Professional Development with Google for Education

Steve Adubato goes on-location to the 2017 NJEA Convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, to talk to Rich Kiker, Founder and CEO, Kiker Learning about the issues facing teachers and students both in and out of the classroom.

1/29/18 #2112

Excerpt:

"This gentleman is changing a lot here at the Convention. He's Rich Kiker, Founder and CEO of Kiker Learning. Rich, you're talking about Google down here, because? I am Steve. Thank you. You know, we're doing a lot of work. I had the benefit to work with about 150 educators here. A special event helping those 150 New Jersey educators get Google certified. What does that mean? Google certified? You know, it has a lot of value in education right now. Teachers, of course, can use it for practical reasons. They can use it as evidence of their professional development for their... for their evaluations. But what we're really seeing here is just a hunger, a desire by these educators, to connect their kids with the latest technologies, and give them these skills that are meaningful for what they're going to be doing after they leave their K-12 institutions. Give us an example of how it would actually work in the classroom. For example, Google has recently released, within the last couple of years, something called Google Classroom. What is it? Google Classroom. Google Classroom? It's a product that works in the G Suite for Education platform. It is a product that allows teachers to quickly deliver information to students, quickly collaborate with students, accept projects and assignments in a much quicker fashion than they were able to do in the past, and allows them to kind of deliver rich media and new content through this kind of closed platform that protects kids within Google Classroom. So a teacher can move from the traditional instruction of, you know, "This is what we're gonna do today guys." To, "Okay, here's what we're gonna do today, here is a resource for you that includes a video, that includes an animation or a simulation," it's all curated and available to this class within Google Classroom, and it frees that teacher up to be kind of the master of the space, to move around, connect with kids, and have a more dynamic, interactive, and inviting classroom working with those kids one on one. What kind of reaction do you get from the teachers? Thanks. And happiness. Well maybe we should get into that. You know what? Teachers will be the first one, as a former teacher, teachers will be the first one to tell you that they are the most difficult audience, because they're critical of what they're seeing. [laughter] Right? Are they really tough? They are... they are tough, until you give them something valuable, and then you've made a friend for life. You actually refer to this as the whole Google thing. You were talking about it as some sort of Industrial... the..."