Thing # 21 Google Tools

This was definitely fun. First I visited iGoogle. By selecting information that I was interested in and adding lots of gadgets, windows for Epicurious, joke of the day, several games, and Spanish word of the day now show up when I go to my google home page. I also added weather, date & time, and news. I may never leave my home page! Next, I played around with Picasa uploading a picture, editing it, and attaching it to my blog profile (look to the left, not exactly Glamour Shots, but it'll do). Then I watched the tutorial for Sketchup, but didn't want to download it on my laptop. However, what a totally entertaining and educational site for students. This tool could offer a fun and visual way to teach some basic geometry. Also, it could be used for interior design class or figuring out your own classroom configuration, etc. What about those TAKS Math questions with the blocks (which view best represents this figure from the side), I'm not sure, but this might be a way for teachers, or students, to set up some practice questions. Then I got lost playing in the Google Lab - what should have been a short time exploring turned into an hour and a half. One of the choices to view was news and advertisements shown in a different way. I really liked viewing the books. I searched and found a few books I have been thinking about reading and checked them out. This was almost as good as The Library Thing, but I didn't find the reviews. There really aren't enough hours in a day are there?