Google Apps-So many great features!

I attended a training at SOITA last week to learn about Google Apps (free programs from Google). There are so many apps to use and they are all free!

Here are a few of Google's most popular apps:

• Gmail: email with features that help you stay more organized
• Calendar: online calendar integrated with email
• Docs: save and share documents with others via 'the cloud' (save your docs online to be available from any computer online)
• Picasa: Picture management software
• iGoogle: customized home page
• Google Earth-satellite and street views of land and ocean-satellite views of solar system

Just a few highlights:
Calendar:
The Calendar lets you manage your events online. Plus, you can share your calendar with others and control what they are able to do. You can share everything, meaning they can add events. This is great if you are collaborating with other teachers (or family and friends for a personal calendar). You can also create multiple calendars (Personal, Work, etc) and choose which ones to make public or private and who you want to invite.

Docs:
I love that you can save your documents in 'the cloud' so you can get to them from any computer online. Flash drives work great but Google Docs is free and always available! They added a new feature now so you can upload any file type (rather then just .doc, .ppt, and .xls).

Picasa:
My two favorite features of Picasa are the Web Albums and the collage feature. The web albums allow you to save your pics online so you can view them from anywhere as well as link them to blog posts or other websites.
The collage feature makes it so easy to create collages with your favorite pictures!

My favorite thing about all of it is that you only need one username and password to access all of the different Google accounts. I don't know about you, but I have trouble keeping all those logins straight! Feel free to ask me questions! I am happy to share what I learned!