As part of my Technologies of Instruction class at Grove City College, I took part in the Fundamentals training provided by Google for Education. Basically, it was a 13 section series about Google. It covered all areas of the Google suites along with some cyber saftey and security basics. Each section was broken down into mini sections. After reading and doing the activities in each mini section, you took a quiz. At the end of each section was a cumulative quiz covering each of the mini sections.
Unit 1
Covered the benefits of using technology in the classroom, especially in the 21st century
Went over Google suites tools like docs and classroom
Covered good digital citizenship, talking about copyright, online safety, and communication
Wrapped up by talking about "going beyond the textbook" and using technology to enhance your lessons
Unit 2
Covered expanding your access to help and learning
As teachers, we don't need to be experts on technology; there are resources out there to help us
Talked about Google help center, Google search, and Google for Education help forums to answer any questions
Also talked about personal learning networks and how you can find and reach out to other educators via Google
Unit 3
Making your classroom almost paperless through Google Docs and Drive
Drive has many options that were talked about and explained
You can minimize class copies by moving all of tour worksheets to Google docs, forms, sheets, slides, and drawings
Google forms allows you to create online exams and quizzes and quickly get feedback
Unit 4
Covered the ways in which Google can save you time
Went over how to find specific emails in Gmail
Google chat allows for meaningful student conversation in real time even if you aren't together as a class
Google group creates stronger class communication
Google sites allows you to create a portfolio of your students' work and efficiently show it to everyone
Unit 5
This unit 5 covered staying organized with help from Google
Google calendar allows you to keep all of your appointments handy and easy to see and remind yourself
Google tasks and Keep are also great ways to keep you organized and on track
Unit 6
This unit covered using Google for meetings
A shareable meeting agenda sent out ahead of time can make in person meetings more productive
The agenda can be linked right to the meeting event on the Google calendar
Of course it covered Google meets and it's many valuable function
Unit 7
This unit covered using Google sheets, groups, drive, and classroom to Bring student work online
Classroom allows you to organize work more easily; you can assign work, receive it, and give feedback on it all from the same place
Classroom can be linked to all of the other Google suites options
You can also comment directly on things like Google docs
Unit 8
This unit covered measuring and sharing student growth
Google sheets and forms give you an easy and organized way to lay out student data
By being easy to see, the data is also easy to view and analyze for growth
Sheets also has built-in bar graphs if you need them
Unit 9
This unit covered the internet and using Chrome specifically
Talked about searching smart; knowing what to search to get the result you want, understanding those search results, and Narrowing the search to get better results
Talked about helping students learn how to research, and determine which cites are reliable or not
Wrapped up by talking about how you can use Chrome in your classroom
Unit 10
This unit covered building interactive lessons with Google
Slides can be made so much more engaging by inserting images, infographics, and charts
The Chrome webstore offers a lot of fun interactive content that goes along with a variety of lessons
Google earth has many different options to create a cool lesson in geography
Your plan, Your planet is a fun game that teaches students about caring for their resources
Unit 11
This unit covered the world of Youtube
It walked through finding channels and subscribing to them, and filters to get you the right content
There are blockings for inappropriate content as well as quality settings that you can set to where you need them
Unit 12
This unit covered groupwork
Docs and Drive can be set up to allow students to collaborate
By viewing the revision history through Docs, you can check for student involvement in these collaborations to make sure each student participated
Groupwork can be very well organized in keep, forms, and sheets
Unit 13
The last unit covered digital citizenship and online behavior
Students need to be taught how to stay safe on the internet by keeping their personal privacy and being able to spot scams
Make strong passwords to keep your information safe
Teach students to watch what they post and do, as that can end up on social media for good and cause them a lot of harm