Google Certification

Having just completed the Google Level 2 certification exam (yes, its called an exam), I was thinking about how stressful exams are. I haven't sat an exam for many, many years. Even when upgrading my TTC to Bachelor of Teaching & Learning way back in 2003, there were no exams. That qualification was based on assignments.

Once again, to be put into the place some of our learners are in is good for us to understand what it feels like.  There was a mixture of emotions leading up to taking the exam - anxiety, fear of failure to say the least. Why is this so? Even having been well prepared by going through the training material diligently - even if I thought I was au fait with the content, I was still quite nervous going into the exam.

Adult training or Andragogy, is well documented and I was aware of this as I prepared and went through the training material and considered my experience and knowledge as I did them.

I considered the assumptions of andragogy [1][2]  following this exam to see if there was something in here to explain the nerves...   Need to know: I knew the reason why I was learning this. 

• Foundation: I was using experience as the basis for learning
• Self-concept: self-concept was not a tick - I wasn't involved in the planning or evaluation of this instruction
• Readiness: this had immediate relevance to my work 
• Orientation: this learning was mostly problem-centered, scenarios were included, and there was some content-oriented material.
• Motivation: and the motivation for me was internal rather than external as I knew I needed to dig deeper into the Google Suite. External motivation was also a factor as it is an expectation of our employment. 

No real clue in there either as all but one was a tick. Maybe I am just an over-achiever? And it just goes to show - you're never too old to learn. 

Upshot of it all is that I now have Google Educator Level 1 & Level 2 and ready to take on the Google Certified Trainer next - but first Apple Teacher.

1. Instructional Design: Theories - Andragogy M. Knowles Encyclopedia of  Psychology. http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/andragogy/  Retrieved 2018/08/12

2. Malcolm Knowles, informal adult education, self-direction, and andragogy. 

http://infed.org/mobi/malcolm-knowles-informal-adult-education-self-direction-and-andragogy/ Retrieved 2018/08/12

How Did I Miss This?

We all know how important feedback is. We all know how important learning intentions and their associated success criteria are. So how did I miss putting these elements into my Cybersmart lessons? No excuses except to say that lessons are an hour long and time pressure is huge- just as all teachers experience all day - every day.
I had to get back to what I know works and have inserted these 2 elements into the Cybersmart lessons.
Learning intentions and success criteria really should be co-constructed - but there is that "time" word again.
Feedback and feedforward go hand in hand. For the purposes of the Cybersmart lessons, I am using Sheena Cameron's 2 medals and a mission, or 2 stars and wish for younger students.

Incorporating this feedback into each Cybersmart lesson will lead into quality commenting on blogs when students need to comment in a positive, thoughtful, helpful way.
The format for blog comments are...
Positive - something done well.
Thoughtful - a sentence to let us know you actually read/watched or listened to what they had to say.
Helpful - give some ideas for next time or ask a question you want to know more about.

Created in Google Drawings

A Cybersmart lesson for Smart Footprint

Making "How To" Videos

This week I wanted to give oral instructions on how to use Voice Typing in Slides. I had experienced Screencastify a wee while back so dived in to record the instructions. I found it interesting that I was a tiny bit nervous about recording myself and then putting myself out there. This is how our teachers and learners will feel as well I think. Always good to be in the position of a learner.

Part of this learning for me was about how to embed it in blogs. The Manaiakalani protocol is to save the video to Drive and to embed video content from Drive. Screencastify saves videos automatically to Drive so all I had to do was to find out how to get the embed code.

As usual, there are complete instructions on the Manakalani Cybersmart site here.

2 steps that I followed for this post are..

So here goes with my first Screencastify video on how to use Voice Typing in Slides...

Creating Portfolios with Google Sites, presenter - Emily Fitzpatrick

Google Sites are our bread and butter in Manaiakalani for visible and rewindable learning.  Our Pilot teachers build a class site to make learning visible and rewindable for their students.

While I am quite happy with how my use of the new Google sites is developing, this session was a good reminder of how to work with people new to Sites to get them to set up a site from scratch. As this is my focus for our Tairāwhiti Toolkit later in May, a very timely session indeed!

Emily's resources are here.

The other great resource for anything Google is Steegle.

Visit our Tairāwhiti Site which Maria, Renee and I build for our Manaiakalani Outreach Programme.

Keep it Together! presenter - Rachel Duckworth

Google Keep is my new best friend. This is a powerhouse organisation tool. Add the Chrome extension to really power it up. Thank you Rachel! My life is sorted!

You can view Rachel's presentation here.

Best tip of the session...

Automate the Mundane, presenter - Emily Fitzpatrick

Emily really got us making tech work for us. there was so much in this session that I was almost dizzy. Take time to go through the slides and give them a go.

I tried setting up IFTTT App on my iPhone but it is definitely better on Android as Emily pointed out. I was trying to set my phone to turn off wifi as I leave my house and turn it on when I return. How good would that be?

Keynote #2: A Māori Perspective on developing Resources to Support Te Reo Māori, presenter - Te Taka Keegan

Te Taka Keegan has a mantra that if you need something then you probably need to do it yourself. This session highlighted the difficulty in NZ around having Te Reo Māori resources for classes.

Te Taka has worked with Google and Microsoft to develop resources such as Google web search in Māori and Google Translator Toolkit for Māori and The Māori Macron Restoration Service.  Take a look at them and see if they are useful to you.

Taka did caution us about the use of Google translate as it is throwing up lots of inaccuracies. He thought he needed to make another trip to Silicone Valley to help them fix it up!

Taka showed us Swiftkey - an on-screen keyboard that you swipe to type. The beauty of this keyboard is that it remembers your keystrokes which is great for Te Reo Māori and dialects. SwiftKey learns your writing style to suggest your next word - much better than any other predictive text keyboard I have used before. I have been using it and already it has turbo-charged my keyboard on my iPhone.