Want to be a better Googler?

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I work with teachers on a regular basis who ask me a similar question when I show then something cool you can do with Google.  “How did you learn about that?”   That’s a great question and I wish my answer was straight forward.  As I mentioned in a previous blog entry, “Learning can be Messy”.  We all learn in a different manners.

So, how do you become a better Googler? A Googler is a person who is better at using Google Apps? This a almost a professional development question, but the great thing about Google Apps is that they can spill over into your everyday life. As a teacher I am all about using Google Apps for Education (GAFE) but outside of my classroom I use Google Apps for my personal life. So how can you learn about what ‘s available?

  1. Play Play Play – open your Google Drive, Email or other App account and play by looking around at what each icon or button does. Worst case, you may delete something important so be careful of the TrashCan. Undo is CTRL-Z which is a handy keystroke to remember (along side CTRL-C (copy), CTRL-V (paste), CTRL-F (find on page)).
  2. Talk to your professional learning community (your colleagues or even your students) about how they are using Google Apps. Regardless of your place in the journey will can learn something from someone else and someone else will have something to teach you.
  3. Google (the verb meaning Google Search) your question. The power of the Google Search is that the better your question the better the results provided will be. When you get your results take a look at the different kinds of results provided by changing from WEB to IMAGE to VIDEO. There are many video tutorials available for most of the Google Products.
  4. Subscribe to a newsletter online which can email you tidbits to your district or other email address on a regular basis. One such service I subscribe to is The Gooru (https://www.thegooru.com/)
  5. Go to the source! Welcome to the Google Help Centre (https://support.google.com/)
  6. Oh, and there are other ways to learn about Google Apps, that are combination or variation of the above.  Thus this is not an exhaustive list but some suggestions to increase your learning about Google Apps (or other things as well).

The thing about Google Apps is that they changes and typically improves. So if are looking for something in a Google App that used to be there but isn’t look around, be patient and

Google On!

Carpenter Out!