photo credit: vimeo SFX Tech

It's difficult to imagine that 3 years ago, teachers in my building were sharing tablets on a cart. What a pain that was! We were divided into 2 groups: those that embrace technology and those that can live without it! I was somewhere in between. I wanted to use and incorporate technology in my classroom but some teachers hogged the cart or on the day I finally got the cart there were so many issues. Either tablets weren't charged, keyboards had keys missing, or internet connections was down or slow! So sometimes, I would get discouraged and give up.

Last year, I finally got my own class set of Chromebooks. This was an exciting day for my class. But now that we had them, what could I do with them? Well I was glad I had taken a summer workshop through my school district titled, Google Boot Camp. Some of the things showcased spiked my curiosity and I wanted my students to have some experience in a 21st century classroom. So through some more PD, workshops, some YouTube videos, and using Twitter, I found ways to use Google G suite in my classroom.

Here is an example of how I used some Google tools with my students. A grade level team member shared a form with the team. I made some changes for my students but nonetheless kept it simple.

I exported the results of the genres onto Google sheets and created a bar graph for a mini-lesson on keeping a "balanced book diet".

Finally, I posted an assignment on Classroom Google for my students to use Docs to create a book review for their book and they had to respond to someone else's book review.