Google Certified Educator Level 1

Recently I took the online training through Google to become a Google Certified Educator. As an educator, and thus a life-long learner, I thought it best to continue my experience with Google Apps, particularly with students who are becoming more and more digitally literate. I appreciated the training, which teaches you how to use Google Apps in various ways in a faux classroom. It is a good way to even gain ideas on how to use some of the programs with Google, or even how to modify how I assign or communicate with students. The training is self-guided, which I found helpful; some of the sections I feel quite competent in, while others I needed to learn a few things. At the end of the extensive training, there is an exam. The exam has a time limit, and also costs $10, but it allowed me to show off my knowledge of Google. I plan on continuing this training, to become a Google Certified Educator Level 2. I look forward to learning more about this, and continually working towards integrating technology into the classroom successfully, in order to increase student engagement and achievement.

Digital Citizenship

Digital Citizenship is a great reminder that classroom lessons and etiquette are not enough for high expectations.  We (Educational Staff) should hold ourselves and our students to face to face guidelines of conduct even when interacting digitally.  There are laws that guide us in the physical classroom and in the digital classroom. Digital Citizenship is a great way to get an overview and a quick reminder throughout the year!

Getting Going with Google

This is a great introduction to Google Drive and the basic features of it.  I had no experience with Google Drive before this course, and I am ready to jump start this school year using Google as my classroom cloud storage! I am so excited because I have been able to access my drive from all of my devices. I can access it from home & school (for convenience). Google Drive has a wide variety of products you can use. I can't wait to dig deeper and use these more & more!

Digital Citizenship

Teaching digital citizenship is not just for the tech teacher or Librarian but should be taught in the classroom as well. But when does the classroom teacher have time to teach this? So it falls back on the teach teacher. The information is very clear on how much is 'fair use' for educators. I love all the lessons you have on the Internet.

Google Basics

I just finished the online course of Google Basics.  I love the interaction with this course in creating a shared folder with Google documents, Google sheets, Google forms, and Google slides. The presentation and resources were all excellent. Although Cheat Sheets seemed to be an ad, I enjoyed all the cool resources. I can't wait to get started.

Google Basics

This course was a nice introduction to some of the Google basics such as Docs, Drive, and Sheets. I had previously been comfortable using Google Docs, but this course introduced me to something new and wonderful, Google Forms. I thought this was great! I've already come up with some ideas on how to use Forms in the classroom. I used the course to become even more familiar with the other Google basics which has been helpful in the day to day use of Google at school.

Transforming Instruction

It found the SAMR model very interesting. It was interesting to think about how I use technology and how I can take what I am doing now in the classroom and, by making a few adjustments, get the students to be working on a much more higher order thinking activity.
The growth mindset portion of the course was also beneficial and something that I have applied more since taking the course.