Two years ago, my school district began using Google Apps for Education (GAFE). Teachers are successfully using the suite of tools under various innovative capacities.

I’ve been using many Google applications with my students for the past couple of years – mostly, to collaborate with student essays along with organizing my own documents. See HERE for materials from a beginning-of-year session I held at my school last August. For this upcoming school year, I’ll be setting up Google classroom for three of my five classes (for the other two, I will use iTunes U as I continue to have success with this platform tool). Alice Keeler and Libbi Miller, Ed. D.’s book, “50 Things You Can Do With Google Classroom” couldn’t have been published at a more opportune time. Google launched Google Classroom at the beginning of the last school year and, while I know many teachers had success with this from the start, others like me had some questions before initiating a brand new platform.

My copy is already doggy-eared everywhere!

What I like best about Keeler and Miller’s book is that it offers at-a-glance tips to do everything from setting up a classroom to utilizing advance features such as polling and linking to virtual office hours. Each of the 50 things to do include a clear, concise synopsis coupled with a screen-shot type illustration that visualizes the steps needed to execute the work in one’s own class.

As stated in the introduction of the book, “Adding technology to our classrooms isn’t optional; it’s a must if we’re to equip our students for their futures” (xi).  It’s books like this one that makes adding technology that much easier. This is a book I will refer to again and again. This is a book I’ve already referred colleagues to. This is a book any teacher using GAFE in the classroom will not want to be without. A+ for inspiration to incorporate more student-centered technology and effective instructional strategies!!

Keeler, Alice and Libbi Miller Ed.D. 50 Things You Can Do with Google Classroom. San Diego: Dave Burgess Consulting, Inc., 2015. Print.

NEXT REVIEW: Dave Burgess’s Teach Like a Pirate 

My summer reading list keeps growing!!