Getting All Googley!

Getting Started with GAfE

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!

Some thoughts on working with the "reluctant tech teacher"

I was just reading an open question on a forum which asked about how to reach/teach the teacher who is reluctant to use/integrate/try technology in their classroom.  It had quite a lively (and long) discussion going which drew me in to reading through all of the postings.  And then I found myself thinking and writing a response myself . . . but I ran out of room in the comment posting!  So here is my entire response as I wrote it . . . before having to cut out some bits to make it fit onto the forum:


Educational technology acts a lens focused on a classroom, a lesson, an activity . . . and the teaching and learning that is going on there.  Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it), the lens magnifies everything . . . . the good, the bad, the ugly, and the awesome.  This discussion began with questions about the reluctant or techno-phobic teachers and how to encourage them to use more technology.  Someone earlier on mentioned that teachers need to "let go of the reigns", which I think is a huge component that sometimes gets missed in this discussion.  Teachers know that technology is a lens on their pedagogy and teaching practice, and many are reluctant to let go of control in their classroom as it could/might/will reflect poorly on them if/when things go wrong.  Some of these teachers frequently experience problems with technology just in their day-to-day work which they cannot solve - why would they want to put themselves on display in front of a class of students if there is a chance of public failure?

Time frequently comes up as a major reason/excuse why a teacher is not using technology in their classroom.  They don't have time in their course to do something different, or the time in their day to look at something new.  They don't have time to learn a new tool.  If they used a new tech tool with their class and it failed, they don't have the time to fix it, time to plan an alternative lesson, or any way of making up for the lost time.  Then there is always the argument where they want to see absolute proof that this tech tool will save them time and will positively affect teaching and learning in their classroom . . . otherwise they cannot see investing the time to learn and implement the new tool.

So I think these two threads are intertwined and connected to one another.  As a tech coach, I frequently hear the "time" argument in all of its different flavours from faculty.  But what I think is really happening is that the time argument is thrown at you as it is hard to argue against or refute - not only is it amorphous and ever-changing, but it is also very personal to each teacher.  The time argument is masking the real underlying reason, which is fear - the fear of letting go, of trying something which might fail, and of stepping aside from being the "sage on the stage" or the expert in the room. As a computer science teacher, I have long been accustomed to not being the absolute expert on everything . . . all of my students typically had a very singular and narrow field of CS that they were intensely interested in and they typically knew more about that one particular topic than anyone within 100 km.  So not being the expert is something that I have long been comfortable with.  However, many teachers are not, and prefer to stick with their tried and true methods to get through their curriculum rather than facing the fear of change.

Change is a powerful and frightening thing.  It can be hugely motivating, yet completely paralyzing as well.  So how do we address this fear?  I once read somewhere that a person will only undergo a process of change if it is easier for them to make the change, rather than to keep with the status quo.  The need to change has to come from within, has to be self-realized and internalized, or else there will be resistance and push-back.  So how do you do that?  Well, there's lots of pieces to the puzzle that when combined, seem to have worked for me which include:
   * Just in Time Learning - providing training individually or in small groups which is directly focused on a tool which will be employed immediately
   * Exposure - showing off a variety of tools to show faculty what's out there and to give them ideas of how they might be used in the classroom (think Speed-Geeking here)
   * Connecting with Others - seeing and connecting with other teachers who are using a particular tool in the same discipline/class/course/grade level as they work in, provides teachers with the evidence they need to move forward
   * Tech Coaches and Peer Coaches - having access to people in-house who are available and accessible is huge; not all schools can afford to have tech coaches, but you can leverage the abilities and talents of those who are already in the building
   * Admin Support - having a built-in underlying support (which could mean connecting tech integration with evaluation) can really help to get things moving . . . some people need this kind of nudge before moving forward.

A Short Jaunt to Learning 2.013 Singapore

Getting to Singapore for the Learning 2.013 conference involved a very long flight, but well worth the effort. After working in Asia for 8 years and attending the Learning2 conference in its infancy, I know that it continues to evolve and simply gets better and better every year. There's certainly nothing like it in Europe, where I am now. And organizing a conference around cohorts who share similar roles, issues, concerns and successes just makes too much sense - how come other conferences do not do this? These are the reasons that I still tell people when they ask me why I have come so far for a conference. Plus the learning - my learning.

I used to say that being an AP Computer Science examiner and going to the exam reading every year was the best professional development that I ever did. I still look back fondly at those week-long trips to South Carolina to sit in a heavily air conditioned room for hours on end, learning a rubric, teaching it to others, and grading a single question hundreds of times over, day after day. Add in the regular feeding times every two hours, and you have a landlocked cruise ship experience where the only activity is grading exams. So why was it so good? Why did I do it year after year until the College Board retired me as an international examiner? Because of the people who were there and the learning that took place. The best of the best CS teachers were all there - trading ideas, talking shop and best practice specific to CS education, and looking behind at the trends and ahead to where we are all collectively going. It was really hard, exhausting and mentally challenging work, but the growth and learning that you came away with in a week was phenomenal. But I don't grade AP exams any more - I no longer teach the course and they cut-back on bringing in international teachers due to costs.

But this is how I see the Learning2 conference now - hard work and a long ways to go, but filled with learning and growth. Last year's conference was special as I was able to take the entire coaching team to my old school in China (Western Academy of Beijing) and show them around the city. This year was the first time Learning2 has moved out of China and I was also able to have reunions with both BISS and WAB folks that I used to work with. Funny that, as I am writing this while on vacation in Istanbul where we are having a week-long reunion with old friends and colleagues at Robert College.

My main takeaways from this year's conference revolved around: finding balance and practising mindfulness with students when it comes to technology use; creating a basic photography mini-course at my school which will help students become better creators and producers; gathering some new ideas and tweaking some old ones for updating how we deliver technology PD; employing cognitive coaching techniques when working with faculty in my role as a tech coach; and giving back to the wider community through two workshops that I presented which were well attended and received. Perhaps the most exciting development from the conference is that Learning 2.014 Africa is now in the works for next year, which I hope to get involved in at the organizing committee level - again, a lot of hard work but with big rewards in the end.  

See you in Addis Ababa and Bangkok next year!