Googles+Other+Tools

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Other Google Tools
As mentioned previously, there is no way to cover all Google Tools and Labs, but I would like to point out a couple more in case you would like to test them out. Don't worry these are pretty self explanatory! After you complete this section, please follow the "Next" link for the survey.

Books
Google Books is basically a huge source to preview books/magazines or even access full books/magazines. When you search for a topic, you will get the results similar to a typical Google Search. On the left nav bar you can limit your findings such as Full View and time period! Do a sample search and see what you find!

For my sample search, I searched "photography" and received 5 million hits! Then I narrowed it down to full text within the years 2000-2010. I still had 35,000 results, so I narrowed it further by selecting books only. This brought me down to around 6,000 results! By adding a few additional keywords I could easily narrow it down to 300, but I liked some of the first page results and stopped here.

Can you imagine the possibilities? I'm not saying get rid of books altogether. I LOVE my class library with an array of books on class topics! While planning units, I incorporate free books and numerous other resources. Yes, I even used these types of resources while teaching math, though I was provided with a class set of books which we used. Each unit had it's own set of resources from videos to websites to ebooks. Would you believe there are over 10,000 free full view algebra books on Google Books? I could take up a small manuscript with ways to incorporate this into your classroom, so I better stop here;)

Desktop
Google Desktop is like a search engine for your computer. You download it onto your computer and it sits on your desktop. It can be used to find and launch any application, or you can use it when you can't find where you put that important file.

Picasa
Picasa is an application you can download on your computer, but also have access online. It stores all of your photos and will even search your entire computer for photos you might have missed. These photos can be organized into albums, purchased as photobooks, or shared via the web. You can pick and choose which albums to make public and which to keep private or limit views to only family. Everything is free other than if you want to purchase an actual photobook to be delivered to your home. As will most sharing tools, these albums can also be embedded into your website, blog, etc.

Scholar
Scholar is a great option to search for professional articles. One of the best features is the advanced search in which you can really narrow down your results. Most of these articles are free and you can even sign up for an email alert when new items are added on your search topic.

I searched what would be a relatively new topic, "iPads in the Classroom" and still found over 400 results. When searching "IPads in Education," there were over 10,000 results. This is a very powerful tool that most of us would have loved when writing research papers.

Sites
Google Sites is an easy option for creating your own website. This could be an entire workshop in itself, but I wanted to mention it in case someone was interested! It is very easy and here is a link to numerous video tutorials.

Translate
Translate is more than a typical translation site. Google's Translate tool allows you to translate full websites! You can even upload your own document and have it translated into another language. This is extremely helpful for ESL and exchange students. Of course there are numerous uses within the classroom itself too.

Video
How may times have you found the perfect class video on YouTube, but couldn't use it because of SmartFilter? Google Video search will pull up videos from all over the web. With the advanced search option you can even tell it not to search youtube.com. If you still want to show one from YouTube, just use this converter or one of numerous others to download it to your computer.

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