Yesterday I submitted my application for the Google Certified Innovator program. There are likely hundreds of applicants, and they are only accepting around 30 people this round, so I’m not holding my breath. I did spend hours (and I mean hours!) on my application, so I wanted to share some of the pieces on my blog.
Part of the application is coming up with a vision for an innovation project. A problem you want to solve in education. This was definitely the hardest part of the process- not because I don’t have ideas about problems that need to be fixed in education, but because it was so hard narrowing it down to one! You had to portray the vision in no more than 10 slides and a one- minute video.
After a week or two of deliberation (I worked on other pieces of the application in the meantime), I finally decided to go with classroom to classroom connections around the world. Think about some of the awesome stories you’ve heard about, or led in your own classes, where classrooms are connecting across the state, country or even the world to work on a project together. Or students reaching out to experts in other geographic locations to complete a classroom project. These are the moments when there is no disputing the impact technology can have on a student’s learning experience.
In my opinion, these virtual classroom to classroom connections should be happening more often. But it takes time to develop a PLN. Even more time to find a teacher who is willing to connect online with your students and work on a project together, right? And that’s assuming that you don’t need any help or resources to figure out exactly what that project will look like and how each piece of the technology works for your students once you’ve developed that PLN and found that other teacher/classroom…
This is where my vision comes in. To develop an online space that teachers can join and search for other classrooms of any grade/subject area around the world. Teachers may want to connect for a one-time thing, or for a larger, on-going project. It still needs a lot of refining and thinking through all the details, but I think it has a lot of potential to be a valuable resource for the classroom.
Below are my slideshow and video. Keep your fingers crossed for me!
What’s your vision for changing a piece of education?
Tech To You Later!
-Katie
Hey Katie! How did you make out with your proposal? I’m considering a training program at a university level to provide those experts with the technical skill to use hangouts and was also thinking of tying in something similar to what you discussed. Were you accepted? Are you moving forward at all with your project?
Hi Trevor! I was accepted, and the academy was absolutely amazing. I actually launched my project a little over a month ago, and just wrote a post about it (check it out here: http://talktechwithme.com/2016/04/21/classroom-bridges-update-connecting-classrooms-around-the-world/).