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?

SMART amp Champ!

I recently submitted a session about SMART amp to the Netherlands Google Apps for Education Summit, because I really wanted to attend this summit and I even liked the fact more that I could share my experience about this new platform, which engages students to really collaborate with each other. I've been using this for the past half year or so in a few of my classes in a self created domain, to gain access to Google Apps for Education. My students have gained a new e-mail address and access to SMART amp. In- and outside the classroom I can really see the power of SMART amp and I have even shared logins with schools from abroad to give them access to the workspaces my students are working in.

Workspace of my students and students from Orland Park Junior High (IL)

Now I have the privilege to share the how to and my best practices with SMART amp tomorrow at the gafe-summit. I'm really looking forward to it. My presentation is for sharing, the workspace the attendees will be working in tomorrow not.

And it's getting better, because next month I will be joining 12 other SMART Exemplary Educators from Europe to attend an exciting new program for SEEs called Amp Champs! As a member of this elite group, we will receive a two day advanced SMART amp training in Madrid, Spain and support. This is really awesome! I will meet and learn with and from the best SEEs from Europe such as Emil Waldhauser (Czech Republic) , Gonzalo Garcia (Spain), Serigio Cabezas (Spain), Tapani Raitanen (Finland) and our teacher and mentor Heather Lamb (Texas, US). Looking forward and will share my experience in Madrid on this blog ...