№6. Google services for education and teaching

Today I want to talk about Google for Education.

Google Apps is a suite of productivity tools that uses cloud computing. The products are useful for everyone, but there are specific options for business, education, not-for-profit organizations and even for governmental organizations!

Google for Education is a set of cloud-based tools that enables educators and students to work together online. This version of Google includes all the core Google apps such as Gmail and Google Docs, with the addition of some school-oriented tools such as Google Classroom. If you work in an education setting, Google for Education won’t cost you a cent — and Google has pledged that it will remain free forever.

Here is the list of available applications:

Gmail allows schools to use their own domain to create email accounts for users. It’s secure and easy to carry out searches and create archives. The administrator can access all email accounts, which is useful for monitoring or controlling student email.

Google Calendar lets you schedule meetings, share events, and send reminders to colleagues and students. You can also create multiple calendars, e.g. a personal calendar, a classroom calendar, and a faculty calendar.

Google Drive is a cloud storage platform that allows you to upload files to the Internet and sychronize them with various devices.

Google Docs is a collaborative word processor, like an online, pared-down version of Microsoft Word. Multiple users can work on one document together, in real-time. The person who creates the document can grant edit, comment, or view access to documents.

Google Sheets is Google’s own spreadsheet software for recording data and crunching numbers. It’s a great tool for administrators to track school data and trends. Likewise, using Sheets in the classroom can help teach students valuable data management skills. It works like Excel, but it’s totally cloud-based.

Google Slides is like a simpler, collaborative version of PowerPoint, that allows the whole team to work together on multimedia presentations in real-time.

Google Forms is a survey tool allowing you to collect information, set quizzes, and analyze the results in real-time.

Google Classroom is a very good collaborative tool, especially the sharing and assignment submission possibilities it offers. It allows students to plan, share and comment on student assignments. Google Classroom offers many interesting options for managing the submission of student work:

• Creating spaces for assignment submission;
• Managing the schedule for submissions and deadlines;
• Submission log;
• The ability to configure document sharing.

Google Meet offers video and voice conferencing for small groups of up to 25 people.

Google Sites lets you or your students create a simple website to host materials, curriculum, or projects — without any web design or coding skills.

Google Scholar allows searching academic works (works reviewed by editorial committees, thesis papers, books, analytical summaries and articles) and to manage a library of references.

What are the advantages of Google for Edication?

1. Interoperability: all of Google’s services are linked together. In addition, there are numerous applications and extensions available to augment the experience.
2. Synchronization: the files can be synchronized across multiple computing devices. This is the primary benefit of Cloud Computing. You can use any workstation, and your files and applications follow you wherever you go!
3. Collaboration: multiple people can work on the same document in real-time over the Internet and also use a chat window that is integrated within the application.
4. Logging: you have access to a log that lists the modification history of a document and have the ability to recover previous versions of a document in the event of an accidental deletion.
5. Compatibility: the documents created with Google Apps are compatible with other suites such as Microsoft Office or Open Office.

What are the disadvantages of Google for Edication? 

1. Internet connectivity: you cannot access or modify your documents if you do not have access to an Internet connection.
2. Confidentiality: it is important to properly manage the user rights on your documents to avoid privacy issues.
3. Features: there are fewer features available for editing documents in Google Apps than in the Microsoft Office as an example.

 

Today we have compared Google services for education with Microsoft Office many times. The suite of applications offered by Google can be used as a simple replacement for Microsoft Office. However, the Google suite offers fewer features. I have had the experience of using Google Dogs and Google Slides for education and I didn't really like them. In my opinion, Microsoft Office is much more convenient. Microsoft also have a cloud storage — OneDrive, which is similar to Google Drive. The only flaw of Microsoft Office is the inability to work collectively online. So, that is the main advantage over Microsoft Office.

 

Hope this information and my recommendations will be useful for you. Good luck!💜💪