Blog Post 18- Uses of Google Photos

Before this class, I had never heard of Google photos. I was only aware of the iCloud for the iPhone 6, and refused to back any pictures up. I was very paranoid about anyone hacking into my account so I ended losing a lot of photos. This is an excellent resource that I had no idea that existed! I absolutely loved it. The way that I would implement it in the classroom are as follows: 

1. Use Google photos instead of anchor charts. Our campus is very big on creating anchor charts for the students for each subject. During walkthroughs that is something that they are constantly on the lookout for. As I have mentioned previously, I am trying to go paperless and adding anchor charts will not help with this goal. Instead of creating anchor charts and posting them on the wall (at the end I find it more overwhelming than helpful having so many papers surrounding you) I would bring up the picture of the anchor chart on the interactive white board. These past two weeks we have been learning about 2d and 3d shapes. I have created about 3 anchor charts for them, taking up a lot of space. Instead of having my classroom looked clutter, I can post up the pictures during the math block, so students could reference back to it. 

2. In 2nd grade my students struggle a lot with parts of speech. They often get confused with a noun and an adjective or a verb and adverb. In my classroom I like to relate my lessons to real life, so I believe my students could benefit by having me post pictures every day as a warm up. I could put up the picture on the interactive white board and they could use adjectives and verbs to describe the picture. They would be practicing with the parts of speech as well as their sentences. They would be much more engaged if the pictures portrayed real life.

3. I would aim this lesson for the upper grades. I am a strong believer that students learn better if they feel empowered.  Instead of being students, they will switch to being the teacher. I would provide each team of 2 students a topic they should research and have them create an album or collage about the person being studied. In the album though, they would have to also write captions, present it to the class, and share the hyperlink to the album. 

4. I think that as a parent anything that your child does is important. As teachers, unfortunately, we spent a great majority of time with them and many times see them more than their parents. I would use Google photos to create an online album for parents to see pictures of what their kids are doing. I would also use Google photos to create a collage of all the students pictures. I would then distribute them to the parents at the end of the year. I am definitely going to try to implement it this as soon as possible. 

Overall, I believe this was a great tool to use!