The Google Educator Accreditation Process for Language Teachers

Brett Milliner

Milliner, B. (2016). The Google Educator accreditation process for language teachers, The Language Teacher, 40(3), 22-24.

The Language Teacher

JALT (Japan Association of Language Teachers)

40

3

22

24

02089-7938

02089-7938

Hubbard (2007) noted that contemporary language teachers not only need to have competent theoretical knowledge and social power, but they must also be responsible for the maintenance and growth of their technological proficiency. In this article, I report on my summer holiday professional development experience becoming a certified Google Educator. Soon after I started this journey, I discovered that a Google Educator’s training
does not simply amount to a lesson on search strategies or using Gmail; Google offers a range of powerful, free educational tools or apps that teachers can take advantage of in their language classrooms. Google Forms (see Milliner & Flowers, 2015), Google Sheets, Google Docs (see Firth & Mesureur, 2010; Suwantarathip & Wichadee, 2014), Google Sites, Google Maps (see McMillan, 2013), YouTube, Google Draw, and Google Hangouts are all examples of the great tools available (see Figure 1).