Cyberspace, the final frontier. This is the virtual voyage of the Starship CharlieEducation. Its multi-year mission: to explore strange new apps; to seek out new functions of Google products; to boldly go where many have gone before. 

Captains blog, stardate 2/7/2021: Planet Pear Deck and the orbiting moons of Google Forms and Google Classroom. Pear Deck allows many of the functions of Nearpod, but with an easier interface and smooth integration with Google Slides. I was able to add formative questions and responses right into a Slides presentation I have used for years. Similarly, my away team discovered uses of Google Forms well beyond the simple testing format. I could add pictures and graphs. Though Google Classroom has been part of my regular learning environment, I discovered numerous functions I had not used prior, such as posting materials, websites, and videos. The Topics function is especially useful for organizing information for students and I have never used the assignments calendar. Although I discovered no Melkotians

like Kirk did during the Spectre of the Gun episode, I did discover a great deal that I will incorporate into my classroom.