Rhiannon Dancaster

TED 507_0125

Fall 2021

Dr. Mitchell

Google Educator Certification Personal Essay

Earning my Google Educator certifications has taught me a lot about the usefulness of

Google and its many attributes. I already knew how to navigate Google and the typical facets –

Google Docs, Google Sheets, Google Drive, etc. – but now I feel as though I have learned a lot

more about just how useful and applicable they can be for educational purposes. I especially

learned just how useful Google Sites is, in terms of creating a class website for the students and

parents to get information from. I also love the idea of using Google Sites to create portfolios of

each student, so their work can be showcased to everyone as a display of what they are learning

and working on in class. One of the most valuable things I learned from the certification was

how to prepare my future students to be safe and respectful online. With having my students do

assignments online, they need to be educated on how to behave online and leave a good digital

footprint, which is something that I learned and feel well-prepared for thanks to the Google

Educator Certification.

I feel as though I am very well prepared to be more organized as a teacher. I had no idea

how useful Google Calendar can be for teaching, especially in terms of providing the ability to

schedule appointments directly through Google Calendar. I would certainly use Google Calendar

to allow parents to schedule their conferences using pre-made appointments, so that I could stay

organized and have all of the conferences scheduled in one place, easy to see. I also see myself

being more organized with the aforementioned Google Sites, by creating a class website that has

relevant information on for my students as well as the parents to refer to. By having a class

website on Google Sites, I would have announcements organized to be sent out to everyone, so
 Rhiannon Dancaster

TED 507_0125

Fall 2021

Dr. Mitchell

the chances of getting a bunch of emails from parents with similar questions would be lessened,

because I would hopefully have questions answered in the announcements. I can also stay

organized by using Google Sheets to store students’ grades in an efficient manner, which would

also help me analyze data easily, using the many tools that Google Sheets has to offer.

I believe learners at my site will be impacted by my certification because I have been

provided with lots of new ideas for how to aid my students at my site. I can definitely foresee

myself introducing some assignments into my lessons that implement Google programs such as

Google Slides. I would incorporate activities/assignments that call for the students to create

informational Google Slides together in groups, in terms of informational slides after either

researching a topic together, reading a book together, or some other content that could be

presented into the slides. This would give the students the opportunity to practice their

researching skills (for the research topic slideshow assignment) by becoming experts on a topic

and then giving a presentation on that topic, and it would practice their technological

organization skills, as they would have to organize the information they learned into a Google

Slides presentation. Finally, the students would get great experience with collaborating in

meaningful ways, since organizing information together and giving presentations together are

life skills that are typically seen in future careers. Overall, my newfound knowledge has made

me feel even more prepared for my future teaching career.