Sometime back, I signed up for the Google Educator program, just for good luck, and the education folks at Google emailed me today with some news about their efforts to aid educators in their quest to tame the web and make it a useful tool for student learning (lifelong learners can use this stuff, too). If you've been to the last NECC or know someone who has, this may not be news, but it was to me.For my own writing, I use a digital notebook that's part of The Journal, but it's not designed to keep track of the tons of info on the web, although I could venture it with cut and paste. But there's a simpler way.
David Warlick, in his book Classroom Blogging talks about digital literacy, and part of that new literacy is learning to find, filter, validate, and organize info from the web. Google has a tool that will help us do that. Funny thing, they call it a Notebook. I started playing with it today. I've already got three notebooks going. I like it.
The other Google tool that caught my fancy will allow teachers to set up dedicated search engines for their students to use in pursuit of their learning. I can only imagine it would be like a grand treasure hunt, custom designed by the teacher.
Google has many more tools for educators, but you have to go there, register, and look for yourself. Best of all, everything's free! :-)
