Google Teachers Academy

Seventh of May, twenty-thirteen saw 52 educators from 13 countries directly influencing 32,727 students, 40,311 teachers, therefore indirectly influencing 410,885 students - sitting in a conference room in the Google Sydney office in Sydney ready to embark on 2 full days of learning.

The room is full of names I recognise from Twitter - educators I follow and learn from - so I am privileged to be part of this amazing cohort.

So what did we learn?

The first day was structured with workshops run by our lead learners, googlers and the GTA planning team.  They were based around Maps, automating your world, youtube editor and collaboration tools.

Here is a snippet from one of the workshops:
Creating your world - lead by Tom Barrett & Jim Sill
What inspires us to create?

Using youtube editor  we were given an image and on a post-it note, wrote down a phrase/ key words about that image.  This was then displayed and we used youtube editor to create a story around this image.  Throughout this workshop, we were given key points to consider when:

• The starting point - don't front load too early
• Prototyping is the key - fail early
• Share early
• Critique: fail fast to quickly move on

We also heard from Googlers about what life is like working for this amazing company. We had the token Google photo of the cohort and rounded up the first day with magic moments, the pinning ceremony and the dinner.

Day two was the Unconference.  With a relaxed feel, we heard from more Googlers and then designed our day of learning from each other.  This was a great opportunity to get a real feel for the talent that was in the room.  Part of being a Google Certified Teacher is creating an action plan for a project that will be completed in the coming year.  

This was an amazing experience and can highly recommend this face-paced, mind-blowing experience.

Here is my application video: