Cumulative Gains at BETT
I was fortunate enough to be invited to speak at BETT - the global Education Technology show in London. I was asked to speak on behalf of Google, as one of the educators speaking at Google’s Teaching Theatre. I’ve long been a vocal advocate of Google Apps for Education and have seen its transformational effect in my own teaching practice and in that of my friends and colleagues – at my own institution as well as on-line.
I gave a talk that focused on what might seem like a pretty dull aspect of education technology – being efficient. Being efficient is not exciting. Being efficient isn’t attention grabbing but, I hope I argued, everything that is exciting and attention grabbing becomes possible when you become more efficient.
The Profile of a Modern Teacher
I saw this great infographic posted on the Wayfaring Path blog, and I think it provides a lot of stimulus for thought and reflection. It covers issues of learning technologies, of course, but also much more within teaching practice. I’m not sure I can hold my hand up proudly and say that I do all of these, certainly not all the time, but they are all things I would say I would hope to do and hope to develop. Some are scarier than others and I imagine different teachers are going to have very different ideas of which are the difficult ones.
Google Certification
I’ve been working an awful lot lately on the educational technology front. In particular I’ve been working within my institution to manage some of our transition to the use of Google Apps for Education. I’m an enormous fan, advocate and enthusiast of these apps and have been working with them for the best part of a school year now so I was very pleased when I heard that Google were overhauling their entire Certified Educator system.