Thing #7

Google Alerts push information to the user (by user defined criteria) as opposed to having to pull information from say a web page. An alert would be the opposite of browsing. I suspect creating the right search string would be critical. Students could create alerts for a class project until the completion, then move on to another subject.

Google Calendar looks really good. I have too many calendars now to add another one, but I will be thinking about how to consolidate some into a Google Calendar. I wonder if you can print a weeks worth of calendar activities in a one-page summary to carry around. I like the reminders being able to be sent to a cell phone.

iGoogle is a great way to have lots of selected information pushed to one web page. Students could create tabs for classes and have information relevant to that class pushed to that tabbed page. Google Alerts could be sent to a Gmail account and displayed on an iGoogle page.

Google Notebook—I wonder if I can create a page that only I can see. If so, it would be great to have all my accounts web pages, blogs, usernames, and passwords at one location that only I could see with just one password.

Picasa is like Flickr in managing photos. How would one decide which to use?

Google Scholar is a useful tool that might warrant being linked next to your online subscription databases. I read one blogger whose students used Google Scholar a lot and many of the articles were to be found in JSTOR so she bought JSTOR to meet the needs of her students.

Google Advanced Search is particularly useful for finding PowerPoints on a subject. I suspect it would be useful for finding JPEGs Excel documents etc…

Google Earth, from all I have heard, is wonderful. One downside is having to download software. That brings up firewall and space on hard drive issues.