Google Tools

Google for Educators
http://www.google.com/educators/index.html

Google Tools for Your Classroom
http://www.google.com/educators/tools.html

Classroom Activities for Google Tools
http://www.google.com/educators/activities.html

Classroom Posters for Google Tools
http://www.google.com/educators/posters.html

Google Book Search
http://books.google.com/
In Google Book Search, you can search for books online and see a preview of the book. You can find out relevant information to the book in which you are searching for as well. There is even a tool in which you can buy or borrow the book while finding out where the book comes from.
This tool could be used in a lesson buy having students search multiple textbooks about a certain subjects. By using the search tool, they would be able to read previews of many different books in order to do their research. They could also create their own library of books in which they read or would like to read.

Google Earth
http://www.google.com/educators/p_earth.html
By using Google Earth, you can actually look at real-life images of different places in the world. In some places, you can actually go street level to look at important historical locations and landmarks. You can use a measurement tool on the site to figure out distances between certain locations, along with many other tools offered on this extraodrinary site.
This tool could be used to show my students different landmarks that we are learning in social studies. We could view what different areas of the world look like and do a comparison and contrast chart once this has been accomplished. I could also have my students locate coordinates of certain cities and then measure how far these places are away from where we live.

Google Calendar
http://www.google.com/calendar/render
In Google Calendar, you can keep track of everyday life activities all on one large calendar. You can compare your calendar to a friend, family, or colleague member and then adjust accordingly. You can plan an event, inviting other members of the google family. You also have the ability to get reminders of events coming up in the future.
I could use this tool to keep in contact with my students with technology. I could send all of my students reminders of assignments using Google Calendar and I could also aware them of events in the near future. I could remind all of my students if a fellow member of the class is having a birthday and I could even send my entire class an e-mail to inform them of urgent information that may be happening within the community.

Google News
http://www.google.com/news
Google News takes stories from over 4,500 English news sources worldwide, and shows you the stories in which they feel will appear most to each reader's interests. They will choose the top news articles around the world and continuously update them in order to give you the most recent and reliable information as possible. Google News has many different featues, including personalized news, alerts, news from your mobile phones, feeds, and a news archive search tool.
I could use this in my classroom by having my students use this feature to show Google this personality. Once they let Google know the type of person they are, and the kind of news articles they would like to read, Google will update their page with news that will appear to each individual student. This will give me, as the teacher, an opportunity to assign individual lessons for each student and then grade them on something they enjoy to do. They could then present what they did to the classroom so that everyone would know what each student accomplised with this tool.

Google Sketchup
http://www.google.com/educators/p_sketchup.html
Google Sketchup is a modeling software tha allows you to explore design ideas in 3D. Students can construct different things they learn about in 3D models, which will get them to think about what it takes to build structures and every little important details dealing with it. Studetns can visualize imprtant mathematical concepts, learn about architecture, and design games, toys, spaceships, and cars.
By using this tool in my classroom, I can have my students create structures using the geometry concepts I will be teaching them in class. I can then have my students list step-by-step instuctions on how they built there structures in order for another students in the class to build the same thing. At the end of the lesson, I can have all my students show off the sturctures they created in the front of the classroom.