Using Google to improve my classroom

I'm trying to be UBER organized this year.  Well at least for 7th grade at this time.  My goal this quarter was to get as many notes online as I can.  I have been placing them on my google calendar.  I embedded the google calendar on my school website (click here to see).  The kids can get notes for any missing days wherever they are.

One of the major advantages for me is that I can replay the videos to my other classes and have every class receive the same information.  I can also use the information for the upcoming quarters.  It archive the lessons for me in a 'google' organized fashion.:) 

I record myself as I'm teaching the class.  Quickly off load the video's to YouTube and place the URL's on my calendar.  This helps me keep my computer clean and again, helps me archive my lessons.

Another GREAT trick I found in google calendars is I can now upload documents.  I love Word.  I think it's easy to use and I will always us Microsoft WORD.  When I create a document I will save it as a .PDF and upload it to google (again, archiving).  Then I found something called Google Labs in my calendar options.  There are lots of 'LABS' out there but the one you want to use is...  Event Attachments.  On the side you will see an place to Enable this and that will allow you to attach document from Google onto your calendar.

The attachement will show up like this.  Check out Sept. 28th on my 7th grade google calendar notes to see an example.

So, there you have it.  I'm working hard at always improving.  Here's another little step to making my classroom better.