Google Mobile Bootcamp Sweden - Stockholm (part II)

Today was a very good day at the Google Mobile Bootcamp at Bromma Folkhögskola near Stockholm. I was very pleased with my sessions about Google Classroom and could tell that the attendees were happy with me sharing workarounds in Google Classroom. And due to the fact that I did this session twice today helpt me to understand and work even better with this application. Some new things and creative ideas came along, whilst sharing and discussing Google Classroom with the Swedish teachers. Can’t wait to start with this in the new period with my classes and share new ideas with the teachers in my school.

My last session was level two Certfied Educator about Blogger, Calendar (and the sharing settings) Forms and My Maps. With the help of the attendants I was able to show them how to create a form real quickly and have the content imported as a layer in My Maps, which showed the places where the teachers lived. Amazing tool. And we discussed about other pedagical values of the Google Forms and My Maps applicactions within the Google Apps for Education domain.

At the end of the day I shared the awesome workaround of the in only in gafe running collaborative tool SMARTamp, by showing the teachers workspaces that my students did create earlier this year.

Now I need to start processing on doing Google Bootcamps with EdTechTeam in the Netherlands.

Bootcamp Google Apps for Education - Gothenburg (part I)

Traveled to Gothenburg, Sweden to show and share my experiences with Google Apps for Education; in particular the focus on Level 2 of the certification program. Which contains applications like blogger, Google sites, adding annotations to a YouTube video, my maps, creating forms, sharing options of Google Calendar, sharing files and documents. All in favor to work smart and focus on the three C’s: collaboration, communication and creation.

Bit too technical if you ask me, but a good way to prepare for the final exams to become a certified Google Educator Level 1 and/or two. From my opinion teachers shouldn’t worry or bother about the technical background of certain applications. Google Classroom does a real good job by being a portal for all those background technical stuff and makes it easy for students to gain access to certain folders and files and a platform is created where students can collaborate together on different tasks and assessments.

So I’ve shared a lot of stuff about Google Classroom: adding students, students’ rights, Classroom stream, reposting assignments, collaboration, adding teachers and the more pedagogical value of the use of Google Classroom. I do hope that the attendants did learn something from my sessions today and I wish them all the luck acing those Google Educator Exams.

At the Demo-Slam I shared the SMARTamp application: cloud based collaborative software, which only runs on a Google Apps for Education domain and can even be shared cross domain. I shared two workspaces created by my students and one created by my and Danesa Jepson (#smartee from CA) her students as a collaborative project.

Me and my colleague that I brought with me were very fond of this bootcamp idea and thought of the idea to organize such a thing for the students in our school. We will try to do that in our school. Will keep you updated.

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

Professional development 2014-2015

During the past school year me and my students did a lot of collaboration with school classes from abroad (United States, Surinam, Curacao, Czech Republic and Saudi Arabia) using tech tools as SMART Bridgit and Skype. I was at BETT 2014 in London, UK and met a few SEEs from Canada, Spain, the UK and Finland and did a few sessions at the SMART Collaborative Classroom and did a session about the use of social media in the classroom at the biggest social media and education summit in Amsterdam. I went on a study trip 'Finland Calling' to Helsinki, Finland from September 22nd till 28th 2013 with the headmaster of my school to have a closer look at the Finnish education system and to gain more about differentiation in the classroom. And from december 2013 my classroom was transformed into a SMART Collaborative Classroom and I have tried a lot new ways to engage students more to cooperate and collaborate with each other whilst using the SMART Boards. I also want to focus on BYOD for students, because since a few months our school has WiFi for all students and will start with BYOD next school year.

Inside my SMART Collaborative Classroom I want more student engagement whilst the use of their own devices such as laptops, smartphones and tablets and really want SMARTamp to get going. I'm quite familiar with SMARTamp and will learn a lot more during the Global SEE Summit in Calgary, Canada which should be the best PD thing for teachers ever. Will share more about this one later.

Because SMARTamp is connected to the Google accounts and as inspired by some other SMART Exemplary Educators from the US, I want to do some Google training. At first an online training to become a Google Educator and later in November I want to attent the Google Teacher Academy in Amsterdam to become a Google Certified Teacher as well.

During the next school year I'm looking forward to join a Learning Circle from the Global Teenager Project again with my 'world citizenship'-classes and cooperate and collaborate with other classes from around the globe. Perhaps we could even visit another school as an expedition in another country next school year.

And at last I want to try this Peer Scholar thing, which should be pretty cool to use in my classes. Let the summer begin and I will share more about professional development on this blog ...

SMART Collaborative Classroom from the past school year