Grateful for Google

I am by no means new to the google website, but I had no idea how useful so many of their applications can be to the educational experience.  I have been using www.google.com as a search engine for as long as I can remember (in the world wide web era, at least) and I have had to use gmail and the google calendar in a limited capacity over the past 6 years.  I guess you can say that I am new to the google app world.

Here is a sample of the many apps google has to offer.

In my short time in the role of an emerging educator I have found many of these apps to be invaluable to the educational process.  One great feature is that everything can be saved on the google drive which can be accessed from any device.  This is helpful when I don't have my computer and am trying to reference a file from my iPad, I can sign into the drive and I have access.  I don't have to carry a jump drive with me, which is awesome!

The google drive makes collaboration seamless.  Instead of having to email documents or files back and forth to a group, files can be shared and group members can contribute as if they in a room, working together.  The drive saves a lot of paper as well.  School-wide bulletins, data-sharing, unit/lesson plans, and any other information that may have been printed in the past and placed in mailboxes can not only be shared but the recipients can make edits to original files.

I have barely explored the tip of the iceberg as far as the usefulness of the google apps and I can't wait to discover more ways to make this experience more efficient and accessible.

Navigating the Teaching Channel

My teaching residency comes with many requirements from many people.  It can sometimes feel overwhelming to make sure I am fulfilling all of those requirements. 

I have found www.teachingchannel.org to be a helpful tool in facilitating the communication between everyone on my team.

Through this website we were able to create a group where we can post videos of me and my mentor interacting with the students.  Within this group we can discuss observations of things we see that need to be improved, things I notice was modeled nicely by my mentor, and extra details from students' reactions that we may not have noticed in real time.There is an app that supplements this website that helps uploading videos and makes attaching them to our specific group very easy.

In addition to using this website to collaborate with my residency team, it is a great tool to see what is going on in other classrooms around the AUSL network and the rest of the country.  I can navigate through the website to see videos on how other teachers approach certain content challenges.  There is an I can also use the videos to observe how effective different behavior or classroom management styles are in different classrooms.

There is an entire section devoted to Q&A where teachers can post a general questions and other teachers can discuss it in a forum.  It is a great way to get advice from quality educators throughout the country.
https://www.teachingchannel.org/questions?default=1

There are also some nice, brief professional development videos on this site which are helpful in discovering my personal teaching style. I am confident that I will spend many hours reviewing all the resources packed into this collaborative website.