My 5 Biggest Takeaways From the Google Innovator Academy
Are you looking for:
* A life changing experience
* Leadership skill development
* Design thinking training
* Personal growth
* Professional growth
* A global network of innovators
* Cohort of forward-thinking
colleagues
Apply to be a Google Innovator!
My 5 biggest takeaways from the academy:
Increased Comfort Level With Risk Taking. Working through the design thinking process at such a rapid pace at the academy makes you so much more comfortable with iteration and feedback.
Support Network. You become a member of an amazing network of dedicated, passionate, and supportive people who want to improve education worldwide. By working together we can make a bigger impact, faster.
Inspiration. These educators are doing incredible things in their specialty areas. By learning about their work, you start thinking about how you can utilize effective ideas across content areas. Cross-pollination at its best.
Bounce Group. Have an idea? Looking for a suggestion? It's like there's a giant virtual digital think tank at your fingertips.
Leadership Skill Development. Leadership sparks are woven throughout the academy. You leave feeling confident and ready to be proactive about your innovation project, and anything else you want to take on.
I am blessed to be a part of the #SWE17 Google Innovator cohort. A year-long professional development opportunity, it features an innovation academy, ongoing learning and development, work with a mentor, and the development of an innovation project.
37 teachers from 19 countries met at the face-to-face kick-off academy for three days in Stockholm, Sweden, at the beginning of October. Online work had taken place the six weeks prior, with the purpose of diving deeper to identify the root cause of an education problem that each participant had identified as part of their application process.
Once at the academy, we participated in leadership sparks from Google employees and members of EdTech Team and Future Design School. We also used the design thinking process to further develop the iterations of our innovation projects. Each group of 6-7 teachers had a coach, who had previously been through the program. I am thankful to have had Shelanna Sturgess as the coach of our team, Key Masters. I am excited to watch the progress of the innovation projects from our cohort, and the impact we can have on the education system.
Want professional development like you've never experienced before?
Want to be part of an amazing global network of educators?
Apply to be a Google Certified Innovator!
Logo designed by Ingvi Omarsson, my vision buddy.