There's no arguing with such understated graphics and inspirational music: education is going Google! In this post, I shall attempt to demystify what it means to be a Google Educator, and whether it's worth it.
Since I haven't actually gone to the professional development to become a Google Certified Teacher, my advice is going to be from a rather limited perspective, but when I got the idea to try to figure out what being a Google Certified Teacher entails, I discovered that Google's coverage of the topic is about as helpful as the above video. It's also spread awkwardly across several different webpages, so I thought that at the very least, it'd be nice for y'all to have the information in one place. Plus, this way you can watch me go through the process before you decide whether it's worth doing yourself.
Since I haven't actually gone to the professional development to become a Google Certified Teacher, my advice is going to be from a rather limited perspective, but when I got the idea to try to figure out what being a Google Certified Teacher entails, I discovered that Google's coverage of the topic is about as helpful as the above video. It's also spread awkwardly across several different webpages, so I thought that at the very least, it'd be nice for y'all to have the information in one place. Plus, this way you can watch me go through the process before you decide whether it's worth doing yourself.
----------- OVERVIEW -----------
The first thing I realized on my quest is that there are 3 different certifications you can get from Google: "Google Educator," "Trainer," and "Google Certified Teacher." Trainers train other educators about Google, and I'm not going to focus on that certification in this post.
SO. To become a Google Educator, you take five free "courses"—four required ones (Gmail, Calendar, Docs & Drive, Sites) and one elective (either Chrome, Chromebooks, Tablets w/ Google Play for Educators, or Implementing Google Apps.)
Then, you pay a "small fee" ($15 a pop) to take the exam for each course and, after you've completed all five exams, Google mails you a certificate that says you are now a Google Educator. Sounds a little bit like a sham, especially since it's not clear what you get out of being a Google Educator. I imagine that having a certificate from Google certainly won't hurt your chances of finding a teaching job, and I have learned that it is strongly recommended that you become a Google Educator before you apply to be a Google Certified Teacher, a certification which seems much more marketable. (From where I'm sitting, I can't say I'm 100% clear on what the benefits of doing that are, either, but the training's definitely a lot more comprehensive and the people who have done it seem pretty pleased.)
To become a Google Certified Teacher, you have to be one of 50 lucky applicants chosen to attend Google Teacher Academy, a free, two-day professional development. There's an upcoming one in Mountain View from July 30-31 for which the application is due May 14th—link to follow.
What's in it for you? According to their website, "two free days of training... access to a private online community, opportunities to work closely with Google, a special GCT badge [for your on and offline personas] and more." Is this Google trying to recruit people to go out and spread the gospel, thus getting Google into more schools? Most definitely. But I am pretty OK with Google as far as corporations go, and Google Drive-ing up classrooms has been pretty effective, as far as I've seen (I mean, did you watch that video??).
So for the rest of this post, I shall proceed to explore the steps it takes to become a Google Educator, as well as the application process for the Google Teacher Academy/becoming a Google Certified Teacher, and you can judge whether it's worth it yourselves.
So for the rest of this post, I shall proceed to explore the steps it takes to become a Google Educator, as well as the application process for the Google Teacher Academy/becoming a Google Certified Teacher, and you can judge whether it's worth it yourselves.
----------- GOOGLE EDUCATOR COURSES, PT. 1 -----------
The first thing I would like to point out about Google Educator courses is that they are FREE. They don't even require signing up for anything. So if you're of the "hell naw I'm not going to pay $75 for Google to send me a piece of paper" mindset (i.e. you don't care about the certification aspect) that doesn't mean you can't browse the courses and familiarize yourself with the finer points of Google, thus getting the same information you would sans exams/fees and, ideally, bettering your practice!
There are two levels of courses, and you only need to take the exams for Level 2 to become a ~Google Educator~ (you actually don't even need to take the courses first—there's no credit for them, and nothing's stopping you from looking up answers while you're test-taking.) I chose to ignore the Level 1 courses because I assumed they are for n00bs based on this description:
I did, however, take the Basics Exam because I was curious. Unlike the Level 2 exams required for becoming a Google Educator, this one was free. If you're logged into Google, you don't need to do anything else. It's 30 questions, took me ~5 minutes, and looks like this :
I got a 90% (maybe those lessons weren't for n00bs after all), was not shown my correct or incorrect answers, and Google emailed me this lil certificate which I am pretty sure is meaningless (but maybe I'll put it up in my future classroom anyway):
If you're interested in the Level 1 lessons, you can find them here (Gmail, Calendar, Docs and Drive, Sites, Search, and Chrome) but this blog is movin' on up.
----------- GOOGLE EDUCATOR COURSES, PT. 2 -----------
GMAIL: Classroom Application
According to Google, Gmail is "an essential skill in the process of learning and one of the core tools required for Google Educators. To effectively teach your students, you’ll need to understand how Gmail is applied for teaching and learning." The course on Gmail has 5 lessons, in which you will allegedly learn:
-How to use Gmail to increase your own productivity
-How to increase communication amongst all members of the school community
-How Gmail can help foster student communication and collaboration
Lesson 1 is an interactive tour of Gmail, which was an absolutely bizarre experience. Talk about the end of the internet. The information was great, especially if you aren't that familiar with all the crazy things you can do to your inbox, but that thing is seriously straight out of 1998. Google suggests you take 10 minutes to explore whatever that is, but I was overcome with the urge to close it immediately.
Lesson 2 is called "Productivity and Classroom Management Skills," but seems to be a more aesthetically pleasing/helpful look at Gmail basics. First you watch a video about composing an email (it does get into specifics, like shortcuts to create a bulleted list) and another about a search of your inbox. Next, you learn why labels are better than folders:
Then you learn about priority inbox (which I swear by) and more about filters. Then it's the Tasks feature, keyboard shortcuts, and labs (where you try out Google's experimental features.) I've decided to stop linking to each of their videos because this is a tutorial about taking the courses, not about using Gmail, and you can find them all in one place here, in the Gmail Level 2 Course.
Anyway, my verdict on Lesson 2 is that is WAY more helpful than Lesson 1, which you should skip. Gmail has a lot of rad features that you have to either know about or go out of your way to look for, so I would recommend this lesson to anyone looking to optimize their Gmail experience, regardless of classroom application. (Side bar, none of lesson 2 was about classroom management...)
Lesson 3, "Increase Community Communication," teaches you about contacts (pro tip: "You can add custom fields like 'Parents’ Names' or 'Graduation Year'"), chat (Google says: "This can be great in the classroom for one-on-one conferences with other school colleagues or parents," I say, meh...), and groups (wherein you create a list of contacts so that you can email a bunch of people in one step.) That last one's useful for emailing a class list, so here's the tutorial on it if you don't already know how.
Verdict? Stop giving your lessons unduly exciting names.
Lesson 4, "Foster Student Communication and Collaboration" (I guess students aren't in the afore-mentioned community), exclusively covers using in-message Google Translator to allow for international pen pals. Seriously?
Lesson 5 is simply called "Advanced Gmail," and links you to even more activities.
In conclusion, if you're looking to become a GCT you could probably pass the Gmail exam without sifting through all this. But if you aren't that familiar with all of Gmail's features, it's worth checking out Lesson 2 (and, I suppose, Lesson 5) to learn what's up. There's not really much about Classroom application, however. They also have this list of additional resources.
CALENDAR: Classroom Application
Calendar is an essential skill in the process of learning and one of the core tools required for Google Educators. To effectively teach your students, you’ll need to understand how Calendar is applied for teaching and learning. To begin, review each lesson and complete each video or activity. You will learn:
-How to use Calendar to increase productivity and efficiency
-How to increase communication and collaboration amongst all members of the school community
-How to plan a course curriculum and schedule using Calendar
If this is really all it says it is then I guess we can disregard my entire Planboard tutorial! Here's the course.
Lesson 1: more of the same madness. Just don't do that to yourself.
Lesson 2: "Google Calendar is an outstanding tool to leverage in your role as an educator or school administrator. This includes adding student assignments, copying assignments, attaching class or project files and creating work folders." Okay, so I already knew that Google Calendar is pretty advanced in viewing/sharing. You can create multiple calendars (like work and personal) and view them simultaneously or separately. This is also great if you want to share a work calendar but you don't want your colleagues to see that you're getting a Brazilian on Tuesday at 4. I did not know, however, that you could add attachments! You could create a separate calendar for every class, and put in assignments like you would an event (Wed-Friday project, for example.) Then you can attach your handouts, and if that calendar is shared with kids and parents then yay! (Before one of the videos mentioned sharing with students and parents, I assumed it would be for co-planning with teachers, which you could do, too!) Here are some more suggestions of how you could use group calendars at your school from Google:
-Class calendar for class-related events such as activities, class meeting times, testing schedules and lesson objectives
-Homework calendar with detailed descriptions of homework assignments, links to relevant materials and due dates
-School-wide holiday or academic schedule with in-service days, holidays and other scheduling anomalies
-Group project deadlines and milestones for a group or team to track workload
-School sporting event schedules that can be shared with the entire school
(Lesson 3): Sometimes it can be helpful to separate long-term project assignments from the general class schedule. For example, if there is an end-of-year research paper and presentation, it might be helpful to have a separate “Research project” calendar that has all the due dates and milestones for the project. Then the project calendar can be viewed on its own. It is easy to find the information because it won’t get lost in all the events scheduled in the class calendar.
Another example of a way you could use a special project calendar is when working on a group project. Group members can collaborate and share a calendar together so everyone can have access to the project meeting times, project deadlines and milestones, and other project related activities (going out to do a survey/market research, conducting an interview, etc).
They also have really detailed information about all kinds of limited sharing that's worth checking out if you're unsure.
Lesson 4: The curriculum planning, however, is weak. I would definitely stick with Planboard for an online planner. Sharing a Google calendar with teachers, parents, and students, seems like a really efficient way of keeping track of deadlines and events, but it's not really designed for lesson planning.
Lesson 5: Advanced Calendar
Once again, things you might find more interesting if you already know your way around Google, but presumably not things you would need to know to pass the exam.
DOCS & DRIVE: Classroom Application
Now we're getting to the good stuff! This course has eight count em EIGHT lessons, in which you learn.....
Can I get a woot woot?
Lesson 3: Save time, effort, and paper? Only the most compelling argument!
Lesson 4 (Manage Class and School Data) has a bunch of uses for Google Drive we haven't even touched on!
Skip to 0:50 to see examples of some classroom uses in this video:
Lesson 6: Forms
The best thing about Forms (which are basically surveys) is that the results are automatically tracked in a Google Spreadsheet. Here's the best tutorial that Google has linked me to yet:
Lesson 7: Drawing in the Classroom? Sure.
My Drive conclusions: everyone go onto the course and learn all about forms! There were way more videos than the one I embedded, and lots of uses! Other than that, most of it's old hat.
SITES: Classroom Application
If anyone wants to know how to make a School or Classroom website, the answers are here! Much more succinct than the other courses, and also something I didn't already know how to do.
ELECTIVE!
As I mentioned, for your 5th course you have the option of taking Chrome (yawn),
,
,
or Implementing Google Apps, which I have chosen!
Implementing Google Apps is like Google's big sell. There's ~1 million videos in this course that are largely testimonials for why and how to get Google in schools. Lesson 1 (Setting a Technology Integration Plan) addresses buy-in and links you to school launch campaigns. Lesson 2 features "security comes first" and "your school's privacy is respected" (thanks, Google!) Lesson 3 is an extremely technical overview of how to get a school domain, and Lesson 4, Success with Professional Development Resources, tells you how to find teacher trainers.
Bottom line? If you're going to take the exams to be a Google Educator, pick Chrome as your elective. It has like one thing. But if you're actually interested in implementing Google in schools, this course is quite comprehensive!
----------- GOOGLE EDUCATOR EXAMS -----------
Here's what you need to know if you want a Google Educator Certificate:
1. You can skip straight to the exams without first sifting through the courses (and you can always refer to them as you're taking the exam.)
2. Unlike with the Basics Exam, you need to create an account.
3. Creating an account looks like serious business. Apparently, some employers are interested in your Google status!
4. Every exam is $15, so it's $75 if you want dat sweet, sweet, certificate. There's also an option of a voucher code, though, so maybe you can find an employer to pay for you!
5. Word on the street is that although Google recommends allowing 2 hours per exam, you can knock them out in half an hour each. So good to know.
----------- APPLYING TO BE A GOOGLE CERTIFIED TEACHER -----------
To become a Google-Certified Teacher, you need to attend Google Teacher Academy, a free, two-day professional development. To attend Google Teacher Academy, you need to submit an application (which includes short answer questions and a video clip.) Only 50 applicants are selected, and it's strongly recommended that you first become certified as a Google Educator. They do, however, prioritize in-area applicants. The deadline to apply for the July 30-31 GTA in Mountain View is 5/14.
The affordances of being a GCT that they name are:
-two free days of training
-access to a private online community
-opportunities to work closely with Google
-a special GCT badge and more
I'm going to go through the GTA Application questions for you, as there's no way to go through them ahead of time, or to save your application once you begin, but all of Google's information about becoming a GCT is here. The application can be found here.
APPLICATION
The first few pages of the application ask for pretty straightforward information about you, what grades you work with, etc. (On the first page, one required field is "Organization Website," and it took me awhile to realize they meant the website of the school or organization with which you are affiliated.) They also ask for a link to your resume in google docs, so it might be a good idea to have that up to date and ready to go before you begin.
The next page wants to know all of this:
so what I get from that is a) know that info about your school before you start (because there's no way to save this application) b) don't fret, twitter and personal website are optional! and c) but obviously, they are looking for someone with hecka followers because, as mentioned above, they clearly want the biggest bang for their buck. If they're giving you a free PD, you better go tell the world how great Google is. Somehow, I doubt that with my 12 followers on Google + that they would want meeee.
Next there are two short answer questions: "Tell us about how you've navigated ambiguity or hardship" and "Tell us about what inspires you to be part of the GTA Program." Each allows 800 characters, max.
Finally, instructions for submitting the original, 1-minute video:
And then all there is to do is wait. The whole thing would take less than 10 minutes to fill out if you have all your answers ready.
----------- CONCLUSIONS -----------
I just don't know, you guys. What do you think? Pointless, or the future? Or both? I can't really say without having attended Google Teacher Academy. I have a feeling it's mind-blowing and life-changing and would totally make me wanna drink the Kool Aid. But after going over the application, it seems like they have a very particular (well-networked) type of candidate in mind. So my next question is, if I don't have a chance (for now) of attending the Google Teacher Academy, is it still worth it to become a Google Educator? I think (for now) no. Until I feel I would be a competitive applicant for a GTA (which, I think, would be worthwhile), I don't know that there's any value to being a Google Educator in and of itself. I may be wrong, and I certainly wouldn't be surprised if this changes in the next few years, but I don't think that many employers are looking for Google educator certificates. For now, I think we are swamped enough that doing this can wait. I would, however, highly recommend that you check out their courses, at least the ones on technologies you're less familiar with. If you're a luddite, go figure stuff out and wow your kidlets with your Google magic next year. But I'll be saving my $75 for groceries, at least until I feel like it's time to join the Academy.
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