Blogs and Google Apps

     I would allow students in my classroom to use blogs by keeping a diary of an imaginary person from the time period we were discussing.  In there first post, I would have my students define their basic character, almost like an avatar, with age, name, race, and origin.  After deciding whom they would want to be, my students would blog once or twice a week to show how their characters lived through the different events that we discussed during the week.  Another way I might incorporate blogs into my classroom are as a diary or a getting to know your class activity.  I would give my students a question weekly to blog about.  Some advantages of using blogs are that it is a new way to keep students attention and that it can be accessed at anytime.  Some negatives about blogs would be being able to gain permission to use them in a classroom and getting the students to use them appropriately for the classroom.  Allowing students on a computer for class work could lead them to doing other things like surfing the net instead of the task at hand.

     The first time that I had been introduced to any Google App was last semester.  I like the idea of being able to work on a group assignment in a much easier fashion because I do not like doing group projects because of the difficulties communicating.  I feel that Google Apps are a great invention for any group project and they are free.  Some problems and limitations of Google Apps comes when taking documents back and forth between Office Apps.  The formatting will not always stay the same if information is taken from Office and put in to Google Docs and vice versa.  Google Apps also has a limited amount of powerpoint layouts compared to Office's powerpoint.  Even with these disadvantages, I still believe Google Apps could be great to use in a classroom.