Google Certified?

So at this point I'm back on my own.  The three days of help were awesome, and I learned quite a bit from some of the more advanced bits and pieces that we covered in the training sessions, but now it's all up to me.  I still have a few exams to complete, and I'm not too worried about them.  After getting the first couple of tests under my belt, I feel much more confident, and I don't think they'll be that much of a problem for me.  I just have to find the time (they are time consuming) to sit down and get them done.  The upcoming break will be just the time to get these out of the way and on to the next step.
This next step is the big one for me that I think will be my biggest hurdle in becoming a Certified Google Trainer.  To earn this certification, one of the major requirements is having led training sessions on using Google's products in varied professional settings.  While I do teach with Google Apps every day with my students and also work continually with the teachers in my building on using Google Apps, I don't have much to list outside of that.  I do have one major presentation coming up at the MACUL Conference in March (that I'm super pumped about), but the bottom line is that it's time to start stepping out of my comfort zone and actively seeking presentation and training opportunities outside of my own little bubble.
I'm really looking to expand in this area, and I hope that a couple of connections that I've made this fall as well as some future connections as a result of presenting at MACUL can help out with this, but first things first... Finish the Exams, grrrr.

How Courtney Saved the 2014 B.F.O.

The Black Friday Omelet.  The 2nd most looked forward to meal of my year was in Jeopardy once again this year, but was once again saved and rose from the ashes of the leftover bins in the fridge like a salty, carb-laden phoenix.  This is the story of how this glorious omelet was saved once again.
For anyone not familiar with the story, you can check out last year's post for a little back story.
So if last year was a change in typical holiday traditions, this year was a revolution.  Dad passed away only just a month ago, and this is the first of my 34 years (that I can remember) that some sort of Thanksgiving dinner hasn't been prepared in my childhood home.  I guess last year's "Family Stone" reference was a bit more spot on than I had realized at the time.  My immediate family spent last weekend together at Pheasant Run in Chicago swimming in the pool, eating and drinking too much, and being way too loud for generally accepted hotel behavior.  This year my kids and I were headed to my Grandfather's house on Thanksgiving Day with Mom to have dinner with her Dad, step-Mom, and two half-sisters and their families.  In the planning stages all seemed like it would be OK for the B.F.O. as I could just bring home a goody bag of bits and pieces for the glorious omelet on Friday morning.  But, "best laid plans, right?"
For as delicious as our Thanksgiving Lunch was, the semi-potluck style in which it was prepared meant that quite a few of the traditional Thanksgiving standards were noticeably absent.  Of course we had turkey and mashed potatoes, but that's just about where the standards stopped.  See, one of my aunt's families has a lot of food allergies, so we had quite a few dishes made without dairy, gluten, or meat.  And in typical Keebaugh fashion, there were more dessert options than main course fare.  For as delicious as everything was, I was struggling to see my omelet come together.  I left lunch with the non-ideal combo of turkey, plain green beans, macaroni and cheese, and a bacon cheddar potato skin headed for the omelet.  With so many of the regular cast missing, would it still be any good this year?
Later that evening, my brother and his wife, Courtney, swung by the homestead to hang out and watch some football.  Knowing we were heading to Grandpa's and eating quite a few Vegan, non-gluten items, she had brought back from her parents the most glorious little care package that included the two most critical missing pieces for any B.F.O., delicious stuffing and the glorious green bean casserole.  (If you remember from last year, green bean casserole is the single most important item in the B.F.O.)  While the bacon cheddar potato skins were a surprisingly nice addition this year, I was missing the cheesy potato and corn casseroles that had been so delicious in the past, and I was also left wanting on some gravy to dribble over the top.  But, things always have a way of working out for the better.  I have always been a firm believer in this, and this year's B.F.O. is no exception.  Courtney's simple gesture falls nothing short of heroics in my book.  It wasn't the best B.F.O. in history, but the story of its coming together typifies the thoughtfulness of family during the holiday season.

In closing, and on a little less tongue in cheek note, this year I'm thankful for my family and the time that we all have to spend together, but more importantly for the time I had to spend with my Dad before he had to go.  I have said and thought numerous times in the last month that he did such a great job of raising my brothers and me that it feels like he's never too far away as he's so deeply embedded in each of us.

Exams Here I Come

My procrastination is about to come to an end; it's time to get busy.  My plan is to use a large chunk of my Thanksgiving break to take my exams.  Hopefully over the long break I'll be able to complete multiple exams.  I've heard that they can be a little stressful, but I'm fairly confident I can work my way through multiple tests over the time I have available.  I do have some awesome resources to use, along with the fact that I'm pretty knowledgeable to begin with.
Regardless of how many exams I am able to pass next week, I will definitely have them all passed by the end of 2014 to become an official Google Educator.  After that I can begin to focus on building up a better network and online presence to begin work toward acceptance into the GTA.
Just as an extra little thought, I will keep you guys in the loop for a new class I'm going to pitch to Mr. Heath for next year.  Keep in mind, this is just a thought at this moment, but I'd love to know what you guys think about it.  I was thinking that that a really useful class would be a student version of what I'm doing now as a teacher.  A Google Apps for Students course similar to this one.  The focus would be on all of the technical details and more advanced uses of Chrome, Drive, Mail, Calendar, Sites, and other Google Apps and Extensions.  For anyone interested in getting better with Google tools (I know a lot of university professors are utilizing them for work, especially Drive) I would recommend checking out the site.  I think creating a site like this would be both fun for me and really useful for our school, students, and maybe even teachers looking to learn more about Google Apps.  Thoughts?

Google Educator Certification Rolling

So after missing day one of the training our county is providing for earning the Google Educator Certification, I was able to attend day two on Monday this week.  I think I'll be ok after missing day one as Gmail and Calendar were covered, and I'm pretty familiar with those already.  I'll just need to do a little refreshing before I take the exam for those two tools.  I did pick up some good study resources to help out a bit with some of the more advanced features that may come up on the exam.  I'm pretty confident in my Google knowledge though, and I'm not too worried about the actual exams.

This Monday we explored some of the more advanced tools in Google Drive, and I picked up a few new, cool tidbits along with the excitement of just learning it a little better.  The things that have me worried about this exam are 1) the test for Drive will cover a lot of material.  Between Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drawings, and Forms along with all of the different tools associated with each one, there is a lot of material to be knowledgeable of.  And 2) with the recent new update to Drive and the fact that Google is in the middle of updating these exams to reflect this new update, I don't know whether to jump in now and take the old version of the exam or wait for the new version to come out with questions over the "New Drive."  Timing is everything, right?

We also took a very brief look at Google Sites.  I've used Sites a little, but I would consider it the tool that I'm the least knowledgeable of.  I haven't really built a full scale Google Site yet, but I have dabbled and I continue to get better.  If anyone is interested in what I have done, "Sites-wise," feel free to check out the Site I set up to serve as a digital portfolio of my daughter's education.  We started it last year to reduce the amount of paper that our pack-rat daughter thought she had to keep.  It's been fun, but definitely needs some updating done for this year.

All in all, I have a little studying to do, but very soon I'll be jumping in to take these five exams and earn my Google Educator label.  From there, it will come the time to start pursuing acceptance into the Google Teacher Academy.

2014 miGoogle Conference

Yesterday I attended the 2014 Michigan Google Summit for Education for the second consecutive year, and it was a great day to see what other teachers are doing with Google products. The day started with Cyrus Mistry, a Chromebook Project Manager at Google, giving a really interesting keynote about many of the things Google is working on and doing for educators. There were a ton of sessions scheduled, and while I think I could have chosen better, I did pick up quite a few new tips and tricks for the work that I do as well as seeing some successful teachers tell about how they have successfully integrated Google's tools to work on cross-curricular projects with other teachers and groups of students. On top of the sessions, as usually happens, I ran into a few people I know and having discussions with them in the in between times was valuable as well. One tool of Google's that is brand new this year and right at the tip of everyone's tongue was Classroom. I was really excited to see Google roll this out over the summer, and I was really eager to play with it. A lot of teachers at the conference have been using it, and it sounds like they are still working on perfecting it. I was a little relieved that I hadn't dived right in so I can use it once a lot of the bugs are worked out. This will be one of my top priorities for next year, especially with my Intro to Computers and Algebra classes. Another priority will be shifting my Intro to Read/Write Web course over to Google Sites from Weebly. It's going to be a lot of work, but in the end it will be very worth it, and there will be a learning curve for students that I hope we can work through. All in all, I had a very productive and exciting day seeing what other teachers are doing and perfecting my use of Google in the classroom. It will definitely help as I get started in the Google Educator Program next week.

Lunar Eclipse

So I've been pumped for a week.  I heard about the lunar eclipse last week, and have been hardcore, nerd-style pumped to watch it unfold the whole way I was going to be driving into work this morning.  Plenty of research later, and I had my camera settings ready to get some cool pictures of it along the way.  I shared my nerdiness with my daughter all week, and she was equally pumped.
I headed outside with the camera last night to play with the camera settings a bit more and see how it would go, and I got some pretty cool pictures of the full moon rising as a bonus.
So this morning we woke up stupid early to get on the road to school so that we had enough time to find a dark spot, stop, set up the tripod, and snap a few long exposures.  Grace was giving me updates the whole way as we were driving East and I couldn't see it.  She was pretty awestruck by the whole thing, and that was as awesome to see as the eclipse itself.  The whole way to school she was chewing my ear off about everything she knows about the sun and moon from school.  Makes a teacher proud to hear that stuff and see her curiosity show through.
But anyway, we made a few stops and snapped off a few of the pictures you see below.  It was an awesome morning.  If you didn't get to see it, I hear there are two more eclipses next year, so stay tuned, and get your butt out of bed.  It's awesome to watch.

#20Time is Rolling

This year's 20% Time Projects are starting to roll in my first hour class.  Students have done some brainstorming and research and made presentations to the class about their project details such as their goal/accomplishment they wish to achieve and their plan to use class time on FLEX days to make that happen.  We are in the process of getting our blog pages set up, and once they are all set and ready to go, I will share those out to an
yone interested.
For my own students reading this, I've been in contact with Mr. Provenzano (the teacher whose student blogs you checked out earlier in the year) and we'll share our students blog links with each other so that you can follow along with their progress as well as having other students following along with what you're doing.  This should be a great year of big things happening in first hour.
For my own 20% Time project, I'll be working alongside my students on a project of my own.  I had already planned on pursuing a Google Teacher Certification this year.  A fantastic opportunity has come up from our ESD to offer support for the first portion of this journey with help in taking Google's courses and passing the exams to become a Google Educator.  Once this step is complete, my time will be focused on implementation and experimenting with more of Google's Apps and preparing an application for one of the yet to be announced Google Teacher Academy sessions next year.
Stay tuned here for reflections on my students' work as well as progress updates on my own 20% Time Project.

Listen to the Mustn'ts Child

I can't help but think that Shel Silverstein would be rolling over in his grave right now if he knew that this was the response I just got from his lawyers.  Or maybe it's that I'm way off base and over-romanticizing the author who wrote my entire childhood's reading list.  Either way, I like to think of Shel Silverstein as the type of man that would embrace creativity and promote a child's pride in it.

Awhile back my daughter's Kindergarten teacher had an awesome idea to have parents and grandparents record themselves reading and create a sort of archive to use in her class.  My daughter and I took this idea and ran with it.  We created a beautiful video of The Giving Tree.  I really wish I could share that with you, but... see below.  We photocopied pictures from the text, and I recorded video of my daughter coloring each of the pictures in order as I narrated with the text of the book.  We threw in some slow, sad (Creative Commons licensed) background music and added the text of the book as captions so students could read along.  It really is a great video.  She took great pride in her coloring, and was so excited about our final product.  I shared this video file with my daughter's teacher to use in her classroom, and my daughter came home from school that day glowing because they got to watch "her movie" in class.

In addition to this teacher, I shared the video with my parents and another teacher friend of mine.  Everyone said exactly what was in the back of my mind, "You should put that on YouTube!"  But, the technology teacher in my knew that there were copyright issues with it, so I didn't.  I thought for awhile, and then shot an email off to the copyright owner of The Giving Tree (along with access to the actual video file) to ask for permission.  "I'll use this as a great example in my class," I thought.  "There's no way anyone involved with the Great Shel Silverstein would stifle the creativity of a kindergartner and her daddy, right?  I'll just wait until they say yes."

Here is what came into my inbox today:

Talk about disappointment.  I completely understand, however, that they own this copyright, and (for the time being ;-) I'll respect that.  But for the life of me, I can't understand why someone would reject the request to post this video to YouTube.  My channel isn't monetized.  I don't get more than ten views per video because only people in my family think to watch anything of mine.  Watching my video isn't going to replace buying the book for anyone who views it.  There is absolutely no downside to them if my video was published.  The only thing that would have happened would have been instilling pride in a kindergarten girl to have something she worked on and created "published" on YouTube.

So, Shel, should I listen to the mustnt's, the don'ts, and the shouldn'ts?  You told me as a child that "Anything can happen, child.  Anything can be."  Apparently you didn't plan on dealing with your own legal team.

P.S. - To SBG Law, 

Thanks for giving me permission to publish this letter in the footer of your response email.  You're swell.  Also, I realize that I didn't correctly use parenthetical citations in my text above when quoting one of my other favorite Shel Silverstein books.  Just to help me stay out of any more trouble with you, here's the A.P.A. citation:

Silverstein, S. (1974). Where the sidewalk ends: the poems & drawings of Shel Silverstein.. New York: Harper and Row.