I am so excited to be a part of the Google Education on Air Conference today.  I will post my recorded session here later this week!  

My session is about using Google Apps for Edu to combine student centered learning, universal design for learning, ICT literacy, with project based portfolio showcasing how Lebanon Junior High School incorporated Project Adopt a Country (PAC) to weave all of this together.  

The concept of PAC is not unique to Lebanon, in fact many schools have student study a country and do a variety of research projects.    What we are doing with this project can be applied as a cross curriculum study and to any grade level.  Currently the PAC project is completed entirely in Social Studies but our long term hope is that the collaboration will expand so students will complete projects for PAC in math, science, consumer science - etc where applicable.  

Google Apps for Edu has allowed for a one-stop-shopping experience.  All eighth graders spend the year using google docs (documents, spreadsheets, drawing, presentation and sites) as well as other great Web 2.0 tools (Glogster, Prezi, Timetoast, Animoto, etc) and learn how to embed code to display their work within their Google Portfolio. They learn about the "sharing" and permissions so that the embedded Google Docs can be viewed by all who view their portfolio etc.  

Students, when finished, can link this project portfolio to their comprehensive K-12 portfolio.

Google Apps for Edu has created unlimited opportunities!