As I was thinking about the best way for me to get to the point of this week’s entry, I realize that after many and many thoughts, I always come back to what we experience in my classroom and its surroundings. It is surprising to me every time I find out that my adult ESL students don’t know that having a Gmail account (that pretty much everybody has it set up on their phones) it automatically creates a Google account that they can freely use for many of their daily tasks. I also found that children in the K-12 system that aren’t involved with Google apps (Google Suit) in the classroom don’t know about it either; bringing the idea that nor their teachers know how to use it or don’t have the time to implement. I took the time to ask around random people about if they knew about Google Drive and it seems that students in higher education are very well informed, but others quickly referred to Google as a searching engine to gather information. So I guess that it may be an effect of many of us being technology immigrant. What do you think?
So, when I get to think about instruction and learning, I believe that technology plays a fundamental role not only to be on top of what are the last technological trends but to aid education. For example, in one of many classes, it is required that all my students create a resume and a cover letter. Putting apart all the struggles of creating a resume for an ESL student and new to the country and possibly new to a resume, we encounter a couple more by not having a place to save it that can be accessible from any location, to be printed, sent, and update quickly. We tried pen drives, but many times they were left at home. We tried sending it to their email as an attachment, but then the process of downloading it, updating and sending it to themselves was hard. And, then if the previous task was completed, it was hard to keep track of which resume was last updated. It became a nightmare, and many of the students became very frustrated as I was as well.
I proposed then, to take some time to create Google accounts for those that use different ones, so we could all be on the same page and then teach them how to use Google drive to avoid unnecessary frustration while working on resumes. Therefore, students learned how Google Drive was able to hold their documents and how easy it was to share them with me, so I could check the progress of their resume confection, make corrections, and advice while in class or afterward. They also experienced the advantage of using Google apps to update their documents as they needed without the strictly use a computer. They were stunned to know that they didn’t need to buy an expensive Office Suite installation and see that they could use even their phone or tablets for these actions! Therefore resumes and cover letter became accessible at their finger tips during job fairs and unexpected job opening. As a consequence, the word started to spread out, and many more students wanted to learn this, and much more became more active in their job search and placement. And very importantly! We eliminated the daily use of their pen-drives (some of them keep using it as a back up).
With all this being said, Google Drive is a tool that I recommend you to use for instruction. Its features make collaborative learning more engaging and easy for the instructor to make corrections and give advice, storage is more accessible not only for standard documents, but for pictures and other files, office apps are user-friendly, and there are many other applications to explore and help you with instruction. But over all, it is free, and teachers love free stuff!
So far I haven’t experienced any down time with Google Drive. I don’t know if someone has something to say about it. I will love to know.
Here is a list of the standard Google Drive tools and down below, I attached some instructional videos that I use in my class. I hope you enjoy this entry and please don’t forget to write your ideas, comments, and questions. Thank you.
---Kennia
Google Drive Features:
It’s good to hear that other people are informed about how useful google drive is. I have been using it for the past 6 years. It gives me instant access to hundreds of assignments that I have done throughout the years. The best part about the google drive is that they made it user friendly, it’s simple to upload and download content. It allows you to save a variety of different document types.
ReplyDeleteHello Trent. Thank you very much for your comment.
DeleteIt is true. Google drive, once you learn how to use it, it’s very simple. It has been a very good addition to my vocational ESL classes. All that my students have learned about sharing assignments, online group work collaboration, and more have resulted in extremely important skills for their future jobs and continuing education.
I've very much appreciated using Google Drive for several collaborative group projects during the IDD&E program as well. It's a great way to share, and since its web based, it doesn't matter which platform/OS/device people are using to access the site. It's also great that it allows simultaneous editing and tracks individual changes. Definitely a great resource!
ReplyDeleteHello John! Thanks for your comment!
DeleteAs I was telling Trent, Google Drive have been a great resource not only for my personal classes, but for my students’ success as well. As you said, GD is very useful in many different areas and it doesn’t have any variation depending on the platform users use. Which I also think it’s an important fact.
Kennia, thanks for sharing information about Google Drive. This is the first time to know what is Google Drive. Since I didn't use the Google in my home country, I found that Good Drive is a powerful tool and a great resource for us. I very like its function that make collaborative learning with others. This function can save a lot of time for me and I may need to spend some time to explore the Google Drive, for it is a new tool to me and I cannot use it neatly now.
ReplyDeleteHello Jing Li!
DeleteThank you very much for your comment. It is good to know that the word is spreading out. I use Google Drive pretty much every day with my students and classmates from other classes in collaborative learning. My next session will talk about GSuit, which you may find interesting as well.
am one of the good user of Google drive.
ReplyDeleteI have one question about the storage capacity of google drive. I have been using other online storage like Dropbox and one drive. both of them have like 4 to 8 GB which are free. if the user wants know he/she is supposed to upgrade by subscription.
what about google drive? is there any storage capacity?
thanks,
Emmanuel.
Hello Emmanuel! Thank you for your post.
DeleteGoogle Drive offers 15 GB of free storage that can be increased with payment (I don't know how much) but it exists.
Kennia, thanks for sharing your info about google drive. Although I'm embarrassed to say...you can add me to the list of victims that don't fully understand the components gmail accounts have to offer. I've always just used google as a search engine. After reading this I'm 100% going to look into using google drive for work and side projects I'm involved in. What interest's me the most is the simplicity, sometimes buying new software or trying to learning a new application can be extremely frustrating.
ReplyDeleteHello Adam! Well, I think in my list you are the number 106 789 89...I'm just kidding. It's true that many people use Google as a search engine and its email, but don't know about all the features that Google provides.
DeleteI am glad that I chose this topic and that the information I am providing is being useful for many of you. As you said, having to buy Office Software can be very expensive and more if you only need it to perform basic tasks. Google Offers many application that can be used online at no cost. This is a real advantage I found for my ESL immigrant students and I want to spread to word to others. Come an see my next post. It's going to talk about those apps in Google Suit.
Thank you.