Simple musings, thoughts and ideas on educational technology, tech integration in the classroom and tech coaching . . . from my journey as a tech coach, computer science teacher and international educator.
When I joined the ranks of Google Certified Teachers over a year ago (GTA SWE 2013), part of my Google Project that I embarked upon was to build a Google Lit Trip . . . from scratch . . . to go with my father's award winning memoir "Things That Must Not Be Forgotten - A Childhood in Wartime China" by Michael David Kwan. My deadline for completing this project actually passed by two months ago (as I gave myself a year to build it) but in a sense I did make my original deadline . . . kinda/sort of. Let me explain . . . I began work on the GLT last spring and then put everything on hold until the summer so I could gather more information and old photos at home in Canada. Then, in the fall, I came back to the project and inserted everything that my summer research had uncovered, and continued my research to try and find the locations of some important places in the book. I was able to just meet my Christmas deadline, but little did I know that I was not even close to being truly finished with the construction process.
What I had not accounted for in the entire process was the amount of work that was required to get it into a presentable state . . . I made a serious mistake here in underestimating the level of detail that was required and the amount of writing that had to be done!
I had met Jerome Burg (the father of Google Lit Trips) before at a Google Geo event, so I got in touch with him about getting my GLT published on his official Google Lit Trips website. Jerome was very receptive to helping me develop my GLT, and was really excited about including historical non-fiction on his website, especially one set in China. Jerome's editorial work and feedback was fantastic. He combed through what I had produced and really pushed me to think about the overall experience of the reader and the fact that I was really telling two stories in the Lit Trip - both my father's story from the book and my own story of discovery as I researched and located different sites and information about my family. With Jerome's extensive feedback in hand (and burning a hole in my brain with each passing day), I decided to tackle everything over the long winter holiday . . . which never happened (getting the work done, that is ;-).
Six weeks later, I have reworked most of what I had previously produced, formatting and organising everything according to Jerome's guidelines and suggestions, rewriting practically everything to tell my own story with links and ties to my father's story, and taking the time to build a supporting Google Site. Now, I think I finally have a product that can be distributed and used by others which serves to tell my story of discovery, enhance the reading experience of "Things", and to provide the reader with visuals and background for the places in my father's book. I really hope that Jerome likes what I have created and that it is now in a publishable state - I just sent it off to him to peruse, poke and prod . . . fingers crossed!
My father David Kwan, with my grandfather John YL Kwan (circa 1938)
Lessons learned and take-aways from building a Google Lit Trip
Completing the research and gathering all of the extra resources is only the beginning - the creation/writing process takes even more time
Conducting real-life, hands-on research with primary sources is tough, challenging and frustrating - trying to piece together information from old family photographs, or coming to terms with place names which have changed over time or are written differently, is very time consuming
Patience is a virtue - you will need a lot of it and you will be tested
You never know what surprises your research will uncover - now I know that I am 1/4 Serbian?!?, whereas before I thought I was part "white Russian" or Swiss (see my accompanying GLT website for the details of how I came to this realisation)
Brush up on your basic HTML coding skills - these will come in handy as you build information into Google Earth
As a teacher, I think having students build Google Lit Trips is not a simple endeavour to be undertaken lightly - perhaps teams of students could collaboratively build a GLT, or it could be undertaken as a major research project, or a tool like Google Tour Builder could be used to create a simpler Lit-Trip-like experience
Building a GLT will take far longer than you ever thought - double or triple your original time estimate
Think about where you will store online extras like photos and documents which will be part of your GLT - I used a Google Site to house these items
Working with historical sites which date back to before the satellite imagery contained in Google Earth takes some imagination and serious sleuthing powers
If you can find historical maps (which are drawn reasonably close to scale) that you can use as overlays in Google Earth, this adds a very rich and interesting dimension to the Lit Trip experience - but you will need that abundance of patience to get them to sit right, on top of the satellite imagery!
Creating a resource like this which is close to your heart is very rewarding in the end - building and sharing this kind of resource is one of the reasons we are teachers, right? And I think this kind of thing is seriously related to your Computing Karma . . .
Have you ever created a Google Lit Trip or tried to build one? What was your experience like?
When I started this ed tech blog about 15 months ago, I said at the time that it was mostly for my reflection on teaching and learning with/through educational technology . . . and I think that this statement still holds true. This is my 23rd posting, which puts me right on a 1.5 posting per month pace. Not bad for a first time blogger. As I write this short post, I have noticed that I have just reached the 1000th view of my blog.
Now, I am not so naive to think that all of these page views actually came from real, live people. Over the past year I have noticed a few hits along the way that have come from some automated trolling services in far-off lands. Plus there's the clear evidence that my postings have only had a few comments left on them, or have had a few people Google+1 them. So there is some evidence that people have read some of what I have written here, but I still maintain that this blog is for my reflection first, and sharing ed tech stuff with the world comes second.
So which posts have generated the most reads/hits? Far and away, the clear winner here is my second posting about the Unplugged day that I held last year ('84 on 8/4 Unplugged Challenge - Revisited). Coming in second was my posting about applying to the Google Teachers Academy (Getting All Googley). After that, there's a bunch that have similar numbers of hits.
Do you have a blog? How long have you been writing it, and how one did it take you to reach a 1000 hits? Do you know anyone who started a blog which they have since let fall away into the void of the internet? Why did it fail, or why did they stop writing it?
It has been almost a month since I attended the GTASWE 2013 in Stockholm, Sweden and I promised to write a post about the experience. Well, it was a blast for sure and well worth the effort of applying, making the video, getting myself to the GTA in the last week before our long winter break, and then trying to recover from being away from school for three days during the last days before Christmas.
Be prepared to put in long, full-on days at the GTA, meet lots of great, innovative and inspiring people F2F and online, work really hard with learning new tools and expanding your world, and then crash afterwards. I was only gone for two nights, but I didn't get much sleep while I was away. Not that jet-lag was a problem for me (like it was for some others coming from the US or Asia), as I only changed one time zone. The work days were just long (and dark in Sweden in December), so it was late to bed and early to rise . . . breakfast was served at the Google offices early each morning and I had a 2 km walk each way from where I was staying.
The biggest take-away for me from the GTA was certainly the people that I met and worked with, and the network of GCTs that I am now hooked up with. As an Apple Distinguished Educator, I know how valuable such a network of people can be as a resource, guide, mentor and sounding board - the growth and learning with Google started at the GTA and has been running full throttle ever since through the Google+ GCT group, which is very active and dynamic.
Becoming a Google Certified Teacher (GCT) involves creating an Action Plan for a Google related project that you endeavour to tackle over the next year. "How are you going to change your world?" was the project question . . . I went to the GTA with no clear idea about what my project would be, but over the course of the two days, it all started to take shape in my mind. On the first morning, I met Liz and we talked about a number of Google-related and topics over breakfast. Without having any idea who she is or what her role at the GTA was, we got to talking about working in Poland and her connections here. As I would be the first GCT in Poland, she wanted to talk later about how I might help her with something that she was already working on. It turned out that Liz Sproat is the Head of Education for Google, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa region) and she is working on a huge project to bring GAfE into Polish national schools. After discussing this more before the GTA finished, this has grown into the "big part" of my project. The "smaller part" of what I want to do involves creating and sharing a Google Lit Trip for my father's memoir "Things That Must Not Be Forgotten: A childhood in wartime China" (by Michael David Kwan). If you are interested in the progress of either of these parts of my project, then have a look here at my Action Plan Site.
My TechXcursion into the Google world is coming full circle now, since moving to Europe 5 years ago. At my previous school in Beijing, we never used Google Apps for Education (GAfE) as it was only sporadically available from within the Great Wall. In the 8 years that I lived and worked in China, I got to experience the first time that Google itself was blocked and the ensuing panic amongst faculty and students that cascaded throughout the school. As the blockade dragged on, it became an interesting case study for the entire school for how to still access Google, and for considering/comparing the other tools out there. So, moving to Warsaw was the real beginning of my work in the world of Google.
The first port of call was coming to grips with the school's poor implementation of GAfE, as it was laying mostly dormant and unused by faculty and students. The school staff was still primarily using a legacy email system, even though they also had Gmail accounts under a school domain. Students, on the other hand, only had Gmail accounts which were largely going unused. The student accounts were haphazardly created, which meant that it was impossible to tell which account belonged to which student in some cases, which accounts were no longer needed (as the students had graduated or left the school), or who "JiWon1", "JiWon3" and "JiWon7" actually are. To further complicate the problem, the two email systems did not play nicely with each other which meant that faculty could not look up a student email account, and students would send messages to their teachers which would remain unread as the teachers rarely opened their Gmail accounts. It took me almost a full year, but killing the old email system and rebuilding everything in GAfE for the high school was the obvious thing that had to be done.
Towards the end of my first year here, I finally got the green light to migrate the entire high school over to GAfE, which became my big project through the spring and into the summer holiday. I built a process for guiding the faculty who wanted to get rid of their dual email accounts, that I then used to individually start the migration. By the summer holidays, all but a couple of the HS faculty had made the journey, and the last few followed at the start of the new school year. The other school divisions decided to follow our lead and make the transition through the fall of the new school year as well. A major piece of the puzzle was taking down all of the existing student accounts, and then building unique accounts for everyone in the school K-12. Student accounts are identified with their year of graduation, so they now follow them from year to year as they move up through the school. Avenues for communication and collaboration finally were in place for everyone in the high school community. With everyone using the same system and tools, GAfE quickly became part of the vocabulary of the community and one of the big tools that is used everyday, in every class.
Google Geo Institute
Prior to summer holidays in 2012, I saw a link to the Google Geo Institute in London in June, which was still accepting applications. The application was relatively straight-forward, and I got support from my tech director to attend, so I put in my application and got accepted. The Geo Institute took place in the Google offices near the west end and theatre district - fabulous location but London expensive! And being in London right in the space between the Queen's Jubilee and the Summer Olympics was pretty cool. There were still huge banners and images of the royal family all around town, and the Olympic venues were being built all around the city. The pre-Olympic buzz was certainly in the air and it was exciting to just be in the city at that time.
Selfie @Google - by special permission (I had to get permission from the leaders to take this one pic)
The Geo Institute focussed on all of the geography based Google tools, and it was really great to work with some excellent trainers and guest experts with Maps, Earth, Sketchup and such. I think the highlight for me was meeting and working with Jerome Burg, the father of Google Lit Trips. The previous year, I worked alongside one of the English faculty and helped her work through Jerome's rather famous "Kite Runner" Lit Trip, so it was great to work with him. I also really appreciated spending some quality time learning and playing with Sketchup and Earth in an organised way. I got way deeper into these tools than I had ever before, especially with Sketchup where I build a rather elaborate doghouse in a very short amount of time - credit goes to the great trainers who were leading the workshops!
Google Teachers Academy - Europe 2013
When I saw the link to the application for the Google Teachers Academy (to become a Google Certified Teacher) which is being held in Europe this year, I jumped at the opportunity. After securing permission to apply from my school, I started combing through the application to see what it entailed, and all of the different kinds of questions that it asked, to get a better handle on the process. If you are going to apply in the future to attend a GTA, then I strongly suggest that you carefully look through the questions and draft your answers over time. Personally, I wrote down my thoughts and answers over about ten days before filling out the application form. I also went through a number of different ideas for the application video before settling on an "RSA Animate" style video on one of the required topics. Originally, I enlisted the help of one of my friends (the art teacher who is an excellent sketch artist and cartoonist) to see if he could make a series of drawing for me, but there just was not enough time for him to do the work. In the end, I built my own 1 minute video using Sparkol's Videoscribe, so I got to try out a cool new tool (a one week trial copy is free) and use it for a real project (just in time learning). My advice for the video is to really plan it out (even use a storyboard) as you only have 1 minute to work with. Below is my application video, which was successful as I have been invited to attend the GTASWE in Stockholm in a few weeks. I will post up another entry when I get back from Sweden!
