Google’s Education Station
Teachers are overrepresented in the Heck Of A Guy blog audience1 so when I learned of Google’s portal dedicated to educators I wanted to spread the word.
Google has consolidated several of their already-existent products on one site, the Google for Educators Portal, and provided suggestions about how each of these might be used in the classroom.
The press release for the site included these examples of teachers using Google tools:
A teacher in Virginia uses Picasa with his students to create picture collages of famous Americans. At a school in California, teachers use Google Calendar to schedule events and reserve resources such as the computer lab and projectors. One teacher in Chicago has her students practice graphing data using Google Earth, the spreadsheets in Google Docs & Spreadsheets, and earthquake data from the U.S. Geological Survey. And students across the country completing their English homework on the word processor in Google Docs & Spreadsheets will always be able to find that assignment, no matter what computer they’re working on.
Give Me A G, Give Me An O, Give Me Another O, …
Google has also introduced the Google Teacher Academy.2 By attending the Google Teacher Academy, it turns out, K-12 teachers can become – ta da - Google Certified Teachers.
The Google Teacher Academy web page explains:
The Google Teacher Academy is a pilot program designed to help K-12 educators get the most from innovative technologies. The Academy is a one-day experience at Google’s Mountain View Headquarters where participants get hands-on experience with Google products and other technologies, receive instructional resources to share with colleagues, and share innovative instructional strategies with other local educators. Upon completion, Academy participants will become Google Certified Teachers.
The first session, the Northern California Pilot, is set for Tuesday, November 7, 2006 at Google Headquarters in Mountain View, CA. Deadline for applications is October 22, 2006.
~ The Google Teacher Academy web page ~
~ Google for Educators Portal ~
Credit Due Department: I first read about Google for Educators at Search Engine Watch
Footnotes
- It is probably not coincidental that both teachers and Mac users – see Google’s Mac Pack are more frequent visitors to this site than one would expect from a random section of internet roamers. In any case, Google’s creation of new portals for teachers and for Mac users makes writing lead paragraphs for this blog an efficient affair today. There is probably a great pun to be made on the lines of “A Macintosh Apple for teacher,” but I am clearly not the one to make it. ~back~
- I’m a tad hesitant about including the Academy since the teachers I know are already overwhelmed by seminars and certifications, but it seems that this entry about Google for Educators should be as complete as possible ~back~
