Head Back to School with Drive: Teacher Edition

Here are 3 tips to help teachers prepare for going back to school with Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Forms.

1. Use Slides to get to know your students

A great introductory activity is to create a single slide deck, and then invite each of your students to share a bit about themselves on their own personal slide. It’s a fantastic get-to-know-you activity for the beginning of school and you’ll be amazed by the creativity that comes out of your students!

The screenshot below shows how Google Student Ambassadors from 9 different countries used Slides to introduce themselves before gathering to meet each other at an event in Indonesia this summer.

Want to get this going with your students? Easy—create a new Slides deck on the first week of school, click the blue Share button to invite your students, and give them a little direction for their individual slide by adding comments.

2. Use Docs to create a classroom “Bill of Rights”

The first few weeks of class is that precious transition from the “honeymoon” period of well behaved students to learning the norms of your classroom culture. Help start the year off right by inviting students to co-create their ideas of citizenship and a happy learning environment, Docs style.

Start by creating a copy of this template and then invite students to join in with you to add their ideas, ratify by adding a comment, and use their editing prowess to come up with a final copy to live by for the coming year.

3. Use Forms to get to know your students (and their prior knowledge!)

Get to know your classroom as soon as possible, using Forms to gather information about their needs, interests, and abilities beforehand. Consider creating a simple Form for a survey for your students and have fun showing the data on your projector and learning about your class as a whole.

Forms can be used as a very quick getting started activity before any lesson as well—take this example from a social studies classroom before talking about population. By placing a quick Form on your classroom site or emailing your students the Form, you can quickly grasp your students' prior knowledge—before you start teaching.

In this case, our team was a bit off, but helped us not only talk about population but estimation and numbers in general (answer? 7.1 billion and counting. )

Partially reposted from the Google Drive Blog: http://googledrive.blogspot.com
Originally posted by  Wendy Gorton, an educational consultant- https://drive.googleblog.com/2013/08/drivebts-teachers.html

Virtual Reality - The future is now

2016 will finally be the year of virtual reality. With the announcement of the Playstation VR’s release date and price yesterday, we finally have the plans of all the three big VR players this year. Oculus VR which is owned by Facebook comes out this month for PC and will cost $599. HTC Vive which is also for the PC will cost $799 and will be available in April. Lastly, the PSVR will be out October 2016 for $399.

These are all primarily built for gaming, but it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to see how it can expand education and allow individuals to experience things that they would have never had the chance.

For instance, one project that is coming out of the Virtual Reality space is called the Apollo 11 experience. What is Apollo 11 before we begin? Apollo 11 was part of the Apollo program and the first mission that landed humans on the Moon, Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, on July 20, 1969. According to Yahoo! News “The ‘Apollo 11 VR Experience’ will feature accurate digital models of the Saturn V rocket, Apollo Command Module and Lunar Lander, including the original real-time audio from the mission and interviews with the astronauts themselves.” [1]

Check out this trailer to see it for yourself

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBzvUYZranc

I, for one, can not wait to experience what it would be like to take a mission to the moon, and mess with all the instruments in the space shuttle, and be on the moon, even if it is virtually. It’s something that 99.99999% of the world will never be able to experience, and if we can experience it virtually, I think that’s pretty incredible.

While that is an example of software created for VR that allows for learning, another possible example is a virtual classroom. Sure, we can have that now with the Internet, but imagine putting on your Virtual Reality headset and actually walking around Manhattan College, walking through the quad. Now, you can sit down in your classroom, and actually look at your virtual classmates, and the teacher. Actually interact, and walk up to the board like you would in class. Stand in front and give a presentation. Imagine having an alumni reunion where people who would not be able to attend under normal circumstances can now meet up with people they haven’t seen in forever in Manhattan College’s virtual quad. 

The possibilities for VR are endless. This is only the beginning and the future looks very bright. To learn more about each of the different VR devices you can check out this website: http://www.ign.com/wikis/playstation-4/PlayStation_VR_vs_PC_Oculus_Rift_vs_Vive_Comparison_Chart

Melvin Lasky

Assistant Director of IT Infrastructure

[1] http://news.yahoo.com/you-can-pilot-the-apollo-11-moon-landing-in-this-132227347.html