Wheaton North Teachers Receive Google Certification

Submission by District 200 

This past school year, Karen Saad, Wheaton North's Instructional Technology Specialist, organized a group of 16 teachers at Wheaton North who created their own, informal cohort and became Level 1 GoogleCertified Educators. After completing 13 hours of training, teachers took a three-hour certification test.

The training units covered topics like appropriate and creative use of technology in the classroom, how to have a paperless classroom, bringing student work online, measuring and understanding student growth, building interactive lessons, captivating the class with video and promoting digital citizenship and positive online behavior.

Why would District 200 teachers be interested in completing a Google Certification like this? Google offers a suite of free services like Google Classroom and Google Apps for Education -- tools that teachers utilize to enhance the student learning experience. Schools are no longer just places for students to acquire knowledge. Schools are now places to find out how to use and apply knowledge.

The tools offered through Google are highly engaging and provide a resource for students to acquire and apply knowledge. The teachers who became certified will increase their ability to creatively engage students in learning through the use of the Google suite.

"This training process demonstrates options for teachers to engage students in anytime, anywhere learning with a heavy emphasis on how to create collaborative experiences for our students - which are areas of focus for the teaching and learning in our District," Saad said.

Prior to the training process, art teacher Christopher Ness has dabbled in his use of Google apps.

"Now I have a better handle on how to use Google Forms to quiz my students on their understanding of vocabulary, for example. It's a tool I can use easily and quickly to help me make sure students learned what I wanted them to learn," Ness said.

Wheaton North staff who participated in the Google cohort are Betty Basista Ronaldson, Keagan Castro, Patricia Delacruz, Nicole Godzicki, Jennifer Green, Evan James, Erin Martin, Christopher Ness, Mollie O'Connor, Elizabeth Ortiz, Angela Pigoni, Karen Saad, Lisa Schmalz, Laura Scott, Rachelle Terada and Benjamin Yergler.