Google Mobile Apps - access your Google apps on mobile web browsers

  

Google has a huge number of apps and resources available (for free). Many of the apps sync or work natively on smartphones (like Calendar), but many do not work on all smartphones or mobile browsers.

Google does have a good number of their apps that are made for mobile access so that you can access them on your phone.

To access these apps, just use your phone's browser and visit m.google.com to see what apps are available for your phone make and model. If you go to this site, you can even send the link to your phone. I even made the mobile apps site link a permanent "app" on my HP/Palm Pre+ for easy access.

These mobile apps don't all have the full functionality of the full app (for instance, you can't create or edit Docs on many of the mobile devices). But, you can still access your files and data using these mobile apps.

Google's Mobile Apps extends the usability of Google's many applications so that you can use them anywhere.

(I've written a lot about Google's apps. I do not get paid or compensated by Google for this. I have found their apps to be well designed and easy to use.)

Google Calendar - get organized for free - great for education too

Google Calendar is a great, free resource from Google. Everyone needs a calendar to stay organized and on schedule. Google calendar is free, easy to use, and accessible from any web browser and is also available on mobile browsers on smartphones. Many smartphones, like Android, iPhone and HP/Palm webOS, automatically sync the device calendar with Google Calendar and there is syncing available for other phones too.  It can also sync events with Microsoft Outlook, Apple iCal and Mozilla Sunbird.


You can easily create new events, set up reminders (pop up, SMS, or email), set up repeating events and more. One of the features of Google Calendar that makes it very useful is the ability to share calendars with other people. You can share the calendar with read only access, or grant someone else the ability to edit your calendar too. You can share your classroom or school calendar with others for easy viewing and a team (or family) can share their calendars with each other or even use one calendar.


You can set up your calendar to see other shared calendars on it. For instance, my wife and I share our calendars so we know when the other has an appointment or schedule change. You can even display set calendars, such as US Holidays or team schedules on your calendar. Each will have a different color so you can tell things apart.


It also allows you to send invites for events to others and they can RSVP via email or via Google Calendar.


You can also display your Google Task list on your calendar page and if you set a due date for a task item, that task will show up on your calendar for that day.


Google Calendar is a great resource for anyone looking to stay organized and on schedule and is also great for schools, teachers, and teams to use.







Related Articles:

Taking organizing and planning lessons from Ben Franklin - great tips for educators too

iGoogle as a educational/organizational tool - revisited

Getting Students and Teachers Organized - tips and resources

Evernote - get organized - free and on all platforms

Google for Educators

Google Calendar Icon now displays actual date

Google Calendar's favicon (the icon in your tab on your browser) used to just display "31". Starting today, Google is rolling out a new feature: the favicon will now display the actual current date. Not a huge change, but one that makes it a little more useful. Just look at the browser tab and you can check the date.

It will be rolling out over the next few days, so don't worry if you don't have it yet.

This is the second update to Google products this week, with Google Docs now having Pagination and native printing from the browser. 

Great, free professional development resource

The Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook is a great resource for teachers and administrators. It is published twice annually, for free, and contains a huge amount of resources.

Each issue includes articles, news, tips, ideas, research, resources, a calendar of professional development activities and more, all about professional development and continuing education. The back of the sourcebook is a type of yellow pages (even though they are white) with a directory of products, services, resources, and more related to professional development and continuing education. The directory is organized by type, topic, and subject area.

The Spring 2001 just arrived yesterday and is focused on real-world learning, authenticity in education, ELL issues, reading and writing, learning walks, and much more.

Past issues have dealt with ways to do professional development with no budget, social networking and social media in education, Web 2.0 resources for PD, as well as making professional development more interesting and timely for educators.

Back issues are also available online.

It is from the publisher of Education Week, which also publishes Teacher Magazine and Digital Directions. All three are also great resources for educators.

You can apply for a free subscription to the Teacher Professional Development Sourcebook.

I also wrote another article about Professional Development and resources.

The site has back issues online, as well as a ton of articles and resources, ranging from assessment and discipline, to PBL and PLN's, to administration and ELL/EFL. This is definitely a site to add to your favorites.

Prezi - the zooming presentation editor

I've been using Prezi for a while now, using it for classroom presentations and presentations at conferences. 

I found Prezi very easy to use and fun. You can easily create a presentation from scratch, adding text, images, video, links and more. It is very easy to modify them all also with just a click. You can also import slides from a PowerPoint file. The presentations are very dynamic and you can really make them more visually engaging and interesting than PowerPoint or Keynote. It also moves people away from those dreaded bullet points. 

The site also has great help resources, including videos, a help site, and more. There is a community of users on Twitter, Facebook, and the Prezi forum also. 

You can get free accounts for educators or the public. There are limits, but they haven't affected my use at all.

You can create your Prezi's and present them online, or download them for offline use. You can also use Prezi desktop software (with a paid account) to create Prezi's offline.

There is even Prezi Meeting, where you can edit and show Prezi's with up to 9 other users. Work collaboratively on a Prezi or use it as an online meeting platform. 

It's easy to get started and there are a ton of Prezi's that you can look at as inspiration. 

You can make your Prezi's private, public (viewable by everyone) and public with the ability to copy. 

Prezi is fun, easy to use, and create's some great presentations. Try it out. 

Example of one of my early Prezi's (overview shot): (done with minimal experience with Prezi)

Here's the link to the actual Prezi: Google for Educators 

Pagination Comes to Google Docs! (and native printing)

Google Docs is a great resource that many people use. One feature that has been lacking is pagination - the ability to see the pages visually on your screen. Up until now, you would have to do a print preview to see how your document will layout on pages. Now, Docs has pagination and the printing in Docs has been improved also. 


It is rolling out today and should be available to everyone by the end of the day. I do not have it as of this writing, but I'm looking forward to it.


With pagination, you will have visual page breaks while editing documents, so you can see how many pages and how the text formats onto each page. Headers will appear at the top of each page and footnotes will appear at the bottom of the proper page. 





To set up pagination, you go to View > Document View > Paginated. You can also select "Compact" if you want to go back to the old view. 

Along with pagination, Google Docs can now natively print from Chrome (will work with other browsers if those browsers implement the "same web standard" that Chrome is using.)


In the past to print, Google Docs would convert the document into a PDF and then that would open and print. Now, you will be able to print directly from the browser and the printed document will be formatted just like you see on the screen. 


These improvements are great features that continue to improve Google Docs and make Docs even more useful. 


They also show that Google is continually improving their products, which is great news for those of use that use their products. 


UPDATE: As of 3:30pm, I have these new features in my account, so the roll out is going nicely.




(images from Official Google Blog since I don't have this function yet.)

Google a Day - puzzles to be solved using Google Search

A Google A Day is a neat new site from Google. The site posts a puzzle and then you use Google to search for the solution. 

The daily puzzle can be solved using clever search skills on Google. Google will post the questions daily on agoogleaday.com and also will be printed in above the New York Times crossword puzzle. 


The site uses Deja Google, a new platform from Google, that leaves out recent web pages. This makes the game a little more interesting and challenging. Deja Google is defined by Google as a wormhole inspired time machine that searches the Internet as it existed before the game began. Because nobody wants someone's recent blog post about finding an answer spoiling their fun."


This could be a fun activity for teachers to use in their classrooms. Students can learn about something new while improving their search skills. It takes creativity and critical thinking, so it's a great way to get students to explore and expand those skills. 

Today in History - manned spaceflight and the Civil War - free resources

Today is the 50th Anniversary of 1st Human Spaceflight and the 150th Anniversary of the start of the US Civil War.

Google's Doodle is about the 50th Anniversary of the 1st Human Spaceflight.

Here are some resources about this historic event, along with other resources about manned spaceflight:

NASA's Page on Yuri Gagarin - news article from the event, archived video, and summary of his flight.

Russian Archives Online - biography of Yuri Gagarin and history of his historic mission. 

First Orbit - site tracks Gagarin's mission and includes transcripts of his communications with mission control. Includes a "video" of the mission as seen from the International Space Station, along with actual mission audio and news transcripts. 

Today, 150 years ago, the Civil War began at Fort Sumter. Here are some resources about the US Civil War:

Civil War Traveler - this site has information about all of the historic sites from the Civil War that you can visit, with historic information and travel help. Great for learning about the Civil War and for planning a trip to historic places. 

Internet Modern History Sourcebook from Fordham University - links, articles and historical documents

History Channel - interactive timeline, videos, links and more. 

Social Studies for Kids - links, articles, and more - written kid-friendly

Using "Today in History" is a great way to talk about different topics and events with your students in any classroom. 

Free utilities for Windows - very useful and powerful

Windows comes with some utilities that allow you to perform different maintenance on the system, but the included versions are not always the best.



Piriform has a variety of free utilities for Windows that I use and that I recommend to others.



CCleaner - cleans out your temporary files, internet history, cookies, form history, recycle bin, and more. It can also analyze and repair issues with the registry, one of the main reasons why Windows can slow down and have issues.  It is a small file and works fast and effectively.



DeFraggler - defrag your entire hard drive or even just individual files. As Windows files are opened, copied, and moved, the file data can be stored in different parts and on different parts of the disk. This can slow down the reading and accessing of these files.


 
Recuva - Recuva can recover deleted and lost files from your hard drive to save you when you accidentally delete a file, or even some files lost during a computer crash.


Speccy - Speccy allows you to see all of the system information for your computer. This can be helpful when dealing with problems and issues.




AVG Free Antivirus - free anti-virus and anti-spyware protection.




All of these are excellent utilities, do their job well, and help you with keeping your system in tip top shape.

Zooburst - create your own 3D pop up book online

Zooburst is a site a learned about at TechForum NY last October. It lets you create a 3D pop-up book to tell a story.

It is easy to use, free (with limitations - there are paid versions also), and fun.

Students can use this to tell a story, and be creative and imaginative. The 3D pop-up really brings a story to life and makes it much more fun. You can rotate around the book in 3D space, add your voice to the characters to have them speak, and even use a webcam to add yourself into the story in augmented reality. Very cool!

There is a gallery of stories, so you can search and get some ideas. You can upload your own graphics and images or use some of the 10,000 free images and materials they have on the site. You can share the book by sharing the URL or you can even embed it in a site.

This is a great way to get students creating stories while having fun and being engaged. It can really bring out their creativity. Students can even use it to show their mastery of a topic by creating a tutorial book on that topic.

Here's an example of one on the Pythagorean Theorem.