New Year New Me

Hello again! Are you ready for more Google things? I am!

This week we learned about Google Classroom, Google Photos, and Google Calendar. Be prepared to get organized times 10!

You can use Google Classroom two ways, as a teacher and as a student. It’s basically a virtual classroom where teachers can post assignments, announcements, and materials of any kind.
As a teacher who is expected to incorporate more technology, I want it to be meaningful and useful for my students. I don’t think you can get any more useful than creating a virtual classroom.

Some ways I think this could be helpful could be if you choose to flip your classroom. Flip your what?! Flipping your classroom basically is giving your students the meat and potatoes of your lesson as homework and then the next day it opens up class time for a deeper dive into that subject. It involves technology and a lot of upfront work from the teachers but the pay off is incredible. You should Google it!   Flipped Classroom

Another way to use it is if students are absent it’s a great way for kids to have access to materials and for them to stay up to date on class work.

Here is a picture of my Google Classroom, check it out.

Next on the list is Google Photos. This tool uses cloud storage for all your photos. So, if your trigger happy like I am, no worries my friends all is kept safe up in the mysterious cloud. You can also put your photos into albums and share those albums with someone. As an aunt, I could definitely see this being used to share all those precious photos of my niece and nephew during their birthdays, out on the town with mom and dad, and of course the hilarious photos of them falling asleep face first into their mashed potatoes. #lifegoals

 View this video of how to use Google Photos

As we get knee deep into the new year my goal is always to become more organized. Google Calendar is one way I’m exploring on how to do that. With a spouse who also teaches and is a two-sport coach it’s important that we are on the same page with events and activities. What I love about google calendar is that you can color code your personal calendar and share it. What this does is combine multiple calendars into one view. Looking at my calendar view I have my personal calendar, Coach Meile’s personal calendar, and our “family” calendar. I know this sounds confusing but check it out…

As you can see Coach Meile hasn’t shared his calendar with me yet…I’m working on it. But here I can view the entire month with events that have already happened (the greyed-out events) and events that are coming up. You can add reminders, tasks, and block out entire days for upcoming events.

If looking at the entire month causes you to spiral, no fear. You can change the view to daily or weekly which let’s be honest we all have those moments in our lives where we are just trying to make it to the end of the day in one piece. No judgement here sister.

I think the best part is that there is an app that you can use as well. So, if you love having this up on your desktop at work and then want to check it once you leave you can have the app on your phone to help you do this. Marie Kondo watch your back! 

This week was chalk full of “get your life together” info. I was so inspired to get my Google Calendar look goooood and really think if I can implement Google Classrooms into my classroom.

Well, I’m really starting to get the itch to organize some more of my life. I better start by shopping for those organizer bins and trays. What a better way to organize than by purchasing more STUFF! 😜

Until next time keep exploring Google. Bye!