How to create a Google group

Here in South Africa, Sean Hampton-Cole (a teacher from Johannesburg) has started a Google group for teachers interested in Ed tech to share ideas with one another.  'Google Groups' is a free email service from Google that provides discussion groups for people sharing common interests. 

Depending on the group settings, you can send a message to all members using a single email address, create a question and answer forum or post a message to the group via a web interface.  After this you and the others in your group can post messages to one another, upload files for review and collaborate on a a document etc. All your discussions can be seen by everyone in the group.

How to create a Google group
I have created a Slideshare to take you through the stages of creating a Google group.

Create a Google Group from Fiona Beal

Create a Google group for your classroom (video)
This YouTube video by Marc Dubeau takes you through the steps of creating a Google group. and how to set it up to share documents and create a paperless classroom  http://goo.gl/00gmXX 




Google groups in your High School classroom
Sometimes you want to send an email to a group of students for them to be able to communicate with one another. Google Groups provides a really convenient way to create online groups and email distribution lists.  This is a great way for a High School class or a Higher Education class to communicate.

Poetry month #1: Colour poems (Gr 1)

April is always celebrated as National Poetry Month - a celebration inaugurated by the Academy of American Poets in 1996. Over the years, National Poetry Month has become the largest literary celebration in the world with schools, publishers, libraries, booksellers, and poets celebrating poetry’s vital place in our culture. During this month I like to encourage my Grade 1 - 7 ICT classes to write and present poetry.  I decided to start on April 1 with my Grade 1 class using PowerPoint.  The topic was Colour poems.

Getting started
We sat together 'on the mat' and discussed our favourite colours. There was a wide spectrum of choices - red, blue, purple, silver, gold, pink, green and more. As we spoke I wrote a few recurring vocabulary words on the board. When everybody felt quite confident about their choice of colour, I read the class a few simple colour poems that  I had found on the Internet. Then we went over the template I had created with them, orally.  They created poems in pairs and related them to one another. 

Using PowerPoint for presenting the poem

This class had not used PowerPoint before but I found that they were fast learners. PowerPoint is an amazing program to use for presenting creative work, especially in a South African school where the Internet is very temperamental. 

The lesson
Step 1: Open the template and save it with your name

The class easily followed this instruction as they had learned how to save documents in previous lessons. 

Step 2:  Start completing the prompts
In computer lessons I always tell the classes to spell the way they think and we'll edit spelling at the end of the lesson.  The students chose their colours and completed the prompts while I walked around encouraging them.

Step 4: Move your words into the middle

We learned how to move our words to the middle to make the poem look more like a poem. This was an optional step.

Step 3: Insert clipart  
Microsoft has a built in clipart selector and the class loved using this to select matching clipart. I love the way Grade 1s talk about everything they do in computer class - they get so excited about everything!

Step 4: Walk around and read each other's creations

They also enjoyed doing this. I am surprised how easily they pick up reading when they come to school. We start school at the end of January - and two months later they have made huge strides!

Examples
I loved the different colour choices. The amazing thing is that we completed the colour poem lesson in 1 hour. 

Well done Grade 1s