Do you remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books from the 80s and 90s? I used to love reading them at school, and recently I have been wondering if students could write their own using a Google Drive Form. This is a proof-of-concept for this idea…sorry if my creative writing is not amazingly griping.
Note: you might find this works better as a stand-alone form, rather than viewing it within this site.
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&t=p&msa=0&msid=106484775090296685271.0004681a37b713f6b5950&ll=32.398516;-107.885742&spn=18.503807;35.332031&z=5&source=embed
This is really interesting; but the source of the data needs to be questioned very carefully! There are some good classes to be built around this idea of not simply believing everything that is on the web.
http://www.quikmaps.com/
This great site let’s you draw over Google Maps. Very useful!
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/02/15/mining-the-thought-stream/
As online content is updated more and more often, traditional search engines are becoming less and less effective at knowing what is going on right now. This article looks into the concept of “real time search”, and what makes it so powerful and interesting (in short it allows us to see change and trends as they occur, so we can learn from and act upon them).
http://scholar.google.com.au/
Search the Web for journal articles and books. This site is extremely useful for serious research of the kind that students might be asked to undertake in their final years of high school and throughout university. If you are on a university campus, the site (very kindly) provides links to full articles which students of the university have access to.
http://picasa.google.com/
This free desktop photo management software from Google provides a fantastic way to manage a large photo collection. It incorporates basic editing tools, and makes it easy to open a file in a more advanced application (such as the GIMP). It’s integration with Google’s online web album system makes sharing images and video with friends and the general public a breeze. One nice feature is that it allows you to share files under Creative Commons licenses, which are subsequently shown in Google Images searches.
http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse
Warehouse of 3D objects for Google Sketchup. Objects include buildings, vehicles, furniture and much more, allowing students to create their own works of 3D art and design. This can be used in traditional design and technology subjects, or, with a little imagination, in subjects such as English. For example, ask students to create a scene, in which they then set a story of their own writing.
http://images.google.com/hosted/life
A huge collection of images from the Life Magazine archives; made available through Google Images. Perfect for stimulating students.
http://translate.google.com/
Copy and paste text to get an instant translation, or have a website translated for you to browse. One of the nicest features of Google Translate is that it is not perfect: get students to translate text from their first language into a second language they are learning, and then get them to look for errors of problems in the translation.
http://sites.google.com/
A tool allowing anyone to build a website in an easy; flexible manner. Integrates well with content from Google/YouTube; but not other sites.
