Thing #7

Wow! Google has so much to offer! I played around with a few of the applications. I liked the Google Calendar because it allows you to set dates by year, like birthdays which are always sneaking up on me! I liked Picassa because it wasn't blocked and I could really see and search photos. I will try this site when I need pictures for book trailers, but I have a feeling it isn't as extensive as Flickr and the photos aren't quite as fabulous. I set up my iGoogle page with all kinds of gadgets and things for myself. I think I will find the Reader especially helpful in keeping up with what is going on professionally in a very time efficient way. Google Notebook is neat! I think it woudl be useful to students as a way to 'take notes' of their online searches. The unfortunate thing is that is an application that is not available to new users, which means that over time many students will not have access to it. (I think Google Notebook isn't the first application to be launched and then reach a point where Google no longer supports it with upgrades and stuff.) I also poked around in Google Docs. This application seems to have the greatest potential for use by my students. They often want to work on assignments at home and need a way to 'transport' their files from school to home and back to school again. Google Docs will allow them to do this easily. I am a bit worried about whether we can require students to have a gmail account, which is required to use any of these applications.