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Teaching Math with Google Apps: 50 G Suite Activities
“Why do I need to know how to do math when I can find the answer on my phone?” If you’ve ever heard a variation of that question from your students—or asked it yourself—this book is for you. Bringing technology into the classroom is about so much more than replacing overhead projectors and chalkboards with Smart Boards. Unfortunately, as Stanford Professor Jo Boaler says, “We are in the twenty-first century, but visitors to many math classrooms could be forgiven for thinking they had stepped back in time and walked into the Victorian era.” But that’s all about to change . . . In Teaching Math with Google Apps, author-educators Alice Keeler and Diana Herrington reveal more than 50 ways teachers can use technology in math classes. The goal isn’t using tech for tech’s sake; rather, it’s to help students develop critical-thinking skills and learn how to apply mathematical concepts to real life. Memorization and speed tests seem irrelevant to students who can find the solution to almost any math problem with a tap of the finger. But today’s digital tools allow teachers to make math relevant. Specifically, Google Apps give teachers the opportunity to interact with students in more meaningful ways than ever before, and G Suite empowers students to stretch their thinking and their creativity as they collaborate, explore, and learn. Teaching Math with Google Apps shows you how Create engaging activities that make math relevant to your students Interact with students throughout the learning process Spend less time repeating instructions and grading work Improve your lessons so you can better meet your students’ needs Packed with lesson ideas, links to downloadable templates, step-by-step instructions, and resources, Teaching Math with Google Apps equips you to bring your math class into the twenty-first century with easy-to-use technology. What are you waiting for?
263 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 6, 2017
130 people are currently reading
141 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 12, 2018
The strategies are quality, but the real strength is in how it lays the ground work to move math beyond memorizing algorithms.
March 22, 2020
Lots of great ideas that will really help me with my digital lesson plans. I had no idea that I was going to NEED to know how to do this a month ago, I was just interested in getting more tech in my teaching to better engage my students. Lucky timing in unlucky times.
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May 1, 2019This book consists of a lot of combination of rick tasks, and pedagogical advice which if followed properly will move students from passive receivers of knowledge to active inquirers. Although we are in the 21st century, a lot of math classrooms still look like the same as they would in the Victorian Era. Chalkboards may have been replaced by smartboards, but very little has changed. Students still spend a lot of time watching their teacher work on math examples, and then try to follow their steps. The authors in this book make a very important point as they say that if students can look up a solution to a question on the internet, the question is not worth asking. Instead of banning technology, educators need to learn to embrace it (Keeler, Herrington, & Boaler, 2017). Skills that were in demand a couple of decades ago to get in the job market such as reading, writing, computational skills are no longer so much in demand now. Employers are now looking for individuals who can problem solve, and reason with their ideas. Digital tools allow us to shift how students interact with math. We can use these tools to help our students communicate their ideas, collaborate, and demonstrate critical and creative thinking. All these skills are important for our students to get jobs in the 21st century. So if we can use them effectively, digital tools can help us prepare our students for jobs in the 21st century. The goal of this book is to share ideas with the reader that the reader can use to teach mathematics by incorporating technology. One of the activities given in this book is located at alicekeeler.com/donotcountdots. As students interact with this document, they are asked to demonstrate and explain strategies for counting. After devising their grouping strategies for determining the number of dots, students invite peers to critique their reasoning by making comments on the slides. This activity engages the students in a very meaningful manner, it gives them opportunity to find different ways to solve the same problem, and it also allows them to collaborate with their peers, and listen to and offer feedback to them. Digging further into this book, this book comes up with different ideas on how we can use Google Suites to teach math to accomplish the following teaching tasks:
1. Post Directions: Teachers can post directions for assignments, or other activities on google classroom, or class website, or google doc.
2. Watch Students work: In a traditional setting, teachers can only give students feedback on their assignment after they are finished with their assignment and turned it in, however using G suite products such as Google doc, teachers can watch students do their students work live and give them immediate feedback while they are working.
3. Collaboration: G suite products such as google docs, and google slides offer opportunities to students to collaborate and work on their assignments along with their peers. It allows them to receive, and offer feedback to their peers.
4. Shift Students to Higher DOK Levels: Google search, and apps such as Wolfram offer tools to students to enhance their research on their math, and thus shift them to higher DOK levels.
5. Students Research: Tools such as Google sheets facilitate organizing of data of from student research.
6. Shift to facilitator: As students use technology to do their research, and lookup information, the role of the teacher shifts from information giver to facilitator (Keeler, Herrington, & Boaler, 2017).
7. Conversations for Deeper Learning: The tools on G suites not only offer the educator an opportunity to offer feedback to students but also open door for conversations to push student thinking, and creativity levels to a deeper level.
One of the important tips this book offers for any teacher new to implementing G Suite into their classroom is to start small. As a beginner with G Suite, one shouldn’t try to straight away shift to a digital classroom by posting all their instructional material online. Instead one should take small baby steps to begin with such as posting direction, and basic instructions online. In a math classroom, this can be in the form of posting the daily do now’s on google classroom, or posting simple classroom announcement such as information about an upcoming quiz online. Posting directions online instead of verbally giving it to students allows a teacher to use time in classroom differently, and also spend more one on one time working with the students. Another way to make a small start can be to make a basic teacher website using google sites, and informing the parents, and students about it through email. Efforts can then be made to post information about assignment on google sites. This way the students, and their parents will get in the habit of checking the class website on a regular basis. Here are some of the other G Suite products that can be used to enhance learning in the classroom:
Google Docs: Google Docs can be used for providing directions, or for providing basic instruction. This way even the students who were absent, or late to class can access directions to the assignment.
Google Slides: Google Slides are a great way to break information into chunks (Keeler, Herrington, & Boaler, 2017). Students can click through the slides as they complete each step of the activity.
Google Sheets: Google Sheets can facilitate easy recording of student responses, and also allows students to work simultaneously on the same sheet to provide their responses. Google Sheets can be a great tool in the classroom to facilitate discussions.
Inserting Private Comments in Google Classroom: For Students that feel shy to ask questions to their teacher in front of their peers, Google Classroom has the feature of private comments. Using private comments feature in Google Classroom, students can ask questions to their teacher without their peers being able to see.
There are a lot of activities that students can accomplish in classroom using the G Suite Products. Some of the activities that can be done in classroom using the G Suite products are as follows:
Creating Collaborative Google Slides: Students can create a presentation on a lesson just finished in classroom using google slides. They can simultaneously work on the same document in group on creating the slides. This can also allow them to divide their work evenly. They can give feedback to, and receive feedback from their peers using the comment feature in google classroom.
Examples of common errors: The teacher or even students can post some examples of common errors in solving math problems by posting these examples on google slides and sharing with their peers.
Formative Assessment Quiz: Teachers can use Google Forms to create a formative assessment. Google forms make it easy for the teachers by even grading the quiz for them.
Creating Geometric Constructions: Creating construction in geometry helps students better understand the properties of different geometric shapes such as triangle, square, circle etc. Different G Suite products such as Google Slides, and Google Drawing help students create Geometric Constructions.
To conclude the section, this book explains that using Google Apps to teach math it not just about going paperless. It provides opportunities to teachers to better interact with students, collaborate, connect learning to authentic contexts, and increase critical thinking.
Features of G suite products: Besides offering a lot of ways to enhance learning in the classroom, G suite products also has a lot of feature that make the G suite products very easy to use, and user friendly. Following are some features of G suite products that make them very user friendly.
● Easy Access: All G suite products can be easily accessed through the website by easy names such as Docs.google.com, Sheets.google.com, Slides.google.com, Forms.google.com, drawings.google.com etc.
● One Version: Shifting to G suite products offers the convenience of only needing one version of the documents to the users. One does not need to make copies or create backups. Using G Suite products, one can always be confident of having the correct version.
● No Save Button: Users do not need to worry about saving their work on a regular basis as the work gets saved automatically
● Easy sharing of files: G suite products make sharing of files easy with the share button. Users don’t need to worry about emailing each other using the attach feature.
● Revision: In the File menu of G suite products, users are able to view all of the revisions to the documents.
● Offline: When offline is enabled in settings of Google drive, Students can create blank, docs, sheets, and slides when offline.
● Make a copy: Make a copy feature allows users to create copies of their documents with the click of a button.
To conclude this section, I will say that this book covers in detail a lot of features of different G suite products, and how these features, and product qualities can be used to enhance learning in the classroom.
1. Post Directions: Teachers can post directions for assignments, or other activities on google classroom, or class website, or google doc.
2. Watch Students work: In a traditional setting, teachers can only give students feedback on their assignment after they are finished with their assignment and turned it in, however using G suite products such as Google doc, teachers can watch students do their students work live and give them immediate feedback while they are working.
3. Collaboration: G suite products such as google docs, and google slides offer opportunities to students to collaborate and work on their assignments along with their peers. It allows them to receive, and offer feedback to their peers.
4. Shift Students to Higher DOK Levels: Google search, and apps such as Wolfram offer tools to students to enhance their research on their math, and thus shift them to higher DOK levels.
5. Students Research: Tools such as Google sheets facilitate organizing of data of from student research.
6. Shift to facilitator: As students use technology to do their research, and lookup information, the role of the teacher shifts from information giver to facilitator (Keeler, Herrington, & Boaler, 2017).
7. Conversations for Deeper Learning: The tools on G suites not only offer the educator an opportunity to offer feedback to students but also open door for conversations to push student thinking, and creativity levels to a deeper level.
One of the important tips this book offers for any teacher new to implementing G Suite into their classroom is to start small. As a beginner with G Suite, one shouldn’t try to straight away shift to a digital classroom by posting all their instructional material online. Instead one should take small baby steps to begin with such as posting direction, and basic instructions online. In a math classroom, this can be in the form of posting the daily do now’s on google classroom, or posting simple classroom announcement such as information about an upcoming quiz online. Posting directions online instead of verbally giving it to students allows a teacher to use time in classroom differently, and also spend more one on one time working with the students. Another way to make a small start can be to make a basic teacher website using google sites, and informing the parents, and students about it through email. Efforts can then be made to post information about assignment on google sites. This way the students, and their parents will get in the habit of checking the class website on a regular basis. Here are some of the other G Suite products that can be used to enhance learning in the classroom:
Google Docs: Google Docs can be used for providing directions, or for providing basic instruction. This way even the students who were absent, or late to class can access directions to the assignment.
Google Slides: Google Slides are a great way to break information into chunks (Keeler, Herrington, & Boaler, 2017). Students can click through the slides as they complete each step of the activity.
Google Sheets: Google Sheets can facilitate easy recording of student responses, and also allows students to work simultaneously on the same sheet to provide their responses. Google Sheets can be a great tool in the classroom to facilitate discussions.
Inserting Private Comments in Google Classroom: For Students that feel shy to ask questions to their teacher in front of their peers, Google Classroom has the feature of private comments. Using private comments feature in Google Classroom, students can ask questions to their teacher without their peers being able to see.
There are a lot of activities that students can accomplish in classroom using the G Suite Products. Some of the activities that can be done in classroom using the G Suite products are as follows:
Creating Collaborative Google Slides: Students can create a presentation on a lesson just finished in classroom using google slides. They can simultaneously work on the same document in group on creating the slides. This can also allow them to divide their work evenly. They can give feedback to, and receive feedback from their peers using the comment feature in google classroom.
Examples of common errors: The teacher or even students can post some examples of common errors in solving math problems by posting these examples on google slides and sharing with their peers.
Formative Assessment Quiz: Teachers can use Google Forms to create a formative assessment. Google forms make it easy for the teachers by even grading the quiz for them.
Creating Geometric Constructions: Creating construction in geometry helps students better understand the properties of different geometric shapes such as triangle, square, circle etc. Different G Suite products such as Google Slides, and Google Drawing help students create Geometric Constructions.
To conclude the section, this book explains that using Google Apps to teach math it not just about going paperless. It provides opportunities to teachers to better interact with students, collaborate, connect learning to authentic contexts, and increase critical thinking.
Features of G suite products: Besides offering a lot of ways to enhance learning in the classroom, G suite products also has a lot of feature that make the G suite products very easy to use, and user friendly. Following are some features of G suite products that make them very user friendly.
● Easy Access: All G suite products can be easily accessed through the website by easy names such as Docs.google.com, Sheets.google.com, Slides.google.com, Forms.google.com, drawings.google.com etc.
● One Version: Shifting to G suite products offers the convenience of only needing one version of the documents to the users. One does not need to make copies or create backups. Using G Suite products, one can always be confident of having the correct version.
● No Save Button: Users do not need to worry about saving their work on a regular basis as the work gets saved automatically
● Easy sharing of files: G suite products make sharing of files easy with the share button. Users don’t need to worry about emailing each other using the attach feature.
● Revision: In the File menu of G suite products, users are able to view all of the revisions to the documents.
● Offline: When offline is enabled in settings of Google drive, Students can create blank, docs, sheets, and slides when offline.
● Make a copy: Make a copy feature allows users to create copies of their documents with the click of a button.
To conclude this section, I will say that this book covers in detail a lot of features of different G suite products, and how these features, and product qualities can be used to enhance learning in the classroom.
March 3, 2018
My impressions with Alice Keeler and Diana Herrington’s Teaching Math with Google Apps: 50 G Suite Activities are mostly positive. The book is easy to follow, conversational, and interactive. I purchased the Kindle version, and it came with a plethora of links and resources that I was able to save into my Google account. Most impressive were utilizing Google Sheets for formative assessment as a direct download from Google Forms, utilizing Google Slides for Geometric Constructions (simple, yet it had never occurred to me), and Pixel Art using math problems and Google Sheets. The resources are too many to count, and the templates are amazing. There are a few collaborative Google Slide projects that are already included as template hyperlinks. The knowledge and creativity of the two authors is impressive. Both authors are veteran teachers and have conducted technology forums for professional development. Alice Keeler has an active blog with links, resources, and articles. Diana Herrington has won prestigious awards such as the PAEMST and the CVCUE teacher of the year award.
On a more personal note, the book provides pedagogical advice that I appreciated. It begins with a Foreword by Jo Boaler on the features of 21st Century learning and the importance of moving students ‘’from passive receivers of knowledge to active inquirers” (Keeler & Herrington, 2017). This has been a recurring theme for me and I am glad that I was provided with the tools to begin this journey. The book focuses on central ideas it introduces in the beginning which are: 1. Post Directions, 2. Watch Students work, 3. Collaboration, 4. Shift Students to Higher DOK Levels, 5. Student Research, 6. Shift to Facilitator, and 7. Conversations for Deeper Understanding. Throughout the book, both Keeler and Herrington attempt to provide resources to navigate these seven categories. They provide screen shots of G Suite that address the specific need. Aforementioned, the Kindle version also comes with hyperlinks and templates. One of my favorite quotes is “We do students no favors by doing the thinking for them” (Keeler & Herrington, 2017), which is an important part of 21st Century learning.
The activities are meant to have students do their own discovery, research, and develop in critical thinking. I especially like their argument about always posting directions as teaching students the life skill of figuring things out. The authors share that directions can be posted through G Suite in several ways. Educators can post on Google Classroom, through Google Sites, or as a Google Document/Google Slide. This lessons educator frustration in having to repeat instructions, and utilizes less time on repeating directions, and more time to work with individual students and small groups. The authors discuss the importance of feedback while students are working as opposed to after. The logic to this is that one students feel like a project is complete, they are less responsive to feedback. Feedback throughout the process is more effective and can be done through the comment insertion text box on Google Docs and Google Slides. The book also discusses several G Suite activities that will promote collaboration and examples in how to utilize Google doc, slides, or sheets simultaneously through group effort. This is where they introduced the Problem Solving 3 Ways template, which I plan to use. It is a Google slide document that allows students to work together to fill in on a Google Slide three different approaches to the same problem.
Another recurring theme throughout the book is to have students conduct their own research. The authors suggest utilizing Google sheets to organize information, creating graphs, writing equations, and displaying results (Keeler & Herrington, 2017).
One project that I plan to implement in my own classroom is through the use of Flights.google.com as an expense tracker for any destination a student wants to go to have them calculate a travel expense budget.
Lastly, the utilization of Google Forms is what I have been trying to implement throughout this year for formative assessments. According to Keeler, “Using Google Forms, students can explain their thought process in a paragraph format. Google Forms enables students to focus more on the strategy rather than the steps to the solution since they must answer with a written response” (Keeler & Herrington, 2017). Up until reading the book, I did not know that Google Forms has a math add on, that was a reason I had not sought to utilize it. Apparently, it does! You can find it in Forms by clicking the three buttons, clicking Add-ons ad locating the g(Math) for Forms button. This allows you to create Math Expressions on it.
Overall, I found this book useful and informative to utilize in my own classroom. I found the content to be informative and the authors to be knowledgeable.
On a more personal note, the book provides pedagogical advice that I appreciated. It begins with a Foreword by Jo Boaler on the features of 21st Century learning and the importance of moving students ‘’from passive receivers of knowledge to active inquirers” (Keeler & Herrington, 2017). This has been a recurring theme for me and I am glad that I was provided with the tools to begin this journey. The book focuses on central ideas it introduces in the beginning which are: 1. Post Directions, 2. Watch Students work, 3. Collaboration, 4. Shift Students to Higher DOK Levels, 5. Student Research, 6. Shift to Facilitator, and 7. Conversations for Deeper Understanding. Throughout the book, both Keeler and Herrington attempt to provide resources to navigate these seven categories. They provide screen shots of G Suite that address the specific need. Aforementioned, the Kindle version also comes with hyperlinks and templates. One of my favorite quotes is “We do students no favors by doing the thinking for them” (Keeler & Herrington, 2017), which is an important part of 21st Century learning.
The activities are meant to have students do their own discovery, research, and develop in critical thinking. I especially like their argument about always posting directions as teaching students the life skill of figuring things out. The authors share that directions can be posted through G Suite in several ways. Educators can post on Google Classroom, through Google Sites, or as a Google Document/Google Slide. This lessons educator frustration in having to repeat instructions, and utilizes less time on repeating directions, and more time to work with individual students and small groups. The authors discuss the importance of feedback while students are working as opposed to after. The logic to this is that one students feel like a project is complete, they are less responsive to feedback. Feedback throughout the process is more effective and can be done through the comment insertion text box on Google Docs and Google Slides. The book also discusses several G Suite activities that will promote collaboration and examples in how to utilize Google doc, slides, or sheets simultaneously through group effort. This is where they introduced the Problem Solving 3 Ways template, which I plan to use. It is a Google slide document that allows students to work together to fill in on a Google Slide three different approaches to the same problem.
Another recurring theme throughout the book is to have students conduct their own research. The authors suggest utilizing Google sheets to organize information, creating graphs, writing equations, and displaying results (Keeler & Herrington, 2017).
One project that I plan to implement in my own classroom is through the use of Flights.google.com as an expense tracker for any destination a student wants to go to have them calculate a travel expense budget.
Lastly, the utilization of Google Forms is what I have been trying to implement throughout this year for formative assessments. According to Keeler, “Using Google Forms, students can explain their thought process in a paragraph format. Google Forms enables students to focus more on the strategy rather than the steps to the solution since they must answer with a written response” (Keeler & Herrington, 2017). Up until reading the book, I did not know that Google Forms has a math add on, that was a reason I had not sought to utilize it. Apparently, it does! You can find it in Forms by clicking the three buttons, clicking Add-ons ad locating the g(Math) for Forms button. This allows you to create Math Expressions on it.
Overall, I found this book useful and informative to utilize in my own classroom. I found the content to be informative and the authors to be knowledgeable.
December 12, 2020
The authors of this book focus on sharing ideas that can be immediately applied by any teacher as a way to incorporate technology for teaching mathematics. In each chapter, Keeler and Herrington present a different strategy, tool, or approach with examples of how to incorporate it into the reader’s mathematics classroom. These ideas and strategies range from learning how to create a document with instructions to using pixel art to model mathematics. Although the ideas presented in this book involve the use of technology, the authors make it clear from the start that the “book is not just about the technology — it is about what technology makes possible in your classroom” (Keeler & Herrington, (2017). They also make it a point to remind the reader that with learning new strategies for teaching comes having an open mind and a willingness to get out of our comfort zone. Keeler and Herrington encourage the reader to take what they see in the book and consider how it can be adapted to the specific needs of their own students. This book offers a total of fifty different activities to teach math using G Suite. While I found value in each one of them, the one that has made the greatest difference in my class was #50: See Math Everywhere. The goal behind this is to help our students see math in their every day lives as math teachers often do.
Overall, if you are a math teacher looking to enhance your teaching with rich tasks and technology, I highly recommend this book! I think this book is especially helpful in our current times where many of us are teaching online! This book can have a tremendous effect in helping you better engage your students in mathematical thinking through the effective use of technology.
Overall, if you are a math teacher looking to enhance your teaching with rich tasks and technology, I highly recommend this book! I think this book is especially helpful in our current times where many of us are teaching online! This book can have a tremendous effect in helping you better engage your students in mathematical thinking through the effective use of technology.
June 29, 2020
I chose this book because I teach high school mathematics and I want to incorporate more technology into my class. I think technology is the key to engaging and motivating students to want to learn more. Another reason I chose this book was because I have had trouble using Google Apps with mathematics. As I read through the book I appreciated the extensive list of ideas as well as examples on how I could incorporate math with Google Classroom and Google Apps. Ultimately, I felt the author did a great job with the layout, the multitude of examples as well as links to view and copy them, and the resources at the end of the book that gave additional ways to incorporate technology into a classroom (as well as good teaching practices!!). I feel that the book has so many helpful resources that I will keep it as a guide next to my desk so that I can work toward learning as many of the techniques as possible (that I highlighted during my reading). I would definitely recommend highlighting and making notes as you read the book because it has so much valuable information. I also appreciate that the author mentioned that math does not transfer over well to Google Classroom as well as the plethora of ways to help make that transition smoother. I look forward to putting her ideas into practice as well as reading some of her other Google Classroom books to enhance my teaching.
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June 22, 2020I was really impressed with the authors' ability to make suggestions for all students of all grade levels. There are some activities that focus on developing number sense, while others provide complex graphing activities. I am so glad that I purchased the Kindle version of this book because the authors have included hyperlinks to copies of all of the resources and activities that they share, including a "share folder" where you can easily access all the activities in one place. But don't be fooled... this book provides more than just 50 suggestions for math activities. The last 50 pages of this book are a gold mine! The authors' talk about successful tips for how to create meaningful math activities that incorporate technology, share a bank of other online resources including virtual math manipulatives, and recommend an additional 24 books all related to technology, instruction, and innovation that will keep me busy and my "want to read" list continuing to grow. I definitely recommend this to any math teacher.
June 29, 2018
Let me start off by saying that I am a HUGE GoogleEDU fan and have been for three years. I have read a lot of PD books and am always looking for resources. This book had so much new information for me!
I love it when I find a book that has as ready to use resources provided throughout the book! Each of the 50 activities that are provided in this book have templates, real examples, and other resources to use in the classroom. My brain is spinning with all of the activities that I now can use with my kids. Out of the 50 activities, sure one of the tools (gMath) isn't available any longer. Do you know why? Because gMath is now named Equatio and was purchased by Text Help. All of these resources are still relevant and still as amazing as the day the book was published. This book is for any math teacher who is wanting to fully embrace the power that Google has for math classes. I highly recommend it!
I love it when I find a book that has as ready to use resources provided throughout the book! Each of the 50 activities that are provided in this book have templates, real examples, and other resources to use in the classroom. My brain is spinning with all of the activities that I now can use with my kids. Out of the 50 activities, sure one of the tools (gMath) isn't available any longer. Do you know why? Because gMath is now named Equatio and was purchased by Text Help. All of these resources are still relevant and still as amazing as the day the book was published. This book is for any math teacher who is wanting to fully embrace the power that Google has for math classes. I highly recommend it!
June 12, 2018
If you are new to Google Suite and teaching math, then this is the book for you. If you are already familiar with google docs, forms, slides, and classroom, then this will help you incorporate some new apps that can be used to faciliate math teaching. Some good suggestions that I will begin to use right away. The author also has many templates for math available on her personal website that can be downloaded to your drive and are discussed in more detail in the book.
July 9, 2019
Whether you're familiar with the Gsuite or not, this is a FANTASTIC resource! There are tons of templates, activities, and helpful tips for implementation. Quick and easy read!
December 7, 2019
Excellent resource. Great idea and easy to understand.
June 25, 2020
Outstanding! Must buy this!
May 28, 2021
This was fine. Just not innovating like I wanted it to be.
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March 3, 2018The book Teaching Math with Google Apps- 50 G Suite Activities, written by Alice Keeler and Diana Herrington, is a great book to read for someone that is using Google Chrome in their classroom and wants to add technology to the math lessons. It is setup like an instructional guide. The book guides teachers through the process of using different Goggle features and changing the way math is taught.
In the first section of the book, the authors say “shifting from using primarily pencil and paper to digital tools in the classroom requires a shift in mindset” (Herrington & Keeler, 2017, loc. 246). The idea behind adding technology to a math lesson is getting the students more engaged. When the students are more engaged, the learning results will be more substantial.
Teaching Math with Google Apps starts by examining the different tools in the G Suite. Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides and Google classroom are all discussed. Step by step instructions are given for each of these topics, and there are screenshots and links in almost all of the sections. I found this to be very helpful when I was reading the book on the Kindle Cloud. Most of the links contained a copy of the template for the activity that they were teaching about. I just clicked on the link, and I was able to save a copy of the template in my Google Drive. I am extremely grateful for this feature. One of the ideas that they shared was using quarter sheets of paper to answer math problems. The student could then take a picture of the paper and insert onto a Google Slide. The students could then collaborate and give feedback to their peers. Another idea that was discussed was to “Teach Like YouTube and Google exist” (Herrington & Keeler, 2017, location 477). The authors suggested that the teacher have the students look up the information rather than giving the information to the student. This will encourage students to utilize skills that they already know how to do. Although there are many ideas that I enjoyed in this section, the one that stuck with me was the idea of giving the students a list of questions and have them choose 3 of the questions to demonstrate understanding. Alice Keeler even put a link to a template for this. These are just 3 of the ways that you could add Google to your math lessons.
The next section of the book the authors wrote Google tutorials. The explained how to use Google Drive and many of the aspects of Google suite. The screenshots and links are a great help for someone that has never used their Google Drive. One thing that I learned in this section is “In the File menu of Google text documents, Slides, Sheets, and Drawings, you can view all of the revisions of a document.” (Herrington & Keeler, 2017, Location 1769). I had no idea that this was possible. I thought that when you change something, it was lost forever. I am sure to use this feature at some point.
The last section of the book was regarding Add-ons. “Add-ons are third party (not made by Google) scripts that give additional functionality to a Google Doc” (Herrington & Keeler, 2017, Location 1881). I am amazed at all of the Add-ons that are listed for math. It also amazes me how many of the Add-ons have Alice Keeler’s name on them. The list is broken down into each section of Google Docs. I am sure that this list is not conclusive, but it is a great place to start if you can. I have already tried to add the Tynker extension to my school Google account but unfortunately or Firewall blocks it. I was able to use Google Classroom to post the URL so my students could access the site. So far they like the different coding choices that it offers.
The book contains many resources that a teacher would find useful in their class. I suggest purchasing this book and reading it on the Kindle Cloud. You will find it easier to view the links that the author has so graciously shared with all of us.
In the first section of the book, the authors say “shifting from using primarily pencil and paper to digital tools in the classroom requires a shift in mindset” (Herrington & Keeler, 2017, loc. 246). The idea behind adding technology to a math lesson is getting the students more engaged. When the students are more engaged, the learning results will be more substantial.
Teaching Math with Google Apps starts by examining the different tools in the G Suite. Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Slides and Google classroom are all discussed. Step by step instructions are given for each of these topics, and there are screenshots and links in almost all of the sections. I found this to be very helpful when I was reading the book on the Kindle Cloud. Most of the links contained a copy of the template for the activity that they were teaching about. I just clicked on the link, and I was able to save a copy of the template in my Google Drive. I am extremely grateful for this feature. One of the ideas that they shared was using quarter sheets of paper to answer math problems. The student could then take a picture of the paper and insert onto a Google Slide. The students could then collaborate and give feedback to their peers. Another idea that was discussed was to “Teach Like YouTube and Google exist” (Herrington & Keeler, 2017, location 477). The authors suggested that the teacher have the students look up the information rather than giving the information to the student. This will encourage students to utilize skills that they already know how to do. Although there are many ideas that I enjoyed in this section, the one that stuck with me was the idea of giving the students a list of questions and have them choose 3 of the questions to demonstrate understanding. Alice Keeler even put a link to a template for this. These are just 3 of the ways that you could add Google to your math lessons.
The next section of the book the authors wrote Google tutorials. The explained how to use Google Drive and many of the aspects of Google suite. The screenshots and links are a great help for someone that has never used their Google Drive. One thing that I learned in this section is “In the File menu of Google text documents, Slides, Sheets, and Drawings, you can view all of the revisions of a document.” (Herrington & Keeler, 2017, Location 1769). I had no idea that this was possible. I thought that when you change something, it was lost forever. I am sure to use this feature at some point.
The last section of the book was regarding Add-ons. “Add-ons are third party (not made by Google) scripts that give additional functionality to a Google Doc” (Herrington & Keeler, 2017, Location 1881). I am amazed at all of the Add-ons that are listed for math. It also amazes me how many of the Add-ons have Alice Keeler’s name on them. The list is broken down into each section of Google Docs. I am sure that this list is not conclusive, but it is a great place to start if you can. I have already tried to add the Tynker extension to my school Google account but unfortunately or Firewall blocks it. I was able to use Google Classroom to post the URL so my students could access the site. So far they like the different coding choices that it offers.
The book contains many resources that a teacher would find useful in their class. I suggest purchasing this book and reading it on the Kindle Cloud. You will find it easier to view the links that the author has so graciously shared with all of us.
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