The new Training Center professional development by and for educators

Posted by Liz Anderson, Global Lead of Adoption Programs, Google for Education

(Cross-posted on the Google for Education Blog.)

Editors note: Twenty thousand educators from around the world will share ideas, tips, and trends for the upcoming year when they gather at ISTE, one of the largest education technology conferences in the world. If you’ll be in Philadelphia, come visit us in the Expo Hall at #1808. You can learn more about the new Training Center and check out any of over 50 short sessions that will share more ways to engage and inspire students.

Technology can transform education, but only when it enables and supports amazing educators. Effective professional development is thus a crucial part of creating real positive change and preparing students for the future. For this reason, we’re proud to introduce the new Google for Education Training Center, a free, interactive, online platform that helps educators apply Google’s tools in the classroom and beyond.

Professional development has long been a challenge for educators and administrators. A 2015 survey by the American Federation of Teachers found that the "adoption of new initiatives without proper training or professional development" was the primary reason for workplace stress, with 71% of respondents citing it. This is why we worked closely alongside educators to design professional development tools that fit the needs of their peers.

“We didn’t need another help center with how-to articles; we needed to start where teachers start, with learning objectives, classroom tasks and teaching strategies,” said Jay Atwood, EdTech coordinator at Singapore American School and project lead for the Training Center’s lesson creation. “With the new Training Center, we do just that.”

The Training Center provides interactive lessons with a practical classroom focus, allowing educators and administrators to customize their learning paths by choosing fundamental or advanced courses. Each course is organized around three themes:

Educators can access different units and lessons in any order they prefer. After completing either the fundamentals or advanced course, educators can then distinguish themselves as Google Certified Educators, Level 1 or Level 2.

The lessons support different skill sets, grade levels, content specialties, capacities and interests. “I thought I was pretty knowledgeable about Google, but in each session I learned something new,” says Carla Jones, a teacher at Cook Elementary School in Chicago, IL who previewed the Training Center content. “I learned tips and strategies that I could immediately use in my classroom, and each session got me super excited about how to make my classroom more tech integrated.”

Chicago Public Schools (CPS), the third largest school district in the United States with more than 600 schools and 400,000 students, worked with Google for Education as a launch partner for the new Training Center. CPS will use the Training Center as an integral part of its technology professional development program, and teachers’ time spent on Training Center courses will count toward their professional development hours.

“The new Google for Education Training Center empowers teachers to drive their own learning and track their progress,” says Donna Román, EdTech instructional specialist at CPS. “It combines differentiated content, flexible pace and application with the collaborative magic of Google Apps for Education in a supportive learning environment.”

The Training Center reflects what we value most about education, focusing on the process of learning rather than the tools themselves. “The Training Center was carefully designed around good pedagogy and instructional practices,” explains Mark Hammons, EdTech coordinator at the Fresno County Office of Education and a contributor to the platform. “Not only will teachers learn how to use Google Apps, but they will also learn how to apply them meaningfully in the classroom.”

To learn more about the Training Center, visit g.co/edutrainingcenter and try out a lesson or two.

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IT makes a difference in improving patient care at Wyoming Medical Center

Posted by Rob Pettigrew, Information Technology Director, Wyoming Medical Center

Editors note: Today’s guest author is Rob Pettigrew, Information Technology Director at Wyoming Medical Center — the first hospital in the United States to go Google. See what other organizations that have gone Google have to say.


As the IT team at a medical facility, we’re here to help caregivers keep people healthy. Google Apps for Work provides superb reliability and security so we can empower our 1,219 staff members and 233 partner physicians to provide exceptional care. The IT team can now focus on maintaining and improving nearly 200 clinical applications that support services such as cardiology and neurological specialties, instead of worrying about email maintenance.

This is especially important in a rural setting like ours. The state has only about 600,000 people spread over 100 square miles, and we serve as a hub of medical expertise. Even with only 217 beds, we can offer the same services as many larger hospitals by working efficiently. In 2014, we saw 9,000 patients, conducted 5,000 surgeries and welcomed 1,200 new babies into the world.

We previously used Novell GroupWise for calendaring and email, but it was expensive, difficult to support and suffered frequent outages. My crew often spent many late hours trying to get GroupWise working after a server outage. We considered other alternatives. Microsoft SharePoint was too expensive, as were dedicated applications for telemedicine and video conferencing. Microsoft’s cloud offering was a possible contender for email, but it was much more expensive and a less mature product than we would have liked. We made up our minds that Google was the way to go. We trusted their exceptional security and privacy procedures and signed on.

Switching to Google Apps has resulted in six figure savings year after year, including decommissioning multiple physical servers. The flexibility of Google Apps helps us collaborate in ways we never could before. Google Hangouts has helped us advance the quality and reach of care. Now clinicians in remote areas can get advice from specialists, such as our neurosurgeons and cardiologists, helping us spread the wealth of expertise across the state, We also use Google Hangouts to streamline the recruiting and hiring process. Candidates submit resumes by Gmail, and HR staff interviews potential hires via Hangouts.

Nurses also use Google Apps to communicate instantly. With Google Drive and Google Docs they discuss and share data on topics such as medication delivery, credentials, blood-borne pathogens, education and so on. With Google Groups, the medical center uses SMS email addresses to communicate directly to users’ cell phones for staffing requests, trauma calls and other communications that require instant responses.

Much has changed since I joined Wyoming Medical Center in 2006. When I started in 2006, reporting and spotting trends was difficult because data was trapped in rigid enterprise systems such as our electronic medical records (EMR) and human resources (HR) software. Today, we can surface and report on large blocks of data from our electronic medical records and HR databases by using Google Sheets. This agility is a big win for strategic activities like spotting population health trends. It’s clear that Google Apps has been among the most positive shifts in helping our IT team make greater contributions that further the health and well-being of people across Wyoming.

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