Certifications -- Pursuing Excellence

At the start of the school year, I sent out a survey asking if any staff had any of the following certifications:

• Google Certified Educator Level 1
• Google Certified Educator Level 2
• Google for Education Trainer
• Google Certified Innovator
• Nearpod Pionear
• Apple Teacher
• Peardeck Inspearational Teacher
• Kahoot! Certified (I didn't ask about this one, but I'm adding it to the list)

I didn't ask just to be nosy. I asked because I wanted to find out where our in-district experts are! These certifications are all related to tools that many of us use fairly regularly in our classrooms with our kids. These tools make learning more engaging and meaningful for our students. It makes sense that if you really have a good grasp for how to use a tool successfully that you should get some snaps for that. That's why these certifications exist!

Teachers often wonder why they should bother to pursue these kinds of certifications. The most obvious answer is growth! You grow as an educator which in turn helps your students grow as learners!

Over the next few weeks, I thought I would highlight all the different certifications mentioned above, especially since so many people expressed interest in so many of them on the survey! Maybe by learning about each one you can find a certification that is right for you and the kids in your class! And if there are a bunch of us who want to pursue certifications, we can work together!

Next week: Google Certified Educator Level 1 certification!

Quick Google Classroom Info

If you started a new Google Classroom recently, then you are seeing the great new version of it! It is so much easier to navigate, much more intuitive, don't you think? If you are recycling an old Google Classroom from last year, you might have noticed it looks a little different and you're probably not happy about that.

What you see if you are reusing an old Google Classroom.

What you see if you are using the new Google Classroom.

In the new Google Classroom, the Stream tab is the place for you to make announcements; the Classwork tab is where you can post assignments or questions; and the People tab puts all your students and teachers for that classroom in one spot (which is also where you can find the class code, manually add students, and invite other teachers).

In the old Google Classroom, you can still add an announcement, assignment, or question to the Stream, and you can find all your students and teachers for that classroom under the People tab. But you'll have to go into Settings to get a class code for students to join.

My suggestion for anyone who is interested is to archive your old Google Classrooms and start fresh with the new ones. You can still reuse posts from archived classrooms, so you aren't losing everything you've used previously. Plus kids won't get confused if they are part of more than one classroom and there are two different versions being used.

Need help getting started with Google Classroom? Need a refresher? You know who to call :-)

Got a cool Google Classroom tip to share? Post it in the comments section here and I'll come see you so you can pick a Google sticker or an emoji sticker!