Many NH Schools Have “Gone Google”
NH Educators Learn 21st Century Skills and Schools Save $$$
Contact:Allison Mollica, NHDRC Grant Coordinator
603.340.0873 | allisonmollica@gmail.com
LOCAL EDUCATORS ATTEND GOOGLE EDU “BOOT CAMP” TO LEARN INNOVATIVE INSTRUCTIONAL STRATEGIES
Pembroke, NH, July 2012 —This could be the summer remembered as (many) NH Schools “Going Google." Sponsored by the New Hampshire Digital Resources Consortium - www.nhdrc.org - NH school technology administrators and educators were trained by Google Certified Teachers and Trainers to help with their deployment of Google Apps for Education.
The NH Google Apps for Edu Boot Camp, and NH Digital Resources Consortium, was made possible through the Enhancing Education Through Technology (Title IID) Program at the NH Department of Education. This program awarded SAU #53 in Pembroke a grant to manage and lead the Digital Resources Consortium project. The NHDRC’s mission is to develop professional development, training and provide tools to help schools reach their 21st century potential.
In July, over 250 NH educators attended NH Google Apps for Edu Boot Camp at one of four locations across the state: The Seacoast Professional Development Center, UNH Manchester, Keene State College, and White Mountains Community College. The event was organized by NHDRC coordinator, Allison Mollica, with support given by the Local Education Support Center Network. Each Boot Camp was an intensive, 11 hour training where teachers received hands-on experience with Google's products and technologies, learned about innovative instructional strategies, and received resources to share with colleagues. To further extend the reach of this initiative, each Boot Camp participant will host a professional development session in their school district or region during the 2012-2013 school year.
Almost 100 school district technology administrators participated in Google Apps for Education Deployment training in May and June. Clearly this is the summer that NH Educators are “Going Google!”
What may be the most interesting to NH residents and taxpayers is that Google Apps for Education is available to all K-12 schools for FREE! This includes, email, web hosting, and more - potentially saving districts thousands of taxpayer dollars!
For further information about Google Apps in Education - http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/edu/
4 comments:
Exciting advances in education for students of today which will be extremely beneficial to their success.
I have come to totally embrace Google in my classroom. Now with my smart board and projector, I create a google document that I want to read with the class and work on together. In my reading class, I am always looking for great articles in the news. I copy and paste the article from the original site, and clearly cite the site for my students. I make note of telling them the original site and I click on it to show them the article on cnn.com or foxnews.com. Then I explain how I have copied it into the google document so it won't have all the distractions from the site when we read.I also space it out in a way that makes it easy to read. We read and we highlight, in google, the important parts of the article. Note taking in this way, as a class is fun and easy. Students use the smart board pen and they themselves take turns highlighting the Google document,choosing their favorite colors. This whole class hands on interactive use of Google documents that I then can share with each of them, makes a 'boring' activity fun and actively engaging!
Stephanie
A simple yet innovative way to bring learning to a higher level. All of which wouldn't be possible without coordinating the online tools that are available to us. Until Google Apps for Edu came along we always had to bring the 'online world' offline to do these things. This way you leverage collaboration, access, interaction and sharing - without ever descending from the cloud. Thanks for sharing!
Yes, and with the training offered by the nhdrc.org, teachers can use these Google tools effectively and efficiently. Collaboration has never existed before in the ways offered by Google. Perhaps I should buy stock in Google, but I cannot praise them enough for how much they have opened up education to collaboration. When teachers and business leaders get together to speak of how education can better serve the students who will be entering the work world in the 21st Century, the business leaders primary argument is that students need collaboration skills. The business world has changed and as educators we have to provide students with the 21st Century skills they need to be successful. If the ability to collaborate is one of those skills, as industry has stated, then being able to collaborate in real time in shared Google documents is a technology rich way to do build collaboration skills seamlessly!
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