Students and subjects come together with Google Apps

Students and subjects come together with Google Apps:

Editors note: Today's guest blogger is Joachim Cohen, Project Officer, NSW Department of Education and Communities

In teaching, there’s something known as “cross-curricular projects” — a sort of “educational Nirvana” where teachers from different faculties bring their students together to explore a single topic in all their classes. However, with teachers being short of time, they often remain in the realm of Nirvana rather than a reality.

Not so at Robert Townson High School in Sydney’s South West where Google Apps has helped make a cross-curricular project possible. Led by history teacher Adam Olm, staff from English, Maths and History brought their Year 7 students together to explore the concept of “Black and White”.

With themes as diverse as Apartheid in South Africa, the same-sex marriage debate, World War II, and the Manhattan Project, students used web tools to be able to learn in new and innovative ways. In History, students were able to research historical figures and events related to their topic and create presentations using Google Presentations with their findings. In English, students wrote speeches, diary entries and other creative writing responses about their topic in Google Docs.

While in Maths, students planned historical trips and literary destinations related to their topic (for example, the group investigating Apartheid virtually ventured to Johannesburg) — consulting airline schedules and working out time differences with Google Calendar. To bring all of it together, students created websites, like this one on World War II, which showcased their presentations, documents and timetables using Google Sites. 

Teacher Adam Olm and Students from Robert Townson High School

Drawing their their various findings and projects together online was an ideal way to highlight the links between each of the subjects and well as being a great way to show parents what they had learnt and made. Students summarised their experience of using Google Apps as being “simple” and “easy” — and that’s important for educators, because the technology should be in the background while the learning remain the focus.

Projects like this are just the beginning for Google Apps in Public Schools in NSW. Last year, twelve schools took part in a pilot program and more schools across the state will be coming online with Google Apps in 2013. We’re looking forward to seeing how these teachers and students will use this technology to enhance learning in other innovative ways.

Google Apps for Education is free suite of cloud-based communication and collaboration tools (Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs and Google Sites) that Google offers to schools for free. This week, educators and Google representatives will deliver online learning sessions and discuss ways to integrate technology into everyday lessons at a Google Apps for Education Sydney Summit being held later this week.


Guest post by Joachim Cohen, Project Officer, NSW Department of Education and Communities

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