GEG Communities
Newsletter
Issue No. 70 | Date: August 28, 2021
Local Success Stories from GEG
Please submit your articles here bit.ly/GEGarticle . We love to hear your stories.
Help us to help you promote your events and good work by tagging @GEGProgram on all tweets you make about events or feedback you get from members. We love to join in your celebrations and share your good work.
For those of you already back to school or just about to start "You've got this!
Keep Googling, keep smiling, keep safe.
When I grow up I want to..." Travel the Solar System"
Through the inclusion of code in an educational context at Colégio Santa Eulália with GEG SUPERTABi Portugal, students learn to create, learn to plan, learn to solve problems, building something with a purpose, in conjunction with the "Solar System" content of the Sciences area, integrated in the commemoration of Earth Day, guarantee the opportunity to develop their originality and creativity, by participating in the proposed activities. By fostering interest in research, discovery and innovation in light of the need to face constant challenges, we promote autonomy, creativity, responsibility, as well as the ability to work as a team through the creation of activities to solve problems. problems using computational thinking.The integration of programming in an educational context allows us to diversify learning scenarios by bringing together programming languages and making a "bridge" with everyday situations, promoting the resolution of problems that encourage the development of logical reasoning, articulation with the areas curricular, carrying out contextualized projects that as a whole provide the student with the opportunity to build their own knowledge.
Launch of GEG Kolkata India
It is my proud privilege to announce the launch of GEG Kolkata, India on Sunday, August 15, 2021. It was a special day for the launch as we also celebrate the Independence Day in India on this date. On this special occasion, I urged all educators to ‘free’ their minds of any inhibitions and plunge into the world of EdTech that Google has made possible for everyone around the globe. The onus lies on us as educators to revolutionise the world of education and bring about a difference to the lives of our students who are the 21st century learners.
I am Sudeepta Chatterjee, Founder and Leader of GEG Kolkata, India. I am a passionate English teacher and I have been teaching for the past 17 years at Delhi Public School, RK Puram, New Delhi, India. I look forward to learning, sharing and growing with world class educators from all over the world who have all come together for the cause of education. A big shoutout to all educators, teachers, trainers, mentors to join hands on this common platform, our very own Personal Learning Network to ‘Learn, Share, Inspire and Empower.’ I urge you all to ‘Be a Teacher Transformer’
Join GEG Kolkata on this exciting quest @ https://sites.google.com/view/geg-kolkata-india
Level 2 Bootcamp - GEG Ahmedabad and GEG Pune
GEG Pune and GEG Ahmedabad launched just less than a year back and we have been conducting weekly PD sessions where tech tools are shared with the community. With more than 100 combined sessions for educators, we have had lots of requests for Training for Educators to help them get Level 1 and Level 2 Certified!
A bootcamp for Google Certified Educator Level 2 was organised by GEG Ahmedabad and GEG Pune on August 13-15, 2021 from 6 to 8 pm IST each day. We had many mentors joining us to teach different topics pertaining to level 2 exam. This not only made the sessions interesting but also brought in the creativity in delivering the content with the audience. We had around 374 registrations from educators across the globe who showed interest to attend the bootcamp.
This Bootcamp was one of the unique one as:
It is the first of its kind in India and APAC
It contained most of the GEG Leaders of GEGs in India
With over 374 registrations and 18 mentors and daily two hours for three days, a total of 2352 voluntary hours were poured into the bootcamp.
Take a look at the GCE Bootcamps Google site :
A detailed intro and brief about all the mentors is in this Intro slide deck:
All the attendees were provided with an Attendance Certificate and relevant content to enable them to learn, practice and prepare for Level 2 Exam.
It was an enriching experience for all the mentors as well. The recording of the boot camp is as under:
Reshma Honap and Dr. Vishal Varia
GEG Curitiba - Brazil
With the support of the Google Educator Group Brazil and Group of Google Educator Group Curitiba, the Raiz Nova Institute was founded in Curitiba, in 2020, with the purpose of contributing to the preservation and recovery of the environment, as an instrumental piece for a conscious education for children and young adults to tackle social inequalities. Learn more about this beautiful and impactful project at raiznova.com!
New GEG Launched : GEG Vadodara, India
GEG Vadodara was launched on July 25, 2021. The launch presentation focused on: What is a GEG? The role of a PLN in encouraging life long learning among educators. This was followed by a mini workshop on creating interactive digital notebooks using slides. The members of GEG Vadodara range from K-12 teachers, university professors including teacher educators in Faculties of Education in 3 local universities in Vadodara, BEd students, tutors and corporate trainers. Most of the attendees at the launch were new to GEGs.
Along with regular training sessions that are open to all we are currently working on a collaboration with the pre-service teacher training program. This will help in fresh graduates of the BEd program step into the profession better prepared with 21st century skills for 21st century classrooms.
The leader and founder of GEG Vadodara is Deepali Medhekar. She had setup her school's Google Workspace in 2011 and has been using and training teachers and students at her school in Alberta, Canada. She is originally is from Vadodara and still has family that she visits regularly there. She did her BSc, BEd and MEd (Edtech) at The M.S. University of Baroda, Vadodara. The first of the captains for GEG Vadodara is Chaitrali Gupte. She is Leadership Development Consultant and Corporate Trainer. Chaitrali resides in Vadodara and Pune, India.
GEG New England video series
GEG New England continued their video series this month with the episode titled "Back to School with Google" streaming on YouTube Live. Host Jeff Bradbury interviewed New England GEG Leaders as they shared tips such as creating a teacher plan book using Sheets, creating a custom app using Slides, best practices for setting up your Classroom, creating custom headers sizes, Google Maps project ideas, and reviewing the Applied Digital Skills curriculum. You may view the episode at https://youtube.com/watch?v=8ACKNIEXnbo….
GEG Leadership
Leading your GEGs
Spotlight on a GEG leader : Dilce Eclai de Vargas Gil Vicente
This month’s spotlight is all about Dilce Eclai de Vargas Gil Vicente the leader of GEG Santo Antônio da Patrulha in Brazil, since 2015.
How did you get involved with Google Educator Groups
I have always been a teacher who questioned traditional teacher training practices. I knew, the classroom should be different. In 2007, I started working in Distance Education and in the years that followed I got to know Google tools and was completely in love. I could picture the possibilities that I had only heard before. I started using Google tools to train teachers with digital tools and strategies. These Google tools helped me bring to life the new classroom I had heard so much about before. In 2014, an event about the creation of Google Educators Groups was held at Google Brazil. Soon after, GEG Porto Alegre published a very small note in the newspaper, we contacted them and created our GEG Santo Antônio da Patrulha in 2015. From that point on, we've been working continuously to train teachers, having helped many municipalities, schools, especially in 2020 and 2021. Today, I am a certified Level 2 Educator and Trainer and I am working towards the Google Coach certification.
What is your most memorable GEG moment?
We had many memorable moments. Here are four of those very special moments:
The first one happened a few years ago when GEG Brasil held a face-to-face meeting at Google São Paulo office, but I didn't have the financial resources to go to São Paulo and present the work we were doing locally. I presented with 20 seniors who were the participants of a digital program led by our local GEG via Google Hangout and it was awesome. The Program, which is still active today, aims at training seniors 60+ to read and write, using Google tools. They learned to do everything in the cloud.
The second impactful moment was in 2020 when we held two state events, each with more than 3000 participants, synchronously and everything was done with Google tools, free of charge in a truly GEG spirit.
The third moment was the participation at GEG ON AIR Brazil, coordinated by Carla Arena, in which we presented our e-Book built totally collaboratively in 2020. The e-book continues to help teachers and their students.
What is your favourite thing about being a GEG leader?
What I like the most is to be learning daily with a very active and inspiring community and network. Our GEG has 29 active members who meet every week to share new knowledge and prepare training sessions for fellow teachers.
What do you feel you have personally gained from your involvement?
My involvement brought friendships, knowledge and professional development.
Tell me something that you learnt in the last month.
Last month, Carla Arena, our beloved GEG Brasil leader, participated in a live and showed us new features to use with Google Slides. I used this knowledge and built several mock apps with Google Slides to inspire teachers. I created something new based on Carla Arena's teaching and inspiration.
What event that you have coming up excites you?
Right now I'm organizing a 40-hour course for a group of 60 teachers in a municipality in the north coast of Rio Grande do Sul, which has recently created Google Workspace accounts. I'm planning to conduct training using active learning methodologies and hands-on activities.
Before you go, do you have any advice for anyone thinking of becoming a GEG leader?
Being a GEG leader is voluntary and hard work, but we get back so much knowledge and help that we can make our community projects come true. With GEG, changing the world through education is possible. I am so grateful for being a part of the GEG Brasil community.
Why not follow @DilceVicente or take a look at the GEG Social media
GEG Events
Bring your community together to collaborate
GEG Idaho Launch
Follow them on Twitter https://twitter.com/IdahoGEG
GEG Idaho would like you to join them on their launch https://bit.ly/GEGIdahoLaunch onb September 22, 2021 at 6pm MST
GEG Ortigas
Handa na ba kayo para sa school year? Join us on September 7, 2021 as GEG Philippines offers free professional development on how to use Google Tools to Plan, Do, and Check for your classes. Please follow on Twitter to get the registration link.
GEG Learn
Individual professional development opportunities
Be Internet Awesome
As you head #BackToSchool, consider teaching your students how to become better digital citizens with #BeInternetAwesome, our free program that teaches the fundamentals of internet safety. Learn more: http://goo.gle/30w0YKO
To make the most of the Internet, kids need to be prepared to make smart decisions. Be Internet Awesome teaches kids the fundamentals of digital citizenship and safety so they can explore the online world with confidence.
New Level 1 and Level 2 exams
From September 1, 2021, educators will encounter a new question type on the Level 1 and Level 2 exams. “Active multiple-choice” questions will replace scenario-based questions as the experiential section of the exam. Testers will still be asked to dive into Google Workspace for Education tools to explore features, but the exam will assess that work through a selection of answer choices rather than direct review of files. The result will be more updated questions that reflect current educator contexts, while retaining the uniquely hands-on format of the Google Certified Educator exams. Please note that while the scenario-based format is changing, the goals of the Certified Educators exams remain the same and the prep work should be very similar.
The registration process will begin with educators selecting the language for their exam. Educators create an exam profile (or enter an existing profile) after selecting a language. And finally, the exam launch process will no longer utilise an exam-specific Google Workspace account. Instead, educators will access their exam by simply following a unique link emailed to them after registration.
Learn more about these changes in these FAQs.