What a summer it has been!
I hope all of yours was pleasant, productive and filled with great experiences!
Here at GELessons things have been quiet for a number of reasons, including a 9,100+ mile journey from Florida to Puget Sound, Washington and back. While you might think it crazy to go on such a long road trip with gas prices the way they are, there was a really cool reason. It is because I had the honor of being invited to the 2008 Google Teacher Academy at Google Headquarters in Mountainview, California!
What an amazing experience! There were over 50 of the most remarkable education professionals in the world there! While being somewhat geeky myself, I wasn’t prepared for the level of Tech-Ed expertise that Google managed to gather in a single room! From my old friend Cindy Lane who I met at FETC, to teachers from as far away as New Zealand the group represented the new age of teachers who are taking technology to whole new levels in the classroom. I even had the honor of meeting the founder of Google Lit Trips, Jerome Berg himself!
Google Earth was just one of the tools that we worked with during the academy, most being related to the Web 2.0 capabilities of other Google products, such as Google Sites, Blogger, Docs and all the rest.
Anyway, we are back from the wonderful exploration of some of the U.S.’s most fantastic natural wonders like Redwood National Park, Mt. St. Helens, Glacier, Yellowstone and even the Badlands of South Dakota and it is time to get back to work after being in tents and away from computers and the internet for a month and a half.
Expect some changes around the site as I implement some of the things I learned at the academy!
More soon!
David
P.S. I tossed all the pix my wife and I took on-line so her parents in Germany could see the sites along with us. Feel free to use any of the pix you like for non-commercial, educational purposes only. You can find them here. I created a bunch of Google Earth enabled panoramas which you will find linked off the home page of this site as soon as I have the time to code them.