Google Science Fair Global Finalists!

Google has just announced the Global Finalists of the 2019 Science Fair!

A truly global cohort with finalists from India to USA, Ireland to Indonesia and every country in between! This year's projects included:

• Novel artificial intelligence-based mobile solution for early detection of valvular heart disorders - Sachin Singh, India
• Neuro-ExoHeal: utilizing neuroplasticity to retrain the brain and rehabilitate patients with hand stroke/paralysis - Zain Samdani, Faria Zubair, Saudi Arabia
• Microbial fuel cells: food waste as a sugar source - Emma Tan, Jenevieve Ho, Singapore
• A scalable and freely accessible machine learning–based web application for the early detection of dyslexia - Isha Puri, New York, USA

View all the global (and regional) finalists here.

Each project is listed along with its methodology, research, and conclusions. Please do share with your GEG Educators - a great way to motivate science learning in schools!

Google Science Fair is a global online competition in partnership with Lego Education, National Geographic, Scientific American and Virgin Galactic. The competition inspires teens to solve real-world problems through the application of science, technology, engineering, and math. Stay tuned later this year for the 2020 announcement.

3rd GEG Brasil Summit | Engaging Communities and Adding Value to Learning

Around 50 GEG leaders from all over Brazil gathered on May 18th at the Google Office in São Paulo to plan local and national activities, to share good practices and network. Our motto is to make our GEG "Sexy" to promote participation and engagement through different types of local events, meetups and training sessions. The group of leaders finished the day with lovely videos, photos, and in high energy to put into practice a plan for L1 certifications with local GEG leaders conducting training sessions, an online learning path in Google Classroom, and a series of 5 hangouts on air. A hybrid solution that mixes local and national actions in blended mode, face to face and online sessions.

The leaders had also a training session with a guest from the Trust & Safety LATAM team about the digital citizenship program #BeInternetAwesome. They all loved to know more on how they can engage other educators for a more safe digital world for our kids.

The GEG Brasil Summit was so productive that we collaborated on our own manifesto in which we answered who we are, how we do things and why GEG exists. Local leaders are sharing the manifesto, inspired by Holstee Manifesto, the Agile Manifesto and by Google Innovators Brasil Manifesto, as well!

Get to know some of our leaders! Check out our event photo album.

Central Coast GEG welcomes a new Certified Innovator

The NSW Central Coast GEG hosted another successful get-together on May 23, where educators from around the region took the opportunity to share and learn together in a fun, friendly atmosphere. Hosted at The Entrance Public School by Liane Tolman and Mitchell Gibbs, the Central Coast GEG shared ideas on a diversity of topics like Google Classroom, Project Based Learning, Lego Robotics, Database tips and more.

As a freshly minted Google Certified Innovator, Mitchell shared his experiences from the recent SYD19 Innovator Academy and encouraged his GEG colleagues to complete their L1 and L2 certifications so they could be eligible to apply for future Academies. Chris Betcher from Google also attended the GEG and shared additional information about certification, upcoming PD events, and some neat tips for using Google Slides. The group plans to double in size for the next meeting by having each member bring a friend or colleague!

Japan GEG hangout on Innovator Academy

Weekly hangout for Innovator Academy challenge. Leaders got together and shared their thoughts and questions while Nate from GEG Nagoya shared his experience as an Innovator.

Japan GEG joint event successfully introduced G Suite to 100 teachers

GEG Kamakura, Machida, Nagoya, Shinjuku, Shonan, Tsukuba, and Yokohama has jointly delivered event at the end of the long 10 days holiday at Google Tokyo office.

Attendees have selected the session that they are interested in and experienced either Google Classroom, Slide, Docs, Sheet, Form, Photo, and challenge for Innovator Academy.

GEG Newsletter in Blog format!

This month we are very excited to share our new home for GEG activities that can be shared and viewed by any GEG member.

As the GEG leadership has grown we have realized that GEG communities want to share certain articles that appear in the newsletter. Going forwards all community events and non-GEG Portal articles will also appear on GEGprogram.blogspot.com.

As always the newsletter is sent to GEG Leaders (and soon to be on-boarded Captains), often articles containing links to the GEG Leader Portal will not be accessible to any visitors who are not a leader. The new home for GEG Community news will help raise awareness of all our community events.

#EdPins - Putting Learning on the Map

#EdPins was launched to connect schools together - and we are highlighting this project from Certified Innovator Dale Plotzki. Truly a project that GEGs may want to share with their school communities.

A new Google Innovator project has recently launched that seeks to connect schools and educators in a truly new way!

#EdPins (www.edpins.org) seeks to highlight the beautiful, unique work in every school! It does this by re-purposing Google Maps ‘review’ cards into billboards of learning that celebrate the unique educational opportunities that are offered by a school. Here is a great example of an #EdPins entry live in the field.

So why look to Google Maps for educational collaboration? Aren’t our schools’ websites and Twitter feeds enough? The truth is, Google Maps has several features which make it an ideal platform for connecting schools:
It’s universal: Every school, EVERY SCHOOL, on earth that exists in a physical location is either on Google Maps or can be placed on Google Maps. This is an incredible fact that we must take advantage of!
It’s free: All you need to participate in #EdPins is a Google Account, which has no cost. This is a huge leveler that can bring schools on to an equal playing field of visibility and boost collaboration!
It’s public: Anyone can participate in #EdPins. Perhaps a student wants to showcase their work in an authentic, public way. They have as much access as an administrator. This has a powerful, democratizing effect on education! And people really use Google Maps! Post a photo of your school and you can quickly see it rack up thousands of views!
It’s dynamic and flexible: Google Maps entries are shareable, multimedia compatible and can host live links; perfect for showcasing beautiful examples of modern teaching and learning.

I would like to invite every student, administrator, parent, and teacher to participate in #EdPins. This project is still developing but holds the potential to have an incredible, transformative and lasting impact on education around the globe. I hope to see your school there!

If you haven't already contributed, please go to www.edpins.org and click on ‘submit’ to share the best of what is happening in your school or classroom. If you need inspiration, check out some of these incredible submissions from around the globe:

• American School of Bombay in Mumbai, India
• Educacional Primaria y Secundaria 60220 Manati in Amazonia, Peru
• iGen École College Park School, Saskatoon, Canada
• Vanavil Trust School in Chennai, India
• Maria Parkskolan School in Helsinborg, Sweden

GEG Meetup at Australian Innovator Academy

Educators met at Google Sydney to watch the newest 36 Innovators give their final project pitches and graduate as Google Certified Innovators. They learned a bit more about the Google for Education Certification process and got a chance to mingle with other Innovators and GEG members. Join the Innovator program, applications still open around the world. GEG members will be invited to future Innovator Academies please stay tuned for updates!

The Google for Education Innovator Program Team
www.certifiedinnovators.com
#googleEI

GEG Denmark Meetup

GEG Denmark had a meet up in May at the Google office in Copenhagen. Twice a year we meet to build the community even stronger and share knowledge and good ideas. The meet ups are alternately in the eastern part of Denmark or in the western part of Denmark to make sure that it is not always the same participants, that have to travel a long way. At this meet up representatives from 20 different municipalities participated - teachers, tech administrators, innovators, consultants and tech coaches.

When we meet in the community we always have an open agenda where all the participants contribute. We have different roles (inspire captain, share captain, empower captain and learn captain), but it is a flat structure where active participation is important.

It is always a hit to hear highlights from Google roadmap, so Jesper Knoop-Henriksen presented selected news. The group also discussed national initiatives of educational, didactic and technical nature.

An all-time favorite for meetups is demoslam. Here we encourage sharing and create a cheerful mood. Bendt got the price for the best demo slam - you can see his happy smile on the photo. Finally the location for the next meet up is chosen - the host is responsible for arranging in collaboration with the different captains.

GEG Denmark's greatest strength is the committed participants, so it must be cultivated.

GEG Plovdiv's (Bulgaria) First Event

GEG Plovdiv was established just several months ago is growing fast, featuring more than 200 members and proudly presenting the European Capital of Culture for 2019, the city of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The group already features 150 members and is growing.

On the 15th of March, GEG Plovdiv had its first official event, where more than 60 educators and 20 head-teachers from the region were involved in the half-day intensive program starting with basics - how G suite may support school administration all the way to Google ARCore and AR expeditions.

As the first event, GEG leaders had to start with “What is GEG-Plovdiv?” Sharing more about the aims, structure, and interests. This session was lead by Elena and Pani (teachers, Google Certified Educator and Trainer, and GEG leaders).

Later in the agenda, it was discussed How a school can benefit from G suite?, Fusion: merging technology and curriculum into a great experience for educators and learners! were some of the sessions in this energizing workshop.

We in GEG Plovdiv are helpers - we motivated and walked through more than 100 educators from the City to get Google Certified Educator Certification in the lasts six months.

For 2019 there are three more GEG events planned and an international conference SCHOOL IN THE CLOUD, on the 11th and 12th of June, where schools from all over Bulgaria will share best practice and learn from each other.

A piece of good practice: involve the City and regional Google partners to support GEG events. Special thanks to the city of Plovdiv and Center for Creative Training for their help and recognition.

More event photos here.

GEG Singapore Meetup

Last April 22, the GEG Asia Pacific leaders gathered together at the Google Singapore office.

• Jason Pang shared about how to be a Google Innovator and the deadline to apply, a copy of his slide can be accessed here.
• Tan Shin Yee shared about how to get more people certified by creating a study group that consists of passionate teachers then they will share to more teachers.
• Lao Shi shared on how to use Slides in her English class by combining Google slides with canvas app (https://canvas.apps.chrome/) for content creation then the students will present the slide and use the live caption feature as well as record the presentation using screencastify addons. (https://www.screencastify.com/)
• Nathan and Ken shared on collaboration by letting students learn from friends on other parts of the world by using Hangouts!

More photos here

GEG in Mexico | GEG Bajío (Aguascalientes)

GEG Bajío (formed by Querétaro, Guanajuato, Aguascalientes and San Luis Potosí, states in Mexico) participated in the XVII Education Congress, Mexico in which private schools from Aguascalientes State were trained in Google Apps for Education.

The leader in Aguascalientes, on behalf of GEG Bajío gave 2 training sessions in which 36 attendees from K-12 schools learned about Classroom, Docs, Slides as well as how to improve their classes applying pedagogical strategies.

GEG in Peru: GEG Libertad GCE L1 Peruvian challenge 2019

GEG La Libertad, Peru created a Study Group Challenge with 11 leaders from the country based on online guidance to support teachers for presenting the CGE L1. They reached 887 attendees from 22 Peruvian regions. During 8 weeks, they provided Hangouts in which they covered the 13 units of Teacher Center. Also, they invited 13 Trainers and Innovators from others countries to motivate and guide educators in their certification processes.

Do you want to take a look? Visit www.gegperu.org/studygroup