*Photo courtesy*


I saw this article pop up on my Facebook feed today. Have you ever heard of the website called Mashable? It's a tech-news website that covers the latest "news, information & resources." (http://mashable.com/about/)

They published an article today entitled "14 Google Tools You Didn't Know Existed." I decided to check the article out to see if any of these Google Tools could be utilized in the classroom. For the past year and a half, I've been utilizing Google Docs and Google Drive and both have come in handy!

There were a few I found that could possibly work:

Schemer - A website that shows you things to do in your local area. The article recommends this as being a great tool for travelers. Of course the teacher in me thinks this would be great to use for virtual field trips!

Google Fonts-  Google has made 629 fonts available for private and commercial use. How cool is that!? I will definitely have to use it in the near future for this website. I think a great idea would be to allow students to choose their own font (readable, of course) and use it to write stories in class.

Google Developers- I briefly checked out this website and have bookmarked it to explore it a bit further. The article says that Google Developers is multi-faceted.  It allows you to internationalize websites and give live presentations of tutorials. I'm thinking this would be a great tool to use for a Flipped Classroom concept.

Google Keep- Google Keep connects to your Google Drive. (Google Drive deserves a separate post in itself, it is a wonderful tool!) Google Keep lets you store memos, voice memos, pictures, and check lists. This would be a great tool to use for group projects. Students could store their pictures, make memos, and utilize check lists in order to gather information.

Above are some of the goodies that came to me in the mail this past week through Amazon and Half.com. I had some graduation money to spend (thanks Dad and Mom!) so I thought I would get a jump start on adding some good educational reads to my collection. I'll be adding these to my Goodreads account.

Have you ever tried Goodreads before? It's a great website for book recommendations. I will link my account here once I start up my education Goodreads account. I can't wait to read all of these! I am currently reading a young adult read "City of Bones" by Cassandra Clare. The movie is coming out in August and I am really excited! I am also reading "Teach Like Your Hair's on Fire: The Methods and Madness in Room 56." So far I really like it. The book is written by Rafe Esquith, an educator who taught in the Los Angeles public school district. He shares methods and practices to use in the classroom. I look forward to discussing more about these later. If you are looking for educational reads, I highly recommend trying Half.com first. This source is great for school teachers on a budget who can't always afford to pay the publisher's price of a book. Plus, the books get recycled from one owner to another :) Who doesn't love that!?