My colleague Rose, an English teacher was presenting during the first day of the Google Apps for Education Singapore summit so we decided to go to Singapore American School early.
My former students suggested we take a cab to make sure that we arrive there safely and with ease.
The school was big and wonderfully designed I suddenly felt the excitement.
When we reached the registration area there was already a long line of eager participants.
I love how simple and light everything was.
Most of the participants came from international schools in Singapore
The day started with a keynote on Technology enabled Education by Suan Yeo. He was inspirational.
I remember him emphasizing on proper use of tools rather than banning it.
I believe in that too. Technology will always change – it may arrive one at a time or all at once so we should equipped our students with the right skills and knowledge to cope with it. They should be able to know which ones to use, ban or discard.
The next part was the break out sessions so Rose and I proceeded to her assigned room to prepare.
The title of her session was Learning to drive: Scaffolding learning experiences (with Google Drive).
Participants started pouring in. I believe we had more than 50.
She talked about how google docs, google spreadsheet and google forms changed her life as a teacher.
She also gave examples on usage which dealt with idea generation, progress, record- keeping and instantaneous feedback.
An additional feature of the session was the demonstrations on how to use the different tools.
I could see how amazed they were while she presented the things she did in class with google docs.
Some participants even approached her after to thank her and ask her more questions.
I selected for Session 2 Kim Randall’s Communicate, Collaborate and Create, Oh My! .
It was a about google apps and other online tools that could be used by teachers for their lessons.
Here are a few websites she shared to everyone
http://blabberize.com/
This website lets you tell a story through a photo.
All you have to do is define which part of the picture will become the mouth and start recording.
You will see the defined part moving while it says your recorded voice. It is fun and funny at the same time.
http://photopeach.com/
This site creates slideshows for sharing with anyone from the net.
This is similar to online slideshows but is easier to use.
and my personal favorite, http://transl8it.com/
This great site enables you to translate regular phrases into sms txt lingo slang.
This is a great tool for teachers who have a hard time understanding the lingo of the generation today.
We can also translate from lingo to our usual phrases, how cool is that!
I also love her snowball fight teaching strategy wherein she requested everyone to write their learning during her session.
She then instructed us to crumple them similar to a shape of a snowball and told us to get ready for the snowball fight.
We are to get a “snowball” and read the things written by another participant. It was unique and fun and crazy. I loved it.
The session after lunch was one of the highlights of our trip.
It was from a company named HAPARA (http://hapara.com/)
It is an education management platform for Google Apps. This is exactly what we need in school.
A system that would help us manage our google apps with ease and create actual classes containing individual profiles of students with their documents and other google apps.
Our last session was given by Jeff Utecht entitled Google Reader: Making the web come to you.
He talked about how we can get the most of the internet, how resources are gathered and organized using google reader.
This is very helpful for students and teachers whose main focus is research and gathering of information.
The first day was very productive and promising. We couldn’t wait for day 2.
Tech Integrator in action 