GEG Malaysia

From 18 March - 14 April 2020, GEG Leaders in Malaysia, together with a host of professional development partners, (such as Arus Academy, iTrainKids, SOLS 24/7, RumahKod, Eduspec, and Chumbaka) launched a series of 72 webinars. These webinars have collectively reached out to over 100,000 viewers and covered a range of topics from focusing on GSuite’s productivity tools and coding initiatives on CS First.

GEG Japan

On April 2nd and 3rd, GEG Leaders and Certified Innovators gathered and provided a distance learning webinar for schools starting to use the tools online.

Asia Pacific GEGs are also hosting GEG Connect Live on April 17-19. Please stay tuned for more details.

Find out about South Texas GEG

South Texas covers three educational service regions. In the times of Google Plus, our Google Educator Group was a strong community that stemmed from the Texas GEG. However, with the fall of G+, our GEG took a hit that sent us to hibernation. But we never stopped. Our former leader, Efren Rodriguez, kept it alive despite adversity. However, his duties as a teacher in a new school district were keeping him from continuing leadership. In his wisdom, he saw it necessary to pass the leadership to an educator who was also a Google Enthusiast.

After watching the emergence of @GEGProgram Twitter account, Carlos Garza started conversations with Mr. Rodriguez on how to bring our GEG back from slumber.

It has been an exciting time for GEG-SOUTX. Especially because it is the only active one in Texas (and some surrounding states). We are taking members from all over the world. Thus, our mission is now to share ideas to meet the needs of students through technology, both in the classroom and beyond, to grow in the global economy. We are still small and humble, but we are growing and proud.

With three regions to manage and a growing GEG, better leadership was required. That’s when Mr.G started recruiting Captains. Since he needed a Co-Leader, he seeked an Empower Captain that was already a leader in the Ed Tech community. That is when Maggie Ojeda came into the picture. As Empower Captain, she will have two roles, Co-Leader and Regional Captain. Next was seeking the other two Regional Captains. However, an amazing member of the GEG was suitable for Share Captain. Mr.G put on hold the search for the other Regional Captains and brought aboard Alfonso Mendoza Jr. as the Share Captain of GEG-SOUTX.

We hold monthly virtual meetings using Hangouts. However we had our first HIRL when Fonz, our Share Captain, was to be trained as captain. GEG-SOUTX is one of the few original GEGs in existence. That is why our name is different from others and uses the term HIRL. That term comes from the days of G+ communities where people would use Hangouts on Air. Once in a while, they would meetup in person, or Hangout In Real Life (or HIRL).

We are excited to see what the future holds for GEG-SOUTX! Learn more at GEG.SOUTX.us

Pedagogic Journey to connect teachers to technology tools

GEG Santo Antônio da Patrulha is leading the online event Jornada Pedagógica (Pedagogic Journey), with the partnership of the Municipal Secretary of Education and the Santo Antônio University Center. The objective is to connect teachers with technology tools to take back school activities during the social distancing time. This GEG had the support of Estêvão Zilioli, Google Innovator, that delighted the audience. This initiative is aligned with GEG Brazil and also had the endorsement of GEG Leaders from the whole country, utilizing the learning network built since 2014. Thanks to everyone involved and also to Carla Arena, which leads the Brazilian group and constantly moves it forwards.

Google Teach from Home

As many educational institutions around the globe are undergoing, extending or planning closures due to COVID-19, half of the world’s student population is unable to attend school. Educators face the challenge of teaching remotely at an unprecedented scale, and in some cases, for the first time.
In the last week we’ve created new distance learning resources including a collection of training materials, a list of useful apps, a new Learn@Home YouTube resource designed for families, as well as a series of blog posts and webinars. We’ve also made our premium Meet features free for schools through July 1, 2020. This includes the ability to have 250 people in a call together, record lessons and livestream. And thanks to feedback from educators, we’re also constantly making product improvements, like these new educator controls for Hangouts Meet.

Avni Shah
VP, Google for Education

Special Mention: GEG Taiwan and GEG HK

Whilst the ongoing global health crisis develops, initially the Covid19 infections were restricted to a small number of countries. Schools were closing and people were already being put in isolation. The early efforts of GEG Taiwan and GEG HK enabled teachers and students to continue their classes and brought a whole new group of teachers together through Google for Education. Sundar Pichai made special note of this in the recent blog post “COVID-19: How we’re continuing to help”.

Thank you to GEG Taiwan, GEG HK, and all the GEG leaders and members worldwide that have supported (and continue to support) schools, teachers and learners at this time.

How can GEGs help - GEG Outreach

GEG Program is curating Playlists of videos and webinars to support teachers worldwide. Check out these Playlists that have already brought together a lot of GEG created specifically to cater to teachers now teaching remotely.

We are eager to hear how you and your community are using Google tools to create powerful distance learning experiences so that we can highlight and share these best practices.

Please visit this Form to submit any videos or webinars for featuring in a GEG Playlist thanks!