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**** by Beth, Diane, Kim, Nancy and Susan **** =http://www.google.com/educators/tools.html=

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Welcome to Google's Geo Education site, where you will find helpful information on using Google Earth, Maps, Sky, and SketchUp in your K-12 classroom. For years, this suite of products has been identified as a powerful learning toolkit that can help your students conceptualize, visualize, share, and communicate information about the world around them. The Google for Educators team hopes these tools will empower you to bring the world's geographic information to your students in a compelling, fresh, and fun way.

Google Maps
[|Google Maps] is an intuitive service for navigating global maps information. It enables you and your students to look up and study addresses anywhere in the U.S. and in many other countries and get point-to-point, draggable directions plotted on an interactive street map. You can also research public transit options and study Yellow Pages listings with reviews, business information and coupons. You can freely switch between map, satellite, terrain, and StreetView modes to gain various perspectives on a location. Best of all, Google Maps is an online application, so there's no downloading required, and you can access it from any computer that's connected to the Internet.

Google Maps are now [|editable], so students can add or move your school, rec center, or favorite park to help other users find the most accurate information. With **MyMaps**, you and your students can create personalized, annotated, customized maps. Whether you're planning a field trip or documenting a famous traveler's journeys, you can embed photos, videos, and descriptive text to make the content come alive. You can also publish, share, and invite others to collaborate on your project. [|Learn more.]
 * Here are some ideas for using Google Earth in your classroom:**
 * **Art History:** Search for photos and user-created maps showing famous museums like the [|Louvre] in Paris.
 * **Climatology:** Celebrate the 2007-2008 International Polar Year and add your classroom's plans to this [|global map].
 * **Earth Science:** Use [|this] Google Maps Mashup to locate and learn about recent earthquakes around the world.
 * **Environmental Science:** See how Google and the United Nations Environment Programme teamed up to use collaborative MyMaps for the I[|nternational Cleanup Weekend Initiative].
 * **History:** Take a virtual tour of the 21 [|California Missions].
 * **Physics:** Learn how one [|teacher] used Google Maps with his 9th grade class to teach speed, velocity and displacement.

Google Web Search - Classroom Lessons and Resources
Web search can be a remarkable research tool for students - and we've heard from educators that they could use some help to teach better search skills in their classroom. The following Search Education lessons were developed by Google Certified Teachers to help you do just that. The lessons are short, modular and not specific to any discipline so you can mix and match to what best fits the needs of your classroom. Additionally, all lessons come with a companion set of slides (and some with additional resources) to help you guide your in-class discussions.
 * || ** Start out ** (Basic lessons) || ** Step up ** (Intermediate lessons) || ** On top ** (Advanced lessons) ||
 * ** Understanding search engines ** || [|Start your engines] || [|Which link should I follow?] || [|Believe it or not] ||
 * ** Search technique and strategies ** || [|The Keys to Search City] || [|Your search toolbox] || [|The advanced search squad] ||
 * ** Features and operators ** || [|Quick Finds] || [|Advanced Advantage] || [|The Search Summit] ||

[|Google Search Posters for Your Classroom]

[|Google Classroom Activities]

[|Google Teacher Academy] – Free professional development seminar in NYC. Complete the [|online application] for the next Google Teacher Academy by July 29th. The GTA will take place on October 3-4 in New York City. Fifty teaching professionals from around the world will learn about new advances in teaching technologies.

[|iGoogle] - You and your students can collect useful content from across the web and see it all in one place on [|iGoogle]. From current events provided by numerous news providers to local weather and your school's events calendar, you can select any number of customized items and place them on a page that's specific to all of your own personal interests. Here are a few of the hundreds of features that are available for your homepage:
 * A date and time clock
 * Your class calendar, easily accessed by students
 * Bookmarks for quick access to your recommended sites for students
 * Headlines from a variety of trusted news sources
 * Link to your class Blog with messages to students or families
 * New! Access to searchable elections videos through Google's [|Elections Video Search].

[|Google Book Search] allows you to search the full text of our large and growing index of books, from popular titles to old, out-of-print and public domain volumes, to find pages that include your search terms. Once you find a given book, you can browse available pages, search further in that book, find online reviews, and learn where to buy the book or check it out of a nearby library, and in some cases, even read the entire title online. Google Book Search can enhance your lesson plans in all kinds of ways, by enabling you to search for, and helping you locate, countless volumes you might not have been able to find any other way. Book Search finds can enhance everything from your bibliographies to your lesson plans; you and your students can access the full text of out-of-copyright books and search the full text of most other books to find the right volumes for any given assignment, project, or lesson.Google Book Search will also enhance your students’ research by allowing them to access information from thousands of books with one quick search. Students can access and read the full text of out-of-copyright books, learn where to locate hard-to-find volumes in libraries or bookstores, and easily create more thorough bibliographies.

With Google Custom Search Engine, you can: With Google Notebook, you'll be able to:
 * [|Custom Search Engine]
 * Create a CSE at any time and Google will give you a landing page with a unique URL. You also have the option of applying your own site's [|look and feel].
 * Invite friends and colleagues to [|collaborate and contribute] to your search engine, enhancing its usefulness to your community.
 * Provide your own [|search refinements] within results pages so it's easier for your users to find the information they're looking for.
 * [|Easily add more sites] to your search engine's index as you surf the web.
 * New! You can [|create a CSE on the fly] simply by cutting and pasting a few lines of code into your website's HTML. Your new automatically generated CSE will let people search the websites you've linked to, as well as the sites they link to. For instance, if you've created a directory, a blog roll, or a list of online resources, your CSE will enable your users to search across these sites and the sites they reference. ||  ||   ||   ||
 * [|Google Notebook] - If you spend a lot of time online, chances are you've come across information you wish you could revisit later, whether to digest it more slowly, investigate it further, or share it with a friend or plan.
 * save clippings from sites around the web so you can access them later
 * annotate your clippings by adding your own thoughts or comments
 * organize clippings into different notebooks or in sections within a single notebook
 * search the full text of your own notebooks and any public notebooks
 * invite specific collaborators to contribute to your notebook -- just click on the "sharing options" link in the top right-hand corner of your Google Notebook and enter the email addresses of the people you'd like to share it with
 * share the information in your notebook with everyone -- once inside "sharing options," select "publish this notebook" to make your Notebook public ||  ||   ||   ||
 * [|Picnik] ||

Picnik is closed! WOW – it says that as of 4/29/12, all files and photos have been deleted!


 * GOOGLE APPS **

[|Picasa]  is a free software download that enables you and your students to find, edit and share all the pictures on your PCs

[|Blogger] makes it easy for teachers and students to share work, class notes, and pictures online. And with new access controls, educators can even make private blogs for their classes’ eyes only.

Here is a sample blog - my daughter’s “story of an ironwoman” blog: http://thethreepeat.blogspot.com/


 * Google Page Creator**


 * Google Page Creator **

With [|Google Page Creator], you can create functional, attractive web pages in just minutes—without having to learn code. You can customize your pages using a variety of styles, fonts, and background colors, and your pages can include images and links to other web pages. We've designed Page Creator to be simple to use—there's no need to download anything to get started, and you can publish the pages you create with just one click. And perhaps best of all, Google hosts your pages for free.



Using Page Creator, for instance, you might build a page detailing your lesson plans, and add a link to your page from your school's website so that other teachers can learn from your experience.

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