What is GAFE?

For the past several weeks, 5th graders have been introduced to GAFE (Google Accounts for Education).  Every student in the WPS district has their own educational gmail account.  The difference between an educational account and a regular gmail account is important to note.  Students can only communicate with individuals in the Winchester Public Schools -- with other students, teachers, etc.  They can not email outside of the district, nor can anyone contact them from the "outside" world.  This introduction allowed them to experiment with inserting images (and citing them!), using color when appropriate, sharing and constructive commenting.

They creating a document showing their "favorite book,"  then worked with a partner sharing one document to post information on online etiquette and as a quick "wrap up" assessment, noted what they learned about GAFE.  Here is a sample of their thoughts:

Niklaus	I learned how to comment,and how to share documents  with other people in my class.I also learned how to send messages in my google apps for education.
Fiona	I learned that there are many different ways to use google. such as, classroom, drive, docs, slides, etc. I also learned how to share documents with other people and work on documents with other people.
Tabitha	On google docs I learned that everything is actually much easier than it seems. I could share my work with friends and teachers. It was quite easy to collaborate with a partner on slides while making a presentation. I especially liked uploading my artwork to my own drive and commenting on others’ work. Google was really fun to use and work with!