The Google Infused Classroom: A Guidebook to Making Thinking Visible and Amplifying Student Voice

by Holly Clark, Tanya Avrith, Alice Keeler (Foreword)

Today's students are the first true digital natives--learners who have never known a world without smartphones, tablets or social media. Technology is part of their everyday lives, and it will be essential to their careers--which means it must also be integral to their education.

In The Google Infused Classroom, EdTech experts Holly Clark and Tanya Avrith provide a guidebook to help you use technology to engage your learners and amplify the learning experience in your classroom--and beyond.

The book walks you through the process of designing instruction that allows students to show their thinking, demonstrate their learning, and share their work (and voices!) with authentic audiences. Packed with examples and instructions for incorporating the twenty of the best Google-friendly tools, including a special section on digital portfolios, The Google Infused Classroom will equip you to empower your students to use technology in meaningful ways that prepare them for the future.

It's time to stop talking about technology and start using it to improve your teaching and the learning opportunities in your classroom. Get started today with The Google Infused Classroom.

Genres: Teaching, Education, Professional Development, Nonfiction, Google

150 pages, Kindle Edition

First published June 20, 2017

Reviews

[Elizabeth · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Google Infused Classroom is not just about using Google Apps, like the book many of us read last fall as part of our MAED EdTech program, Creating a Google Apps Classroom. Clark and Avrith (2017) feature 20 tech tools that are both inside and outside the Google for Education Workspace; those outside tools can be integrated seamlessly into the Google ecosystem. Moreover, the use of their selected tools is supported by learning theories and research-based pedagogical practices. In other words, the intent of the book is to guide educators in transforming their teaching with technology by addressing both the best instructional practices to follow and the tools to use to achieve our goals with our students. Throughout the book, the authors maintain a focus on meeting the needs of every student and empowering them in the learning process, as highlighted in the book’s subtitle, A Guidebook to Making Thinking Visible and Amplifying Student Voice.

For my full review, including my likes, recommendations, and final thoughts, please see the following document:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z...

[Ivonne Rovira · Rating 5 out of 5]

A pretty good introduction to some of the bells and whistles you can use in Google Classroom. Even non-tech wizards will enjoy this slender tome.

[Andrea Balthaser · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very informative and helpful when setting up to teach distance learning.

[Sunny Welker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fast. Informative. Easy to implement ideas with real life application. Super helpful in a distance-learning, Google Classroom world.

[Christine Rice · Rating 5 out of 5]

The book The Google Infused Classroom, written by Holly Clark and Tanya Avrith is a guidebook on how to organize and connect teaching pedagogy with digital resources. The Google Infused Classroom focuses on how to incorporate Google Education Apps into your lessons. One of the primary purposes of reading this book is to learn how to best use technology to enhance and improve the learning of your students. The book starts out by talking about pedagogy and gives you an idea of learning theories that are the foundation for the purposes in the book. The authors want teachers to learn how to use Google to make the classroom “…a place where we help our students visualize their thinking, give each and every one a voice, and allow them to share and publish their work” (Avrith, Clark, pp. 3) One of the core learning theories is about making thinking/learning visible. Making thinking/learning visible is about being able to hear from all students and finding out what they know and don’t know. With the use of apps”…getting inside our students’ heads—and finding out what they know and don’t know—is easier than ever.” (Avrith, Clark, pp. 14) Using tools like Socrative, Padlet, or Talk and Comment are all ways to allow students to show where they are in the learning process. A teacher can get immediate feedback where they can gather information on student learning and growth.
The book then goes on to explain how after gathering information and deciding where your students are at in the learning process, you can use that information to “Curate or create resources that would help that individual learner’s needs.” (Avrith, Clark, pp. 42) The authors provide several examples of how certain digital tools will help differentiate your lessons. The last core idea of the book is about how to get students to demonstrate their learning through the use of technology. “Technology makes it possible to take something that was one-dimensional, like a poster, and layer it with student voice, explanations, and even virtual reality to make their learning come to life.” (Avrith, Clark, pp. 47) The authors provide resources and explanations on how tools will allow your students to share their learning in meaningful and authentic ways.
The Google Infused Classroom was written with the intent to explain how digital tools should and can work with learning theories and how they are capable of working together to help empower classrooms. This book is full of examples on how to use tools effectively in your lessons. I was pleasantly surprised when I finished this book. Most of the time when I read books like this, a bunch of ideas are thrown at you, but not much support is given on how to incorporate them into your lessons. The Google Infused Classroom does the opposite of that. The authors of this book provide very sound ideas. It is easy to read, and it gives actual tools that can be used right away in your classroom.

[Valerie Blomquist · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall this book did an excellent job addressing using technology in the classroom. I appreciate the fact that they emphasized pedagogy first. As technology is improving and ever expanding it is easy just to use them randomly throw a new tool into a rotation of cool tricks for students but using technology purposefully can be much more difficult. Avirth and Clark break down the process of purposeful adoption of different types of tools by addressing what the classroom should look like, how teachers should approach lesson planning, and how assessments should look then they say how technology can be used.
One area that I though the others could improve on was the initial tool on how to use the book. At the start they say reader can choose to start at pedagogy or tools, I think that is a mistake. With their purpose of showing how technology can integrate with pedagogy is vital to the purpose of the book, I found it much more useful to read it with the intention of impacting student learning rather than just looking at flashy new tools.

[Nathan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Kind of great, kind of a mess. This book does a great job of breaking down a variety of web resources that educators in the post-pandemic world should be aware of. It offers a number of use suggestions for these tools and sparks ideas for other uses pretty consistently. However, it’s a bit of a mess. One website is given four different entries because the authors suggest four distinct uses for it. Much of the write up for these entries, though, is very similar. Wouldn’t it make a lot more sense to include one entry for each site and then discuss a variety of uses for it? That wouldn’t work well with the organizational structure the authors decided on, but it’s still a weird choice. Maybe an abbreviated summary of tools that had already been discussed?

In short, this would be better as a reference book than a straight read through. I’d still recommend it for that purpose, but if you want something that’s proposing a new paradigm for teaching and will go into depth explaining that paradigm, this isn’t it.

[Chris · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quick read, and semi-helpful with some good charts and graphics discussing how and why we integrate technology and more specifically, Google, into our classrooms. Liked the graphic on do this, use this instead.

[Emma Bechill · Rating 1 out of 5]

I found the organization of this book difficult. I wasn’t able to pull out many immediate, practical things that I felt eager implement right away. I would recommend Control, Alt, Achieve instead for all the teachers doing remote learning.

[Heather Stringham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Helpful

I want to add more technology to my. Lads, and this book gives great ideas on how to do so.

[Kate O'Quinn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great resource for teachers that are new to using technology in the classroom. Even if you are a veteran, there might still be a couple of useful tools for you as well.

[Todd Gragg · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for any educator wanting to infuse and not just integrate their classroom with Google tools!

[Michelle · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really helpful and quite creative. Perfect blend of pedagogy and tech.

[Nicole Cruz · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great if you don’t know much already

There were only a few bits that I didn’t know already. A good investment if you don’t use Google in your classroom.

[Martin Botha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely brilliant!

Thank you for a very inspiring book! I plan to take my teaching and classes I teach to the next level.

[Brandy Montgomery · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book with great ideas. A little dated, but still had some great solutions both for virtual teaching in 2020 or face to face learning when things go back to a semblance of normalcy.

[Valerie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing! Will definitely use as a teacher.

[Virginia Regan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great ideas for the virtual classroom.

[Samantha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good information on teaching Google in a classroom environment. Will be referring back to it as I teach in my classroom.

[Marck Cortez · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite informative. Nowadays it is important to know how to use technology in teaching so I think teachers who teach online will find this important.

[Peggymsu · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent resource for adding technology into the classroom in ways that enhance what you are already doing.

[Briana · Rating 3 out of 5]

Simple, easy to follow book about different apps within Google. Definitely a quick version a teacher would have time to read. Would have liked a little more info about how public some apps are or what ideas for media safety should be taught to students when using the tools in the book.