UTS students undertake Google Educator training

It may surprise you to learn that over half of all students in Australia today attend schools that use Google Workspace for Education. These schools, whether they be public, catholic or independent, have chosen Google for Education as their platform of choice for teaching and learning. Many of these schools have completely standardised their operations on the Google platform, while others offer Google tools as an option.

This means that when a University of Technology Education student graduates and begins their teaching career in a school, it’s very likely that they will find themselves immersed in the world of Google Classroom, Google Drive, Google Docs, and more. And while many of our students may own a personal Gmail account and be somewhat familiar with some of these tools, the Google for Education tools made available to schools around Australia have a raft of additional functions and features that they may not have much experience with. And of course, just because you understand how some of these tools work, doesn’t necessarily mean you understand how to adapt them for effective teaching and learning.

Google for Education provides many resources and training options for practising teachers, but a recent partnership between Google and UTS is aiming to also bring some of that support to pre-service teachers, to equip them with additional skills and training before they enter the profession.

Almost 50 UTS students spent the day at Google’s Sydney HQ recently to learn more about how the latest Google for Education tools, including Gemini AI, can be used for effective teaching and learning.

This workshop day covered not only the education specific tools available in Google Workspace, including Google Classroom, Drive, Docs, Slides, Forms, etc, but also a range of other useful Google tools for teachers such as YouTube, Google Earth and Google Arts and Culture.

“We've also included the use of Gemini Education, NotebookLM, and other Google AI tools for the classroom. They will also get a sneak peek at Vids, a brand-new collaborative AI video editing tool that has not yet been publicly released,” says Chris Betcher, Education Program Manager from Google.

“The day focused not only on understanding what these tools are and how they work, but more importantly, how they can be applied in an educational context,” says Chris. 

Of UTS students taking part in this training, Keith Heggart, Senior Lecturer, School of International Studies and Education at UTS says; “UTS’s initial teacher education degrees are innovative and really prepare students for their entry into the profession”.

This training day was the evolution of pilots that Google and UTS have previously done together.

In January 2021, the Australian Google for Education team started a conversation with the School of Teacher Education at UTS to run a pilot program to provide Google training to ITE students as they prepare to enter the workforce. After initial planning sessions between Chris Betcher from Google and Keith Heggart, Rick Flowers and Annie Agnew from UTS, a plan was developed to provide students with a Google Fundamentals online short course (three sessions delivered over six weeks) with an intent of preparing them to gain a Google Certified Educator Level 1 Certification. Schools widely recognise this certification as it helps potential school employers identify applicants with recognised skills in the use of Google for Education tools. Participation in the course was voluntary and offered at no cost to the students. 

This initial course was delivered between Sept 21 and Oct 19, 2021 via Google Meet, a Google video conferencing tool. 110 UTS students registered for the course and the level of participation and engagement was high. 55 students requested a Level 1 exam voucher after the course completed, and indicated an interest in gaining their Google Educator certification. After the completion of the pilot the intention was to review the result to determine whether this was something that might be looked at for future ITE groups. 

This year, students were again offered the opportunity to attain the Google Educator Level 1 certification, with Google providing vouchers to students to take the certification exam at no cost. Students are encouraged to attain this certification as it can be valuable when interviewing for their first teaching positions. 

“Before the day we ask students to do a self-assessment of their current understanding of these tools that Google provides to schools. Predictably, because versions of these tools are available with any consumer Gmail account most of them rate themselves highly on tools such as Gmail, YouTube and Google Drive. However, they rate much lower on more education-focused tools like Google Classroom, Gemini and Arts and Culture. The education versions of these tools, especially Google Classroom, contain features that are only available to schools. So this day will expose the students to how these tools get used by schools in ways they have probably not seen before,” says Chris. 

Students were also provided with the use of high-end teacher Chromebooks for the day so they can get experience with the same devices that are used by thousands of students in classrooms across Australia, as well as a Google account that has all the additional premium education features enabled, including the Gemini AI licence. This allows them to experience the full version of these tools as they are used in most schools.