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This school year began with new emails for every student and faculty member in Hamilton.
Why the change from ‘elmsd’ to ‘eufsd’? Apparently, there are many reasons: This gave everyone a gmail account with which they can utilize applications such as Google drive, docs and classroom.
One teacher who uses these services to enhance her teaching is Ms.Carrie Silva, the English department chair, with whom I had the pleasure to speak.
Classroom allows teachers to create and post assignments for online completion and submission. Through this, she works with her students on papers, making revisions and leaving comments, creating a virtual platform for each student to work with their teacher without having to be in the classroom.
This can even be accessed through smart phone applications, granting students and teachers greater ability to improve on individual weak points and skills in and out of school.
Mr. Richard Macleish uses Google drive with Schoology, an online system focused on communication between students and teachers, allowing users to create and share ideas. His Earth Science classes use drive to complete assignments and connect it to Schoology for submission. Via Schoology, Mr. Macleish can comment and revise homework while updating students on anything.
For him, the two work wonders together: “schoology becomes the ‘classroom’ and google becomes the ‘looseleaf’ or notebook.”
In addition to student-teacher collaboration, students find group work easier. While one creates a slide using his/her phone, another can edit that slide before creating another on his/her computer.
Of course, this is the ideal. Addressed by both Ms.Silva and Mr.Macleish is the issue that not every student has internet access at home, and some only have access at certain times. The goal would be for everyone to have a chromebook provided by Hamilton, as has been done by other schools. Being a student, I can attest to the fact that not everyone can type their papers; some students even go to the public library for computer time.
Though these issues have yet to be resolved, Google has proven to be an efficient system. It truly makes work and communication between student and teacher easier while enriching students through the Internet, as we are in a world of technology.
The question becomes, how do we provide everyone with equal resources so that everyone is on even ground in the race to success?
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