Having returned last week from an amazing time at the New Hampshire Summit in Pinkerton Academy I’m finally getting round to put down a few thoughts on the blog about the event.
I was there a day early and and got to meet Jenn Lowton and the tech team in person and got a tour of the Pinkerton campus which is more like a University than a school. Also got to meet he tech team. A highlight for me was to see a working Apple IIc in the tech department!
Tuesday was Allison Mollica delivering the all new Google Educator bootcamp to a packed room at the Astros Cafe. Google has recently revamped the entire training curriculum and certifications and the new course reflects this with a high energy day that puts attendees on the pathway to certification.
Jenn Sheffer got things off to an amazing start on day 1 with her talk ‘How do we reach todays learners’ and Ben Rouse followed up on day two with his keynote on constant change in education
I wish I could give an insight into the many sessions but I was delivering training the whole time but you can see how amazing they were by checking out part 1 and part 2 on Storify. you can see links to many of the presentations by clicking through to the links on the schedule then ‘Link to the presentation’
Demo slams were fun as always and this summer we had two amazing Samsung table prizes in our ‘Twitter raffle’
Which brings me on to my main function at the summit, delivering the AppsEvents Certified Admin Level 1 and 2 sessions. This was a lot of fun and it was great having a full classroom both days. We spent the mornings covering the course material and the afternoons doing the certification exercises. It was great to see so many people come back on day 2 for the advanced course to get into third party admin tools and best practices for schools.
Also great was to see so many teachers getting into Google Apps administration. We are really helping to drive this movement of the ‘democratization’ of IT in schools and getting more teachers involved.
Finally we couldn’t have run the event without the awesome student helpers and tech team at Pinkerton academy so thanks again guys!
About the Contributor
Dan Taylor is from the UK and the Director of AppsEvents. He has been involved in the Google Education community since the launch of Google Apps for Education in 2006.
