Thing 12 (Google does it all)

Google Alerts...how cool is that?  I love the idea of not having to search for something every day, but now that I am an RSS expert (NOT!), I can have these alerts sent to my Google Reader.  Man, that RSS page does it all.  I am starting simple with an alert on "Titans football" and another one on "Geometry Lessons" combined with Technology.  This was extremely easy to set up...so what's the catch?  No frustration on this one.  I must be getting good or Dr. Wall was just trying to build me up.  Seriously, this could be very powerful when you one to keep on top of something important, or just of interest to you.

I actually used Google Translate last semester while teaching.  Two weeks into the second semester, I had a student show up to my class that was from China, speaking no English.  I was glad to be a math teacher and not history, as I figured math was universal.  I did, however, need to give him instructions, lessons, the words to "word problems", and the questions on test and quizzes.  Google Translate did great for the words, not so great for the actual math problems.  However, once I conveyed that the translation was for the words only, he was able to read the instructions as they related to each problem.  It was all I needed to get him, and me, though the semester...that and he may have been better at math than I am .  Google translate sample:

Write the polynomial in standard form. Then name the polynomial based on its degree and number of terms.

寫的標準形式的多項式。然後將其命名根據其程度和數量計算的多項式。

I set up a Google Calendar https://www.google.com/calendar/render?pli=1 that has my class set up as a repetitive event to end on July 6.  Other than this class and an online class I am taking, my schedule does not have very much on it, so my calendar is fairly blank.  This was however something that my "significant other" and I have talked about doing so that we can coordinate our schedules, so this is step one in that process.  I will probably not use this for school, as I already use the Outlook Calendar from my school email account.

I have found that all three of these tools were extremely simple to use.