This week one of my colleagues posted a link in a Google+ community about 14 Google Tools that you didn’t know existed (http://mashable.com/2013/07/05/google-tools/#_). To be honest, I didn’t know that any existed. I hadn’t heard of a single one and some made sense that I hadn’t heard of them. I am not a computer programmer and while I input metadata for a website, I am in no way a developer. These two roles are what most of the tools seemed to be aimed at – programmers and developers. In saying that there were a few that I could see of being use with my students so I dove in to explore them in more detail.
Google Public Data Explorer: This tool allows you to search for different data and it will show this data on a line chart, bar graph, map or bubble chart. I started out with something easy – population density. I chose the map view as that made the most sense to me and I played around with some of the variables. I looked at the birth rates of countries, the migration rates, the growth rate. All of this seemed very interesting. I also liked how it showed where the statistics were coming from (in this case it was the International Data Base – IDB). The next thing that I thought would be interesting to see if the tablet usage per country. This information came from the Connected Consumer and again, I thought it would be easiest to see the information shown on a map. This time I found something that was interesting – there was no information shown on the map outside of Australia (Oceania) and Asia. When I clicked the box next to Canada, it gave me a nice big Canada to mouse over and tell me that we have a national 79.5% PC usage and 29.5% tablet usage but there were no nice little blue dots on the map for me to see.
Next tool on the docket: Schemer. I will only write a short little piece about this. I went on the website and tried to sign up. I was greeted with this message: “Schemer is being shut down soon. Sign in to get your schemes before they’re gone! So much for that lead, onto the next...
When I first got onto Google fonts, I am shown the message “Grumpy wizards make toxic brew for the evil queen and jack. I was first quite confused until I realized that the sentence contains each letter of the English language so that you can see what they all look like. There was also another sentence option or an option to put all the letters in upper and lower case in order. I will stick with the grumpy wizards. I chose a few that looked neat – Jolly Lodger, Freckle Face, Hanalei and Love Ya Like A Sister. These fonts showed what they would look like and were added to my collection. From there I was asked to verify my settings and copy the code for my website. I will try this when I am done and attempt to have this post show up in “Love Ya Like A Sister” – For now off to Google Keep. (Update: That didn't work, to be honest I don't have the time to try again now so for the time being it is pushed to the back burner.)
Google Keep is something that I don’t know if I completely see the value in. It is a note taking service from google and you can have an app or it will be attached on your PC as part of google drive. My thoughts on this is why not just write notes up in a google doc? If you need to keep quick notes on your tablet, why not use the notes app that comes pre-installed? To be fair, I didn’t look too deep into this but at the same time, I didn’t really see the value in using my time to do so.
Finally – Google Sky. This is the tool that I was most excited about and you know what they say, save the best for last. As an avid star gazer, having one of my favourite DVDs to watch called Indescribable (a Christian perspective of the solar system) and a teacher of grades where the solar system is part of the curriculum, this seemed like the tool for me! This tool allows you to access pictures that have been taken by the Hubble telescope and when you click to view, it shows a closer view of them along with a description of what you are looking at, how big it is, how many stars are in it, etc. There was also an ability to check out different constellations and galaxies. I think this would be a very neat tool to use with my students and allow them to explore our solar system. One thing that I cannot report on as it was not working at the time was the search function. I will have to come back to this at a later date and try again.
Google Public Data Explorer: This tool allows you to search for different data and it will show this data on a line chart, bar graph, map or bubble chart. I started out with something easy – population density. I chose the map view as that made the most sense to me and I played around with some of the variables. I looked at the birth rates of countries, the migration rates, the growth rate. All of this seemed very interesting. I also liked how it showed where the statistics were coming from (in this case it was the International Data Base – IDB). The next thing that I thought would be interesting to see if the tablet usage per country. This information came from the Connected Consumer and again, I thought it would be easiest to see the information shown on a map. This time I found something that was interesting – there was no information shown on the map outside of Australia (Oceania) and Asia. When I clicked the box next to Canada, it gave me a nice big Canada to mouse over and tell me that we have a national 79.5% PC usage and 29.5% tablet usage but there were no nice little blue dots on the map for me to see.
Next tool on the docket: Schemer. I will only write a short little piece about this. I went on the website and tried to sign up. I was greeted with this message: “Schemer is being shut down soon. Sign in to get your schemes before they’re gone! So much for that lead, onto the next...
When I first got onto Google fonts, I am shown the message “Grumpy wizards make toxic brew for the evil queen and jack. I was first quite confused until I realized that the sentence contains each letter of the English language so that you can see what they all look like. There was also another sentence option or an option to put all the letters in upper and lower case in order. I will stick with the grumpy wizards. I chose a few that looked neat – Jolly Lodger, Freckle Face, Hanalei and Love Ya Like A Sister. These fonts showed what they would look like and were added to my collection. From there I was asked to verify my settings and copy the code for my website. I will try this when I am done and attempt to have this post show up in “Love Ya Like A Sister” – For now off to Google Keep. (Update: That didn't work, to be honest I don't have the time to try again now so for the time being it is pushed to the back burner.)
Google Keep is something that I don’t know if I completely see the value in. It is a note taking service from google and you can have an app or it will be attached on your PC as part of google drive. My thoughts on this is why not just write notes up in a google doc? If you need to keep quick notes on your tablet, why not use the notes app that comes pre-installed? To be fair, I didn’t look too deep into this but at the same time, I didn’t really see the value in using my time to do so.
Finally – Google Sky. This is the tool that I was most excited about and you know what they say, save the best for last. As an avid star gazer, having one of my favourite DVDs to watch called Indescribable (a Christian perspective of the solar system) and a teacher of grades where the solar system is part of the curriculum, this seemed like the tool for me! This tool allows you to access pictures that have been taken by the Hubble telescope and when you click to view, it shows a closer view of them along with a description of what you are looking at, how big it is, how many stars are in it, etc. There was also an ability to check out different constellations and galaxies. I think this would be a very neat tool to use with my students and allow them to explore our solar system. One thing that I cannot report on as it was not working at the time was the search function. I will have to come back to this at a later date and try again.