Video: Using Google In Classrooms

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COLUMBUS, Miss. (WCBI) — A decade ago, computers became all the rage in classrooms across the country. But technology grew faster than teachers could incorporate new ways of teaching.

Teachers still are learning new ways to guide young minds in a world of hand-held devices, the Internet, “clouds” and other high-tech worlds.

Young educators attending a conference at MUW Thursday are learning new ways to face challenges from classroom diversity to health education. One of the biggest is technology where students often know as much as the teachers. As their teachers find out, there’s an app for that.

“I just want to get in there and learn from and with my students and you have to kind of adopt that attitude that you don’t have to know it all; But you just have to prepare and let your students lead the way. Become more of a guide and facilitator as they learn to use technology as the leaders,” said April Coleman, one of the presenters at Thursday’s conference.

To help with teaching young educators who will in turn teach students, Google is pushing versions of popular classroom tools. Everything happens in the clouds that allow for storage of information, a way of reducing paper waste. Interviews can be conducted anywhere in the country, saving money by giving virtual field trips at the touch of a keyboard.

“Then they can collaborate with other teacher or students on those products. And so we can be working for example with another classroom in London, England, or we could be working with a classroom in South Carolina or California to collaboratively create a document or a presentation,” Coleman added.

And when using Google to teach, teachers don’t have to be experts as their students share through blogs and websites.

“Five or 10 years ago, it was still a question kind of if we wanted to include technology in our schools and today its not a question anymore. If we want to move to the top in Mississippi, you know move on up in education, we need to be a leader,” Coleman stated.

Many of the apps like the ones from Google are free and make excellent tools for parents to help students at home.