I’m passing on the 1st Issue of the Google Teacher Newsletter in it’s entirety! If you’d like to subscribe to future issues of this newsletter, visit http://www.google.com/educators and subcsribe with your email address in the lower right hand corner of the site.
Greetings, and welcome to the first issue of the Google Teacher Newsletter.
We hope you’ve cleared the “back to school” hurdle and are full swing into the new year – enjoying your students and learning as much from them as they are from you. It’s in the spirit of collaboration and mutual learning that we’re sending this newsletter – an invitation for you to join us in creating a truly useful resource for educators.
Today, teachers like you are using technology in innovative ways to help students build knowledge. You play a critical role in breaking down the barriers between people and information, and we support your efforts to empower your students. We’re reaching out to you as a way to bolster that support and explore how we can work together.
As a start, we’re inviting you to share your best ideas for using the web in the classroom. Visit us at: http://www.google.com/educators for a teacher’s guide to 12 Google products. You’ll find information about each tool, examples of how educators are using them, and lesson ideas. You’ll also find lesson plans and videos from our partners at Discovery Education focusing on two of our most popular teaching tools: Google Earth and Google SketchUp.
We think of the site as a basic platform of teaching resources – for everything from blogging and videos to geographical search tools and 3-D modeling software – and we want you to fill it in with your great ideas. You can explore a Google tool you’ve never tried before, then tell us what you think about it. Or road test our lesson ideas, then follow the links to submit your own. And if you’d like to share your expertise with fellow educators, we encourage you to send us your story – we’d love to feature it in this newsletter or on the site.
We’re also working with WestEd to help teachers learn about the newest technologies for the classroom, including Google tools. If you’d like to be a Google Certified Teacher, we invite you to check out the details on our November 7th training academy here: http://www.edgateway.net/google
So what’s next? In addition to adding your ideas to our site, we’ll continue to develop new teaching resources and keep you updated on tools you can use in the classroom. And in the next issue of this newsletter, we’ll further explore how Google is getting involved in the teaching community and how you can join us.
We hope you find this newsletter useful. If you have any questions about the newsletter or website, please feel free to fire away and send an email to: educators-support@google.com
Until next time, thanks for reading.
Cristin Frodella
Google K-12 Education Outreach
Today is an exciting day for teachers and educational technologists everywhere; Google is officially reaching out and offering support to educators. :)