Netherlands Google Apps for Education Summit

One of the cool things is to present at education summits in order to share best practices and share ideas with others attending the summit. As you could've read in another blog post I applied to do a session about SMART amp at the Netherlands Google Apps for Education Summit this weekend and that went very well. I did prepare my presentation in English, but due to the fact that only Dutch people attended I did it in Dutch anyway. I handed out some leaflets with more information and every attendant received a SMART Board pointer. The attendants needed to log in to SMART amp with pre-created accounts by me and needed to work together in a workspace where I published a assessment as well. The teacher that gained the least score for the assessment received a SMART amp t-shirt, due to the fact that all the other teachers scored 100% on the assessment.

On Sunday we we started with a real good Keynote by Dan Leighton (Director of Technology, Grammar School of Leeds) about effective strategies in the classroom to gain more engaged students and higher grades. Top two things concerning was he impact of good feedback (formative evaluation) to students and and meta-cognition (self reported grades). I need to process on this ...

The first session was getting more out of the admin console with Google Admin within your domain. I've learned a lot of things and Sarah Woods really took my understanding of working within the admin console to the next level. I'm very happy that I learned a lot today already. Next was the session of Warren Apel with easy to use tips and tricks on how to create engaging activities with Google Maps in your classroom. This was really mind bowing and I've shared a few interesting links in this blog and will create a new one about the cool things you can do with My Maps in Google Maps.

This Google Apps for Education Summit was awesome and I do have a lot to take with me and need to process on!!!

Cool tips and tricks:

Realtime Board: online whiteboard in your browser.
Thematic Mapping: create kml-files for Google Earth.
Open Signal: compare phone signal coverage in the entire world!
GeoGuessr: Explore the world in a real fun and challenging way.
Time Machine with Google Street View.
Google Treks: help out Google Street View in places where cars can't get to.

Cool fun fact that I learned: did you know that when you need to type something unreadable when signing in somewhere, the so called captcha thing, is actually really cool and whenever you use it you' helping out humanity by helping to save our own ancient cultures? These hardly readable things we need to re-type are actually pieces of text from ancient written text and we ar actually helping out to translate them. And the blurry pictures of street numbers we need to re-write are actually from pictures Google Street View took and we help out by mapping the world better. Ain't that just awesome?

#rewind2014

This past year was a very good year for me from a professional point of view. In January I spend a whole week presenting in the SMART Collaborative Classroom at BETT, London-UK, the largest education and technology trade show in Europe. In July I attended and presented at the Global SMART Exemplary Educators Summit in Calgary, Canada. And this was most amazing and met a lot of new friends and partners to work with. In October I was present at a Google Apps for Education Summit (#gafesummit) in London, UK and I was selected to attend the Google Teacher Academy in Amsterdam, Netherlands in November. A few new certificates and rewards were added to my professional development roadmap ... Let's continue to do so in 2015!

Google Teacher Academy

As you could've read on this blog in an earlier post (July '14) about my roadmap of professional development that I would apply to the Google Teachers Academy to become a Google Certified Teacher and while doing that I wanted to do some online Google courses to become a Google Educator. In order to become a Google Educator I need to pass a total of five exams, of which four are required: Google Docs & Drive, Gmail, Google Sites and Google Calendar and one elective course and I've picked Google Chrome (the browser). Well, I've done all the things concerning Google that I wanted to do.
The courses took me quite long to take, especially when a fulltime job as mentor and teacher in secondary education is due too. And I didn't expect it to be that difficult and more imported inspiring and worth for. The first exam I took was Gmail and I failed. It got only 75% and needed at least 80%. This was the one that made me nervous for all the other exams and made me prepare the next ones way better and according to some reviews of others the Gmail exam was the hardest one. Anyway, I passed all the required courses and stil need to make time for the final elective one in order to become a Google Educator.

I've also signed up for a Google Apps For Education summit in London. This summit will be held at an international school in downtown London, UK and I really do hope to gain a lot. I'm quite new to this Google Education thing and really want to keep up. Especially in order to maintain as iCoach or instructional technology specialist in my own school and therefore I cannot only rely on Apple hard- and software. Google is around all of us and particularly the students and I want and need to keep up and add the useful education tools from Google to my lessons and the way I teach and the way students could learn.

And at last but not least I applied for the Google Teachers Academy and was notified this week that my application was approved and I am going to the Google Teachers Academy in Amsterdam on the 4th and 5th of November. This was great news for me this week and I do hope that at the end of november I'm so comfortable with Google Apps for Education that I can and will use this and SMARTamp (which is linked to Google Apps) in my classroom.

GTA Application video (in Dutch language)

Thanks to all the North American SMART Exemplary Educators, that I met at the Global SEE Summit in Calgary this summer for the inspiration and especially Lise Galuga. Now on to the last online Google course! #Chrome