Hello and Happy National Teacher Day,
In 1953, Eleanor
Roosevelt persuaded the 81st Congress to recognize teachers with a
celebratory day all their own. Since then, the date of National
Teacher Day has bounced around a bit until 1985, when the National
Education Association declared the first week of May National Teacher
Appreciation Week and the first Tuesday of that month National Teacher
Day. If you'd like to know the whole story, check it out here:
http://www.nea.org/teacherday/index.html
On that note, we'd like to invite you to come celebrate and learn
with us at the next Google Teacher Academy, scheduled to take place at
the Googleplex in Mountain View on June 25th, 2008. The Google Teacher
Academy is a FREE professional development experience designed to help
K-12
educators get the most from innovative technologies. Each GTA is an
intensive, one-day event where participants get hands-on experience
with Google's free products and other technologies, learn about
interesting and new instructional strategies, receive resources to share with
colleagues, and immerse themselves in an innovative corporate
environment. Upon completion, GTA participants become Google
Certified Teachers, who share what they learn with other K-12 educators
in their local region. This time around, we've listened to your
feedback and opened up the application to all teachers everywhere. As
long as you are willing and able to get yourself to the Googleplex,
we'd love to have you. For more information about the GTA, please
check out our full information and requirements page:
http://www.google.com/educators/gta.html
The team of people thinking more about teachers everyday is growing
here at Google. As such, we're introducing a new section of the Google
for Educators site - dedicated to using our popular Geo Products. Here
you will find information about using
Google Earth, Maps, Sky,
and SketchUp in your K-12 classroom. Along with some of the great
classroom activities we've collected over the years, we've also
included starter kits which feature "cool and easy things you can do"
with each product in your classroom. Check it out here: http://www.google.com/educators/geo.html
Lastly, but never leastly, a few months back, we asked you to share
stories about using Google Docs with your students. You told us about
the power of introducing collaborative writing to your kids, you
mentioned using our presentation software in class, keeping students
engaged with the "chat" feature, and you told us how much you like to
be able to drive success throughout the writing process, instead of
just grading the final product. http://www.google.com/educators/p_docs.html
While we were reviewing your stories, we realized that Docs may be a bit
intimidating to the uninitiated so we developed a "getting started" guide
- with step-by-step instructions for creating accounts, sharing and
collaborating, editing and organizing your work. Now there's no reason
to be scared, so give Google Docs a try: http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dcdn7mjg_72nh25vq
We hope today is a true celebration of your vocation - and
we're wishing that all of those who are thankful for your hard work take this time to express it. I know I speak for
everyone at Google when I say that none of us would
be where we are without the amazing men and women who dedicated their
lives to teaching us much of what we know today. On behalf of Google,
I'd like to say thank you - to each and every teacher - for all that
you do every day.
Cheers,
Cristin Frodella
Google K-12 Education Outreach
Google for Educators
http://www.google.com/educators
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