Google's G Suite for Education
Rio Hondo Preparatory School is excited to offer Google's G Suite for Education to our students. G Suite is a core suite of productivity applications that Google offers to schools and educational institutions for FREE. These communication and collaboration apps include Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs and Sites, and a G Suite account unlocks access to dozens of other collaborative tools supported by Google. All of these applications exists completely online (or in the cloud), meaning that all creations can be accessed from any device with an Internet connection. More info can be found on the G Suite for Education website
The Google Classroom environment allows teachers to create assignments for students. Students will “Turn in” their assignments directly to their Google Classroom. The document management software is excellent and allows both students and teachers to stay organized through a paperless system. Students simply click on the assignment and choose to create a Google Doc, Google Sheet, Google Slide Presentation or other project and then attach that to the assignment when they submit their work. Students can also Share documents to collaborate with other class members on group assignments. This is a private web space for teachers to communicate directly with students. Parents can request access to view Classroom assignments from their student’s teachers.
Much like a computer has a hard drive full of folders and files, Google Drive is a cloud-based storage system that can be accessed from anywhere, and anything, with Internet access. Think of Google Drive as the home base of Google Docs, Spreadsheets, Forms, Presentations, Drawings, and other files.
- Google Drive can store and access these files anywhere - on the web, on a computer hard drive, or on an iPad or Android tablet.
- Any file in Drive can be saved and shared to other RHP students to collaborate on projects
- Offline features allow students to work on documents even when Internet access is not available and work automatically syncs when the devices goes back online.
Upon consent from their parents, RHP students will be assigned an @rhprep.org email account. Middle school students will only be allowed to email their teachers and classmates. High School students can send and receive emails from teachers and other high school students in the RHP domain. We encourage parents to take a pro-active role by logging into their student’s accounts along with their student to help monitor their email activity. We suggest that parents add your student’s accounts directly to your smart phones. This will give you direct access to their activity. You can also have student emails forwarded directly to your own personal email account if you prefer doing that.
Google Sheets is a powerful online spreadsheet capable of running complicated tasks similar to Excel. It makes data pop with colorful charts and graphs. Built-in formulas, pivot tables and conditional formatting options save time and simplify common spreadsheet tasks. Students will learn to run queries, store data, create charts and graphs and analyze the results with regression equations and statistical analysis. They will also learn to create Google Forms and collect the data in Sheets.
With Google Docs students can write, edit and collaborate wherever they are from a phone, tablet, or computer. Google Docs is a web-based word processor very similar to Microsoft Word but is free and allows for online collaboration. Students can choose from hundreds of fonts, add links, images and drawings.
Google Slides is Google’s online presentation tool that is both comparable and compatible with PowerPoint. Students will have access to create and edit presentations on the go. There are a variety of presentation themes to choose from and students can easily embed videos and insert animations.
RHP recently purchased a classroom set of Chromebooks and plans to increase student access to Chromebooks in the near future. Through Chromebooks, the Chrome Browser and the Chrome App Store, teachers and students can unlock a host of tools and apps to enrich the educational learning experience.