Google Teacher Academy - Check!

Well, I'm back from the Google Teacher Academy in Mountain View, still trying to digest all that happened. What an experience! Two days of intense learning, together with 61 more educators.

Here's an overview of what happened these days:

Day 1 - GTA - Arrived at 7:30am. Meet my team. Reception and breakfast. Welcome message and overview. Demo slam by the team leaders. First 2 break out rotations. Break and snacks. Get to know each other activity. Third rotation. Lunch. Google product demo. Last 2 rotations. Another break and snacks. Sharing of ideas. Google product demo. Digital literacy. Break. Action plans. Pinning ceremony. Dinner. End of day at 8:00pm.

Day 2 - Unconference - Arrived at 8:00am. Breakfast. Free choice hands-on sessions. Lunch. Free choice hands-on sessions. Googleplex tour. Closing. End of day at 4:30pm.

The days were packed with new information, revolving around 5 major strands: 
Visualizing your World, Sharing your World, Collaborating with the World, Exploring your World, and Searching your World. We got to see and hear first hand, from the leaders of important projects taking place in Google, what they are currently working on.


I am very impressed on how much Google has dedicated to education. There seems to be an educational value into any Google product there is. Pretty awesome!

I have tons of notes to sort through, much to remember, and a lot to try out! And to think that we just touched the surface of all the functionality of the major tools.

I value the professional learning community I have entered and the strong relationships I have established with great people from around the globe.

Thank you Google for an amazing experience and for the opportunity to help change the world!

Cheers!

Comments

  1. PaulDecember 9, 2012 at 9:43 AM

    Sounds like you had a fun "unconference". I haven't attended Google's seminar, but hopefully soon. It is great that Google is so committed to education! I am starting my own google keyword website. After reading your review, I look forward to future conferences! Thanks!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Diana Irene SaldanaDecember 9, 2012 at 10:01 AM

    You know, it was all fun, from beginning to end! If you have a chance to attend a GAFE Summit, that's a great place to start. http://www.gafesummit.com/ What a great idea your keyword website is! Good luck!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Creating QR Codes

Image
Last week, fourth grade students started working on a project about Native Americans. They will create an exhibit of the different tribes that includes artifacts, pictures, posters, and QR codes. Parents will be invited, along with other teachers. The kids are so excited preparing for this special day! What is new to the kids is what is a QR code, how to create one and what to do with it. Well, QR code stands for Quick Response code. It works in a similar way as barcodes do. In this case, the image is a matrix that shows an arrangement of squares.  A QR code contains information. It could be a URL, text, a telephone number, etc. In order to "read" a QR code, you will need a QR scanner. There are apps you can download to your mobile device and easily read these codes. The iPad app we use at school is called " Scan ". There are two QR code generators I suggest using : QR Stuff In this application, you ...
Read more

Hello World!

Hello World! This is how I started my first tweet some years ago and this is how I start my first public blog. I am trying to reach anyone out there that shares the same interests I have. The purpose of this blog is to share my experience as a technology trainer at an elementary school. I will be posting what has worked for me, any resources I recommend, and in general, the day to day experiences I go through in my daily life. Check back frequently and feel free to comment and share your experiences too. Let the learning begin!
Read more

Discovering Add-ons & Scripts

Image
Hi! It's back-to-school time. I hope your school year is off to a good start. As for me, it's been a very busy season. I can tell you that, amongst many other events, two major situations take place each year at my school: Open House and New Google Apps accounts. What's so special about these two? They both require a great deal of prepping and tech assistance. For instance, during Open House, the Tech Integration Team takes advantage that all the parents are present to have them register for tech orientation sessions. A couple of years ago, we'd lay out long sheets of lined paper, one for each different session, with a limited amount of lines. In the next years, we decided to take it a step further and created a Google Form. We had laptops available during each of the Open House nights and asked parents to register electronically to a tech session. While parents were submitting forms, I'd be in the background, checking numbers against the capacity we had fo...
Read more