Google Apps For Education Summit

I thoroughly enjoyed the Google Apps for Education Summit. I learnt so much and was very inspired by the Key Notes speakers and by the Presentations.
I thoroughly enjoyed Jill Sill's presentation on the Google Art Project.

Here is the link: https://sites.google.com/site/mistersill/art-project

I particularly liked how you could actually visit the great art galleries overseas and could zoom in on the artworks. It is great for the students to view the famous galleries overseas, as we are so isolated here in New Zealand. The artwork overseas goes back centuries. During the session we used the Palace of Versailles to view the artworks and to visit the rooms inside the palace.

http://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/project/art-project

The Google Art Project website was great as it allows you to compare different artworks, artists, collections and mediums. I liked how it gives you a description of the artwork and artist.
It also allows you to create your own galleries which I think would be fantastic in the classroom, as students would be able to have ownership over their favourite artworks.

Another presentation that provided a lot of food for thought was Rich Lambert's presentation on organizing your school with Google Sites. I was most inspired by what I saw. I was impressed how Google sites were used. The orientation manual had a Google Site made around such things on procedures and had such things as daily notices, staff birthdays, updates etc. He showed us another Google Site on Syndicate planning. Within the syndicate teachers would gather online resources in Maths and there would be a Google Sites made for the curriculum levels. I thought this was great as I know from my own experience that searching for online resources takes time. The same resource could be searched by five or six people within a team for a period of time and linked onto a whole lot of Google sites. Yet I think that if it was on one site, imagine the amount of time saved. I feel teachers have enough administration work to do and having a team site where it is a one stop shop is the way to go.  

When I get into senior management I would simply love to set something up like this, where teachers can work collaboratively to share resources online for the curriculum areas. It would be great to set up new organizational practises where orientation manuals are created in a Google Site.