Information and digital literacy in education via the digital path

One of the most popular posts of the past week was my two video introduction to Google Forms for teachers. Those videos are part of my larger, constantly growing, playlist of Google Apps tutorial videos.

With this new application in Google Docs ( Drive ), teachers can now record their audio comments and share them with their students. I see this as a better way to give feedback on students' work and I do believe there are things we can express with our voice that no written code could ever capture like the tone and intonation..etc.

I have created this step by step guide to show you how you can add " Voice Comments " within your Google Docs. This application is developed by 121 Writing.

George Couros has recently shared a tweet about a wonderful resource on Google Apps in education. This is basically a work in progress in which educators and teachers from different educational stripes contribute with their ideas on how to use the various Google Apps in education. I have been reading some of these ideas and I was really stunned at the intellectual  depth and stretch of some of them to the extent that I decided to share the document link with you here in Educational Technology and Mobile Learning.

Like another eight or so Institutions around the country, Sheffield has relatively recently become a full "customer” of Google Apps for Education (GAFE). After moving our student email service to Gmail in 2009, and then a phased transition of our staff email service about 12 months ago, we then enabled Calendar, Docs and Sites for all staff and students alike.

With its readily usable platform that enables collaborative working amongst our students, and apparent popularity, there’s lots to like about using Google Apps in learning and teaching. In the last year we’ve seen a few really exciting examples of innovative practice, and there’ll no doubt be more to come. But before we just wade in with wholesale promotion of using the Apps with our students, we need to think about some of the broader issues, starting with policy and guidelines. Here are some of the areas I’ve identified over the last few weeks that require such attention.