Blog Entry 2

It’s NOT About Google, It’s About the Learning!— Part 2: Digital Citizenship

8 Ways to Support Digital Citizenship Skills with Google

This article was really interesting and useful to read. It talks about how Good can help support Digital Citizenship. It has 8 ways for Google to help out. The first way is a program that has an interactive game for the students. It is designed towards grades 3-5 but can be adjusted for younger and older students. The second way is that Google has a self-paced training, Digital Citizenship training. It is a course with 6 units that teachers can learn how to stay safe and how to advise students to stay safe. The third way is a feature that Google Docs offers. That citations are built-in to the Google Docs. The fourth way is searching for images. You can now search for images without leaving Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Forms, and Drawings. Also, when you run the search the results are filtered so that you have permission to use the images. The fifth way is that you can Google yourself to see where your digital footprint is. The sixth way is Google a Day challenges. The seventh way is Google has designed a series of lessons to help with guiding the students to search meaningfully in their schoolwork. The last way is Google Alerts it allows you to be alerted when new information on topic that interest you come available. I haven’t heard of most of these ways. I am really excited about the ways Google is supporting Digital Citizenship. 

Free Natural Reader is one educational technology tool that I could really see myself using. The tool allows you to convert any written text, Microsoft Word, webpages, PDF files, and E-mails into spoken words. If a student is in need of the text-to-speech website, you just upload your files into the website, and it will convert it to a mp3 file that you can listen to whenever you would like. One problem I can see from the tool is when the student is listening to the text, they will not get any of the elaborations that I would say. I will have to plan around the text and think of spots where the student who is listening to the text can take the headphones off and listen to me. Other than the flow and planning of when the student can use them, I really like the idea of having a reliable text-to-talk application.