In January 2018, I was fortunate to become a Google for Education Certified Trainer. This credential isn't all that easy to acquire, yet the journey was incredibly inspiring. The looking@2020 project is powered by a collection of Google for Education 'Core Apps' - Slides, My Maps, Sites, and Forms. Behind the scenes, our team of Project Ambassadors is also making use of Docs.
Why is this important?
Connecting as a community of colleagues is the ultimate ambition of the looking@2020 project. Google's outlook on education is the same: foster meaningful collaboration that can flexibly accommodate the needs and work of teachers and students around the world.
The 17-month duration of the looking@2020 project requires a sustainable and easy-to-configure approach to content management. On the project site, you'll recognize that each month's collection of submissions has been embedded into a relatively static website. The dynamic content can change each month without having to re-work the site, just the embedded Google Slides content.
With each slide containing links to resources, projects, YouTube videos, and other online content, the volume of material can be carefully organized in a structure that isn't overwhelming for the reader. It's like flipping through a magazine rather than scrolling through an endless stream of material.
Creating and Managing Content
A Google Form is being used to receive submissions from colleagues around the world. The design of the Form carefully guides you through a series of questions that are relevant to the type of submission you're making. For someone submitting a Google Slide, they will only see questions about the Slide and prompts to upload or share the Slide. For a YouTube submission, it is as simple as providing the link to the YouTube video.
This content does require a little bit of formatting adjustment to fit each month's Google Slides collection, but the mindful and supportive submission process reduces the work required in the editing and content management phase.
Beyond the Project
The most interesting aspect of the content management approach and 'embedding' technique, is that the content can be shared and preserved for future use. The amazing team leading the #TeachSDGs movement is doing great work at collecting resources, assets, and support materials for teachers engaging in SDG-related learning. The monthly Google Slides collections will be available for future use and engagement beyond the project, through sources like the TeachSDGs website.
Content this good must never be lost!
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