow. We all have our different methods but I suspect that covers most people. When I look at those people who have followed me on Twitter recently I can see very quickly (on a single page which I can just scroll up and down) what they do from their profile and just click follow if a) they interest me or b) they are in education. That’s it.

Importantly with Twitter there are no ways to target your messages to groups within those who follow you, it is an “all in” sort of method. My updates go to designers, teachers, classes, professors, executives, artists, whoever makes up your network. Do I think this adds value to the replies and perspectives you gain? Absolutely.

With Google+ Circles are we creating silos of information? By saying to users, “do you only want to share with those that find it 100% relevant?”, are we in fact encouraging a narrowing of perspectives? What about those that might find it 60% relevant? Or whose current project makes it highly relevant to them, but perhaps not at other times. Of course we have the choice to make things public in Google+ and the choice to have different circles, but Twitter’s default broadcast state is always set to public. An open style of sharing is not a choice.

Perhaps targeted sharing, in the style of a Google+ post, will just give me what I always get. The isolation of ideas, fuzzy-warm acceptance but nothing to challenge them. Alternate expertise has no way of peaking in or seeping into the reaction.

Of course this idea of cross-fertilising ideas from different domains has a strong history with, for example, Innovation Time Off or 20% time from Google or bootlegging product development at 3M that led to the early concept of the Post-It note.

I think I will probably not use the Circles feature of Google+ because I think that I will be limiting the reactions I get and actively avoiding the opportunity to connect with other professionals who could add a valuable perspective beyond education. I still prefer a model that is more open by default and puts the responsibility of information filtering on the consumer, not the producer of the information.

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Pic Back of Beyond by violscraper

Having spent a little bit of time using the Google+ Project I thought I would share some initial thoughts and reactions.

From the very beginning it is all about people, as always with these new network tools it is about adding people into your space to enjoy and share it with. I was immediately impressed with the Circles feature which helps you organise people into different groups. The user interface is really nice and it was easy to grab people and drop them into the right Circle for them.

You can create lots of different circles and name them whatever you like. Once you are using and sharing if there is someone who either adds you to their Circle or you see their name mentioned, all you have to do is roll over their name, then the Circles icon and then tick which they belong to in the pop up window – really easy.

Within Google Apps for Edu I can see each class having a specific Circle with which you can share content.

As many people have said, this level of organisation is much more like real life as we have distinct and sometimes overlapping connections with people. What is currently missing seems to be (amongst other things):

• to share a whole Circle with others
• to add inner circles to a group – say for groups within a class
• build on other social media groups, LinkedIn or Twitter lists

This compartmentalised approach to our social networking behaviour is very much at the core of what the Google+ Project seem to be developing. When you look to share any type of content you can be very refined about who you share it with. As Vincent Mo from Google explains:

On Google+, anyone can add me to their circles, and they never see more than what I share with them. It’s as easy as not adding them to a circle. That means people can add me all they want. If I post something private, I’ll only post it to a circle, and they won’t see it. Go ahead. Add me. I don’t care.

So the focus is on the creation of Circles of connections which then allows you to dictate who you share content with. Vincent Mo says that Google+ is “built around targeted sharing”. Seems obvious – and Google have executed these crucial elements really well.

Even if you have not had the chance to use Google+ I would be interested to hear your thoughts regarding the Circles style of organisation and how it differs to what we are used to.

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Pic: Flickr’ng lights by josef.stuefer