GoogleFEST is coming! This is a great way to learn how to utilize Google Apps for Education to increase engagement, collaboration and learning outcomes before you get back to the classroom.
GoogleFEST is August 9 & 10 at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel in Grand Rapids. Registration will open on April 29 at the MACUL website.
Have you signed up yet? GoogleFEST is a one day professional and personalized learning conference for educators, presented by the Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning (MACUL), Google, and CDW-G.
The keynote speaker is Pernille Ripp, a teacher, speaker, and author. Her work has influenced thousands of teachers globally, as well as the work of school districts across the United States. She teaches others how to give the classroom back to students. Her first book will be republished this fall titled “Passionate Learners – How to Engage and Empower Your Students.”
Check out the information page, schedule and registration today.
MACUL, GOOGLE, & CDW-G Presents GoogleFEST!
Join us for GoogleFest 2015. Attendees will get first-hand knowledge from Google Experts, CDW staff, and Michigan Google Certified Teachers using Google tools that include: Google Apps for Education (GAFE), Forms & Scripts, Classroom, Sites, Google Play, and much more.
For more information and registration, check out the flyer.
Google is hosting a free, interactive online conference that will take place on Friday, May 8 from 10am – 3pm EDT and throughout the day Saturday, May 9, with sessions across time zones.
The sessions in the conference will focus on education. This will be of interest to educators in all roles, but also to many parents, students, and citizens. If you register for the event, Google will send you information about the exact speakers and sessions as that becomes available. Although many sessions will focus on primary/secondary (K-12) many will be of interest to the Higher Education audience too.
Even if you can’t make it to the live online presentations, the event sessions will be recorded and available for replay, on-demand.
Register today at Education On Air and read the FAQs for additional information.
Google Drive is already one of the best cloud storage services around, and last week it got even better— that is if you’re using a Google Apps for Education (GAfE) account. In an effort to further enhance its commitment to education, Google is offering both educators and students unlimited Drive storage at no cost. As far as we can tell, unlimited means just that for as long as you have that GAfE account. There is one small caveat though – you are “limited” to a single file size of 5TB. I don’t think I even have a total of 5TB of storage in the many files I do hoard, let alone a single file of that size.
Let there be no doubt the strategy from the search giant to build their user base by getting people hooked on ubiquitous access at a young age.
Something that we should all think about beyond the ever present talk about privacy issues, which are both ongoing and debunked is: What happens to your files when you leave an EDU organization?
Since our students may move from district to district, and will eventually graduate – what’s your plan for data portability and to help them take their digital artifacts with them? Google has a relatively unknown utility which allows anyone to make a backup of most of their Google product files, to include Drive data. Formerly called Google Takeout, now Data Tools – this service creates a downloadable .ZIP file of your content.
Having a statement on data portability might be a great addition to your student handbook and might be a good topic for a short staff professional development topic.
If you ever have any questions about your organization’s Google Apps for Education accounts, please feel free to contact the expert Kent ISD Educational Technology Team at: educationaltech@kentisd.org – We’re always willing to provide professional learning for you and your staff around technology integration into the classroom.
Kent ISD EdTech Blog 