Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Thing 10: Google + and Communities

I can see the possibilities with Google + and Communities, but it's a little challenging.  I made a circle for 36 Things, but not everyone that I know of in the class was part of my Google + following, so I had to go through a lot of clicking to add them to the circle.  I made another circle for my 6th grade LA/SS colleagues, but the only person on Google + was our department's coordinator, and she doesn't even teach at our school.  Again, lots of clicking to get a circle created.

I joined four different Communities: 36 Things, GEG Chicagoland, The Winnetka Experience, and Winnetka University Reflections.  For the first three of those, I could see posts, and I posted into our 36 Things Community.  For the fourth one, I couldn't see any posts.  I created a Community for 6th grade LA/SS and invited all my 6th grade LA/SS colleagues.

Possibilities:

  • If our students were all on Google + and we made a community of all of them, it would be like our own personal Twitter account to post and share on.  I like that possibility a lot.
  • If all our colleagues were on Google + and we made a community of all the ones in our department, it could be a great way to post and share what's going on in our classrooms.  It's the part we never have time for in our meetings and the part I find myself most craving.


2 comments:

  1. Great idea on the Google+ for your students Megan. I didn't think about this until now, but it's just like schoology. We have the classes premade (except for advisory). I posted a lot of fun, random, "non-educational" things to schoology and the kids seemed to enjoy it. You could do the same with Google+ if you don't have schoology. It was a lot of fun when there were big things going on outside of the classroom, like the NCAA tourny or the Superbowl.

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  2. Google+ has age restrictions, so it's not an option for our under 13 students. For those students, you could use Google Classroom or Schoology for the same purpose. You could create a class twitter account and have an official tweeter each week.

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