Being Googly

Just over a week ago I finally sat down and took my Google Level 2 Certification exam! And I am super excited to announce that I passed! It has been a long few months of training - I would sit down whenever I could find the time, so it was so fulfilling to finally be able to complete it.

Truthfully, I was very nervous about this exam. There were a lot of new apps and material in this part of the training, and Sheets seem to be my nemesis. When I am practicing in Sheets, it seems to be okay, and it makes sense, but as soon as I stop practicing with pivot tables, etc. I forget it all!

Needless to say, when I finished the exam, I sat there in nervous anticipation, waiting for the results. It was a flood of relief when the results stated that I passed!

Now I need to reflect on next steps and how I plan to use my certification and the things I've learned to improve my teaching practice.

I'm really excited to sit down and incorporate Google My Maps into my ESL and Spanish classes - there is so much potential, and there are so many different things that I would like to do. My Spanish class is an International Baccalaureate class, and one of the important aspects of the program is culture - Google My Maps will allow my students to collaborate throughout the year to create a map with various cities/sites throughout the world. We could have a separate layer for different aspects of culture: architecture, ancient ruins from indigenous cultures, important museums or galleries, tourist destinations, etc. This way they could have a resource that includes images, etc. that they can refer to as they prepare for their exams, or prepare for their Written Task which is a cultural comparison.

As for ESL, Google My Maps could be an exciting way to share where my students are from, where they have travelled, etc. It's a great way to share and build community in my class. And this is just My Maps - there's also Google Arts & Culture, Google Lit Trips (which I tried out with my ESL students last week), and many other awesome apps.

As for the bigger picture with respect to my own professional goals: I want to work towards becoming a Google Certified Trainer. One of the requirements is to have 5 recent training sessions that I have led, and while I have led quite a few, I'm not sure I have led 5 technology-related sessions recently. And really, by starting fresh, I can meaningfully sit down and reflect on how the training sessions went, how I can improve, and I can also ask for feedback from the people in the sessions, which will really allow for some constructive feedback and improving myself. This should be fairly easy to reach, as Chrome Squad will allow for many opportunities to share what I know with staff and students.

Part of my challenge is that I'm not sure I totally realize how much I know. I always feel like I have so much to learn, so I don't compare what I know to what others know. I'm only starting to recognize how much I really do know about the GSuite and technology in general. I think that putting myself out there more this year has really allowed me to realize my strengths and what I have to offer and share with others.

I'm really happy with my decision to move forward this year with both the Level 1 and Level 2 Google Educator certifications. I feel like training and practicing for these exams alone have really forced me to slow down and take a look at what I already knew and then build upon that and learn even more exciting apps, add-ons, etc. I am looking forward to applying to become a Google Certified Trainer over the next year - even just the process alone will force me to put myself out there more and find effective ways to teach/show others the benefits of GSuite and integrating technology in the classroom.

That's it for now! If you haven't already, you should really check out the training modules that Google offers - they are totally worth the time! And let me know what apps, add-ons, etc. that you find useful in your classroom - I am always looking to learn more about what is out there!