Completed Training for Educator Level 2 in Google!

This past weekend I was able to complete my training to become a Google Educator level 2! I am so excited to share these tools with my future students, my colleagues, and my post-learning network of educators around the globe! Through the course of this training, I was able to learn about some really cool tech features, apps, add-ons, and extensions I was unfamiliar with previously. In addition, I got to see how these could be meaningfully incorporated into the classroom while still improving my students' digital literacy skills. I am so excited to share my big takeaways from each unit of this training:

Google G Suites for Education:

This tool is absolutely FREE for educators and offers so many cool features that save teachers time, energy, and stress!

PLN & Professionalism:

In unit two, I learned about how to grow and maintain my professional network. Not only can I reach out and do this through Twitter, but coaching models withing my school district are a great way to build relationships within my community and learn or teach new tech skills to other educators. They discuss the trainer of trainers model, which is where teachers receive training so that they, in turn, can teach others, and the early adopters model, where people who are already familiar with technology share best practices. ​Also, within school districts there are other support models too for professional development. First there are instructional coaches, who are teachers that are released from normal classroom duties to go around and help other teachers work with technology. Secondly, school site mentors, who are teachers who still teach but are advanced in tech and go around helping other teachers use technology in their grade level. Thirdly, staff development workshops, where groups of teachers meet to share best practices. Fourthly, student- led support, which is a designated group of 'techy' students that can teach teachers how to use tech. And lastly, self-guided professional development that you can use to help develop your own skills on your own time. For me personally, I love Twitter and webinars!

Google Sites:

Google sites is an amazing feature that teachers and students can use to showcase work, post class announcements, and so much more. Often, students and teachers use Google Sites for creating and maintaining digital portfolios. Individual student portfolios are a great way to motivate students to complete quality work - as their audience extends far beyond simply the four walls of the classroom. Within Google Sites you can insert docs, sheets, and presentations, all in one site! Furthermore, these sites can be public or private, depending on the setting.

Blogger:

With Blogger, the same as Twitter, you can schedule the blog posts to go out at certain times- what a time-saver for educators! Additionally, blogger is a great way for students to look back on their work and permanently have it in one place where they can continue to update it and even use it for their resumes. Another bonus is that their families have access to the blog posts too and can be involved more in what their child is doing. Like Google Sites, blog posts are not public to the world if you don't want them to be.

YouTube:

YouTube is a great way to collect content, create engaging and interactive assignments for students, and use for professional development. Within YouTube, users can create a channel where they can then create different playlists. For the longest time I could never figure out how people were able to save videos to playlist instead of simply the 'watch later' default. Now I understand how to do it! Whoop! But the fun doesn't stop there, YouTube editor allows teachers to create interactive YouTube videos using 'cards' which direct your students to new pages, videos, polls, etc. You can also live stream chat in YouTube, which extends your audience to a global one.

Google Calendar:

Another amazing feature that Google has for educators within G Suite for Educators is Google calendar 'appointment slots'. With this, teachers create blocks in their schedule where parents can sign up for time slots for parent-teacher conferences and reduces the hassle of trying to set up times that are not conflicting. You can also create separate calendars for clubs, sports, family, work, etc. This is an especially unique tool for parents that cannot meet face-to-face with teachers, but still want to play an active role in their child's education.

Google Forms:

I thought I was pretty familiar with Google Forms before I completed this training but, man was I off! Google forms has a feature called 'Choose Your Own Adventure' where students can differentiate learning by their responses. Each different response leads to a different set of questions. Additionally, Google Forms has add-ons like Flubaroo that grades responses in google forms and can even calculate percentages in student performance reports. Goobric is another Chrome extension that allows for rubrics to be displayed. Also, you can export data from Google Forms to Google Sheets to see all the different types of responses your students had. In sheets, you can use conditional formatting to keep track of data by time stamps, numbers, text, etc. You can also color code text depending on the response.

Google Tours:

While I was familiar with google expeditions, I was also introduced to Google Lit trip, which is a perfect tech tool for English teachers. With Google Lit trip, students can map out character's journeys within a novel and get to see the same landscapes as the character in the book. I would definitely use this tool in my future classroom as it allows students to get a practical view of the journey, see where events take place, and overall gives deeper insight into the text that the students are reading.

Google Slides:

Ever since middle school I have been using google slides, but never in an interactive way. In this training course I learned about how educators can use Google slides and allow students to edit them, take notes, highlight passages, add information, watch videos, and complete their own activities. I think if I were to ever use flipped assignments in my classroom, I would use them through this interactive tool.

Google for research:

There are so many different types of features to help students with research. Two of my favorites from this training were the search bar in Google docs and Google Scholar. With the search bar, students can research facts, pull images, and even cite sources without having to leave their Google doc! With Google scholar, students can research academic journals, filter images, used advanced search features, and find quality content.

Google for Projects:

As stated in this training, the goals for independent learners are mastery and autonomy. By using Google features for their individual "20% projects," they can solve community problems, using online tools, connect with experts in the field, and even teach members of their community how to use google features.

In order to complete these projects, students must complete these steps:

• Developing an agenda

• Collecting or brainstorming problems

• Pitching problems to be solved

• Formulating the solution

• Presentation of solutions

Additionally, students must also consider their research and data analysis, using visual aids for instructional design, using visual aids for graphic design, and practicing delivery of their project or presentation. Once students have mastered working individually, then they can move towards working in groups.

Overall, I learned so much about different tech tools educators can use through Google and I highly recommend this course to any other educators out there looking for PD!

#AlwaysLearning #GoogleEducatorLevel2