Google Applications and Google Sketchup

Tonight is my last night of class for a ten session graduate class at SUNY New Paltz which is part of the Classroom Technology Institute (CTI) summer classes. The title of the course is Google Applications for Teachers. I had a lot of fun taking this course! Here is a list of some of the different Google tools that we have explored.

GMail

Google Calendar

Google Documents

Google SketchUp

Picasa

Google Reader

Google Earth

Blogger

and iGoogle

Quite a bit of these web-based applications I am familiar with and use. Regardless of what I use I find there is always new things to learn about these types of tools. It is interesting hearing from other teachers how they look to use these tools in their classrooms.

One tool I had a lot of fun playing and working with was Google SketchUp. This application brings me back to my technical drawing classes back in high school!

Here is a quick snapshot I took from the project I worked on for the course. I decided to try my best at drafting up a model of the school I teach in.



On the left monitor is an aerial view of my school via Google Earth. On the right screen I tried my best to draw the different portions. It is amazing how powerful a free application such as this is. Kevin Jarrett informed me via Twitter that Google SketchUp Pro is free for educators. I look forward to going through the process of obtaining one of these free teacher licenses in order to see the type of features that are present in the Pro version.

Enough about me...

My question for teachers out there is...what Google tool do you use the most personally? Also, which is your favorite to use with your students?

I hope everyone is having a wonderful summer!