Google Apps for Education
Google Apps for Education is a free set of communication and collaboration tools that includes email, calendar, and documents. More than 30 million students, teachers, and administrators in schools around the world use Google Apps for Education. Many students will use these tools in college and in the workforce — 7 of the 8 Ivy League universities and 5 million businesses use Google Apps. Tools that meet the needs of schools Google Apps for Education are built for schools.
They are:
COLLABORATIVE: Fast, easy collaboration is what makes Google Apps unique. The tools offer real-time editing, powerful sharing controls, and seamless compatibility – a great platform for teamwork in the 21st century.
CUSTOMISABLE: We make it easy for you to set dozens of critical security settings
and feature options. Set account permissions to meet your school’s needs. For
example turn email off for second graders, allow fifth graders to email classmates.
FREE: We offer Google Apps for Education to schools for free. This includes 24x7
online, email & telephone support, an online teacher training center, as well as
syncing and migration tools.
SECURE: Google Apps for Education users own their data. The data schools and
students put in is theirs, and we believe it should stay that way — it even says
so in our contracts. We have more than 400 full-time engineers working to protect
your information.
WITHOUT ADS: There are no ads in Google Apps for Education services and Google
does not use student data in Apps for Education services for advertising purposes.
USABLE ON ANY DEVICE: Whether your school has laptops, Android tablets, iPads,
Macbooks, desktop PCs or any other device, Google Apps will work for you. With
Google Apps you can work anytime, anywhere on any device. Offline Gmail and
Docs mean you don’t always need internet access.
The following are the apps:
CLASSROOM: Save time, improve organization, and enhance
communication with students when you create assignments
and give feedback using Classroom and Google Apps for
Education.
GMAIL: Reach students or faculty members instantly with email,
voice calling, and chat. Choose which services you turn
on and off. Customize Gmail to match your school’s logo,
colors, and domain, e.g., you@yourschool.edu.
CALENDAR: Manage all of life’s important events within your online
calendar. Plan lessons and book parent/teacher conferences.
Overlay multiple calendars to see when people and
resources are available.
DRIVE: Sync, store, and preview documents, videos, images, and
files. Share individual files or whole folders with specific
students, other teachers, or the whole school.
DOCS: Write, edit, and collaborate wherever you are. Add comments
to give feedback to students in real time. Plan a lesson
together with other teachers. View revision history to see
how student writing has evolved.
SHEETS: Teach students the power in data with built-in formulas,
pivot tables, and conditional formatting options that
simplify common spreadsheet tasks. Have a whole class
capture data from a science experiment.
SLIDES: Create lessons that shine with a variety of slide themes and
templates. Enhance learning by embedding educational
videos—add the animations that grab attention and the
transitions that keep it.
SITES: Display student e-portfolios or make a class website. Teams
and clubs can create web pages without writing a single line
of code. Students, teams, and clubs save time by selecting
one of many pre-built templates.
FORMS: Use forms to gather and analyze information. They’re great
for quizzes, tests and surveys. Export results for easy grading.
Send surveys to get feedback from families.
VAULT: Google Vault is an optional app for archiving, e-discovery
and information governance. Vault is $10.00 per year for
all faculty and staff, but is free for students.
TALK/HANGOUTS: Use text chat or make group video calls with up to 15
people. The tool can be used for office hours, virtual field
trips, team meetings, and distance learning.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Facebook for Students
Facebook is the most popular of social networking sites right now, and possibly in many futures to come. Used by anybody from professionals, students, teachers, to businesses, governments, and politicians; it is not hard to see how far Facebook has come to be the top online networking tool for everyone. One's life spent studying in an institution spans an average of 15–20 years, from primary school until one attains an undergraduate degree. Chances are, in at least 10 of those years, a student would've spent some time on Facebook to socialise, manage their social networks, and even to liaise with school study groups and classrooms.
An advantage of Facebook is of course the fact that almost everyone is on the platform, and if otherwise, signing up is virtually a few clicks away. To students, finding classmates would be easy and organising everyone into a group helps manage the sharing of information, assignments, and notes. Facebook allows the sharing of files and as everything updates in real-time, students get notified almost instantly. This facilitates group work, keeps tabs on who's doing what, and if teachers are let in, they can monitor and comment on what students are doing. In my university, Facebook is the one tool our teachers use to group a whole class together. In the group, notifications are sent out, lecture note PDFs are shared, assignment briefs are posted, students ask questions, and answers are shared. Facebook groups for students act almost like a virtual hub of information; well it is a virtual hub for information.
The disadvantages of Facebook affect every user and not just students. A primary concern is that of time-wasting and procrastination on the site. Facebook is a sharing multiverse of entertainment news, internet memes, emergency news, businesses advertising products you love, and of course everyone you have on your friends list. It is not difficult to spend hours on Facebook, scrolling through facets of information — and not retaining much. Facebook is like binge-browsing; your mind takes in information for the sake of it, for pure entertainment. This of course makes it less efficient for a student or professional (or just about anyone who has work to be done) to get things done in a timely manner if they get carried away by their browsing habits on Facebook. As with most things in life and on the internet, striking a balance between two extremes takes discipline; and such is the case with social media and networking.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Twitter for Students
Twitter, just like Facebook, is a social networking platform. Though not as multifaceted as the latter, Twitter has its advantages and disadvantages should you be a fan of the platform. Twitter is advantageous in that it disseminates information fast and uses hashtags to categorise information pretty well. Twitter is primarily used on phones or tablets, making for efficient text and photo-sharing on-the-go. Students can use Twitter to their advantage by following sources of information useful to them. Twitter, like Facebook, is widely used by everyone from brands, businesses, celebrities, media personalities, to the average joe. Twitter hashtags can also personalise information sent within a group or circle of friends, or classmates to aid learning and communication. The mainly text-centric nature of Twitter also lessens the risk of students getting distracted by what they would find on Facebook.
The disadvantage of Twitter is of course, addiction. With its real-time nature of messaging, retweeting, and reaching-out, it is not difficult for one to get carried away by reading backlogs of tweets made by one's favourite celebrity or media personality. Snooping around social media also takes up time for those always curious about what their social circles are saying. Like any other media outlet, Twitter may give rise to the spreading of false information if not double-checked for authenticity by its users. Twitter accounts are also easily hacked or compromised of its safety so students of younger ages need to take some measure of precaution when using social networking sites.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Youtube for Students
Youtube has many advantages for students. For one, you can learn a lot off a video whether it is a documentary on a topic of interest, an instructional on crafting something, or a tutorial on learning software. Youtube videos are endless in their application, be it for studying, learning, and entertainment. Students may also find lectures on Youtube or even create videos themselves on their achievements or projects. Youtube's history feature is useful to keep tabs on what you've watched and being able to like and organise videos into a playlist are also handy should a student want to categorise videos into those they plan to watch over a time period. The comments section on Youtube also allows students to ask questions, comment, and of course partake in a discussion concerning the video topic.
The disadvantages of course come with safety. The Youtube comments section is largely unfiltered for expletives and rough language and younger students may need safer viewing of the site. It is also easy for one to divulge personal information if they are not aware of how sensitive the information is (Google account password, email.) It is also easy to spend too much time on Youtube for entertainment purposes and much less so studying. As Youtube hosts a wealth of information, a student has to have a level-head and some common sense when taking in the information found on Youtube videos. Some videos depict instructional or news-related information done as a parody or in jest, and one must realise this beforehand to not believe everything the see or hear on the internet.
Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube are easily shared in and amongst each other and creates a synergy of information-sharing that can be both useful or detrimental to a student's work discipline. It is ultimately the student or user's responsibility to ensure balanced social networking site usage and that time is spent wisely: more on gaining knowledge and less on online gossiping and binge-browsing.
