5th Grade and GAFE

The fifth graders here at Blackland Prairie were introduced this week to their new Google Apps for Education (GAFE) accounts.  These accounts are created and owned by the school district, therefore the district is in charge of setting features as well as sharing and safety parameters.  Here in Round Rock ISD, email accounts can be monitored for inappropriate activity and, at this time, students in fifth grade will only be able to email their teachers from the email account.

Some benefits of the accounts are:

• They open a line of communication directly between students and teachers. 
• Access to Google Drive allows students to create documents and presentations that can be shared directly with the teacher.  Comments from the teacher can be added directly to the document or presentation.
• If students are working in a small group, the document or presentation may be shared with a few others so that real time collaboration may take place.

Here are a few tips for students as they are getting comfortable with their new accounts:

• Save to different file types:  You can easily save your documents and spreadsheets to commonly used file types like DOC, XLS, CSV, and HTML.
• Use keyboard shortcuts:  With keyboard shortcuts, you can speed through all of your tasks in Google Docs.
• Insert photos with drag and drop:  Instead of going through the process of attaching, you can just drag and drop files from your hard drive into the document, then wrap text around the photo.

It will be fun to see how these accounts will be utilized in the classroom...check back for updates!