Our Day with the Google Expeditions Pioneer Program

After successfully stalking the Expeditions Pioneer program for the last 6 months, my partner and I were able to get signed up in time to be one of a limited number of stops on their internationl tour. This last Friday, the Expeditions SUV (driven by my new friend John) rolled up to our 6th grade campus and rolled out 3 travel cases with 90 Google Cardboards and the same number of ASUS phones to slip inside.

Google recommends having three dedicated classrooms to keep the Expeditions in all day, so we decided to run them through our three Social Studies classes, which meant every one of our 503 sixth graders would get a chance to take an Expedition. They're wrapping up a unit on South America, so what better way to take a virtual field trip than to take them to the 2014 World Cup?

We planned our Social Studies lesson with a focus on how customs, traditions and events (like the World Cup) can unite diverse cultures in a multicultural society. We started with a quick video on the World Cup, then led into a discussion about how sports can bring people together. There was some great sharing going on as kids made the connection that even though sports are competitive, the World Cup brings together people who would typically not be together to celebrate.

After that conversation, it was time to take our Expedition. We passed out the Cardboards and gave a quick set of directions. Then the kids put them on.

Bam. Totally hooked.

Our day with Google Expeditions

I have never seen students so engaged in my 12 years in education. Once they realized that they were actually in Brazil, they were tapping each other on the shoulder and pointing, sharing goggles with other students to try and show them what they were seeing, and (loudly) narrating what they saw as they toured stadiums and streets during the World Cup.

With Expeditions, the teacher uses a tablet that's linked to all 30 goggles to control what students are looking at. They takes students through various scenes, and within those scenes, students can explore by looking around, up and down through the panorama. Another nice characteristic of the teacher side is the information that you can pull up on the right-hand side and let students knows exactly what they're looking at (just in case you're not intimately familiar with the names of the native Brazilian artists who created works for Estádio do Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro).

When it was time to come back together and put up the goggles, there was a palpable sense of disappointment. They wanted to go to other places, see other cities, and talk about what they saw. Students who had glazed over in days previous were vigorously tapping the person next to them to talk about how cool the experience was. It was awesome.

Of course, anything that's a prototype is going to have its hiccups: the World Cup Expedition wasn't on two of the routers, a few of the phones kept dropping their connection, and Google's Cardboard has a slight design flaw where the phone you put in will just slide right out the side when you pick it up.

But our awesome Social Studies team rolled with it. They took students on another Brazil Expedition that worked equally as well with our lesson (if not better). We got the phones reconnected. And starting second period, we just showed the kids how to hold their Goggles so as not to lose the phone (in fact, the only person who had a phone hit the floor was a teacher who had stopped in to try it out).

It was an amazing, chaotic day, and totally worth it. It's experiences like this that students never forget. A huge thank you to Google for giving our students (many of whom have never been outside of South Dallas) the chance to travel 5,220 miles away and have their eyes opened to an entirely different world than what they've ever seen before.

Small Bytes: Google Classroom

Google Classroom is Google Drive management dressed in beautiful simplicity. Clean and straightforward, it's exceptionally intuitive in its workflow, and is the perfect hub for any digitally oriented classroom.

If you'd like to read more about the new features in Classroom, Alice Keeler has an excellent summary of them, as well as some more detailed opinions on always unchecking a certain box in Classroom (you'll have to read here to find out which one...).

If you want to see the features in action, please enjoy the latest edition of Small Bytes.

Other Small Bytes Playlists:
Google Drive Basics
Google Docs Basics
Google Slides Basics
Google Forms Basics

Why I'm not becoming a Google Certified Trainer. Yet.

I recently spent 3 days surrounded by 30 very nice ed-techie Texans, all of whom were focused on the same goal: passing 5 tests to earn the Google Trainer Essentials Certificate. If you had asked me at the beginning of the week what my end game was, my answer would have been "becoming a Google Certified Trainer." But now, I'm not so sure.

Just to be clear, you'd be hard pressed to find a bigger evangelist of Google Apps for Education than me. It streamlines teacher workflow, enhances collaboration, and gives student a safe, creative place to explore what it means to be a digital citizen. Marry it with a Chromebook and it takes less time to power up than it does to turn to page 128 in a social studies textbook. It's a game-changer.

But the more I think about it, the less convinced I am that becoming a GCT is the path I need to be on right now. The first step was passing the 4 core tests (Docs/Drive, Sites, Gmail, Calendar) and 1 elective (in my case, Chrome), which proved to me that I know what I'm talking about (and I got a fancy certificate to show people when I corner them at dinner parties). Step 2 to becoming a fully certified trainer would only require a resume, 3 references and a screencast, none of which are difficult things to do.

But here's my hangup: annual recertification requires conducting 12 Google trainings every year.

Practically speaking, that would probably happen without even trying. My job is to train teachers, we're piloting Chromebooks, and we're rolling out GAFE. Opportunities abound. The issue is more philosophical: would I be exclusively focused on the needs of my teachers when one of my considerations in planning professional development is making sure I get my GCT hours in?

I'm just wondering if any trainer certification in the education realm that's conferred by a vendor carries with it a certain conflict of interest. It seems to especially be the case when the recertification process requires prioritizing the vendor's product.

While a Google app may often be the best tool for a given situation, equally as often it won't be. I want to make sure I keep the freedom to train teachers using whatever works best, which means evaluating a variety of tools from diverse sources, then picking the one that meets the need without stopping to consider if it meets my recertification requirement.

So for my first year, I'm going to make sure I'm focused on who I'm serving, not on reaching a training number. Maybe once I get some experience under my belt, I'll realize that there are plenty of hours to go around. We'll see. But for now, that's why I'm not becoming a Google Certified Trainer...yet.

10+1 Takeaways from the @GoogleForEdu Texas Roadshow

(note: If you're frantically searching for the final post in the "3 Smashing Tools for Online PD" series, fear not, it's coming later this week. For now, please enjoy this brief intermission.)

Google for Education has taken their show on the road in the Lone Star State, mainly traveling the I-35 corridor, but with jaunts to Houston and West Texas tossed in. Today I had the pleasure of getting schooled (in a good way) by the folks from Google and the Highland Park tech team on their path to GAFE implementation. Here are 10 takeaways from the day.

1. Google Cardboard has to be experienced to be believed
   We had 30 minutes to explore Cardboard before we started, and I visited an Icelandic geyser, an aviation museum, and experienced the history of Marie Antionette in 18th century France. Pair Cardboard with Google Expeditions and you've got an unforgettable way to get kids to expand their thinking to a global level.


2. 68% of Fortune 500 companies use Google Apps
   With this fact in mind, why do we keep having conversations about students having to know how to use Windows and MS Office to be prepared for the future? Legacy system advocates, can we just move on?


3. Resources for questions about trust and privacy
   Google's information on trust, privacy and safety is obviously full of useful information. If you need a ready-made presentation to show to stakeholders, Dr. Henry Thiele's very practical slide deck "Killing the FUD and Dispelling the Myths around GAFE and Chromebooks" is an excellent starting point.
   
   And for those responsible for the privacy of students in your district, the COSN Privacy ToolKit is a must have resource for navigating the legalities surrounding student data.


4. Synergyse
   An easily-deployed, on-demand professional development Chrome extension, Synergyse walks teachers through the functions of Google Apps as they're using them. It's like having an edtech coach living inside your computer or constantly looking over your shoulder, but in a way that's a touch less invasive than constantly sharing personal space with an IC.


5. Flippity.net
   Flippity.net lets you turn Google Sheets into flashcards, name pickers, progress charts, and certificates of completion. It's one of those tools you may not need immediately, but the time will come when you'll be glad you know it's there.


6. Chromebook Public Kiosk mode
   A handy trick for lower grade levels, in Public Kiosk Mode Chromebooks can be used by students without anyone logging in. You can also set up a Chromebook as a Single App Kiosk with only one app running in full screen mode, which will be essential as state testing moves online. We know that Pearson and ETS are using apps that are now compatible with Chromebooks (TestNav 8), so in Texas, all-online testing is probably sooner than we think. That's great news, especially since the first round of computerized assessment went so smoothly last year...


7. "The best device is the one you're actually going to use."
   I enjoyed this off-handed quote from Erika, a tech coach at Highland Park High School.


8. Cloudready turns your old computers into Chromebooks
   If you have a computer less than 8 years old, Cloudready replaces Windows/Mac OSX with a customized version of Chromium so you can have the same Google Apps experience (and management) that you have with your current Chromebooks. 


9. GADS and GAPS
   I'll be the first to admit the depths of my technical ignorance. Until two days ago, I pronounced Linux as "lie-nucks" (a shout out to my geeky friends who set me straight) and I only recently figured out what Active Directory (AD) does. But I had always been told that AD (and the passwords stored there) couldn't sync with Google Apps. The Google Apps Directory Sync (GADS) and the Google Apps Password Sync (GAPS) take care of these issues, which means one less password for everyone to remember. 


10. Google Drive permissions can now be set by Organizational Units (OUs)
    If you're the GAFE Admin for your district, remember when you had to lock down Google Drive so no one in your organization could share outside your domain? You had good intentions (trying to keep your students safe) but it irritated the fire out of your teachers because they were under the same restrictions as the kids. Now you can restrict students' Drive sharing permissions so they can only share with others in your organization, yet still allow your staff to share freely. This is a much-needed change that comes from the incredibly responsive Edu developers at Google.
    
    (A special thanks to Peter Henrie from Amplified IT for explaining these last two takeaways in a way that even I could understand.)

Bonus Takeaway:
Powergistics Storage Solutions

Looking for a storage solution for when your Chromebooks are staying in one classroom? Powergistics makes a wall-mounted storage solution that frees up space and can improve the flow of distributing devices day in and day out in your classroom.

It was a fantastic, eye-opening day, one of those rare events where the things you learn you can put to use immediately. Fantastic job by the team at Google and Highland Park ISD for putting it all together, and if you can catch one of the last two roadshow in Texas (if they're not already full), I highly recommend it.