This "Last-but-CERTAINLY-NOT-Least" CUE Workshop was on YouTube and G-Suite, led by Brian Costello . Brian is affiliated with a variety of Tech-Integration sites, on several different Social Media platforms: The Suite Talk on YouTube; BTC2Learn on Google Sites; The Global Audience Project and, his Weebly site that has a TON of great ideas, projects, tutorials, and information. This instructor is quite the innovator, bursting (literally) with enthusiasm about the possibilities as he shared a glimpse into his world with us. For a link to the resources used in his presentation, click HERE.

G-SUITE:

G-Suite, a.k.a. Google Apps for Education (G.A.F.E.) is a great platform that offers a great many tools to engage students and push out assignments to create an easier, more user-friendly Google experience. The applications (pun intended) are really only limited by its user's imagination. Some of the more familiar ones may be used as follows: Classroom is a great tool that allows teachers to provide immediate feedback to students in real-time; Hangouts is a great way to bring other communities and classrooms from around the world into your own classroom; and, Sites allows you to showcase your students' and classroom projects to share with others.

Helping students experience the world is a passion of Brian's; he developed a site, "The Global Audience Project", as a way that students/teachers may collaborate and share projects and ideas.

"So many tools now comprise GSuite for Education. From Classroom, to Docs, Slides, Drawings, Sheets, GMail, and Maps. There are a TON of amazing apps available. Each one has a quick overview. " Brian's unique way of integrating technology with engaging visuals may be seen here:

Reflection:

This was a very informative and fast-paced session. I am always surprised that, even when I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed during the workshop due to pace and/or unfamiliar content, I still walk away with tons of great tid-bits and resources. Looking through my notes, I see that several times during the presentation, he was doing a lot of talking about what he does, and his ideas, without the benefit of walking us through these things. He was obviously very passionate about what he does, but there was a lot of jumping around and I lost track of his trail along the way. However, after processing and reflecting, I realize that this (like so many) is intensely dynamic and most learning must be self-driven. It is unrealistic that I expect myself to be at his level of understanding in this brief amount of time, covering the vast array of topics that we did.

WHAT I LEARNED: A lot of what he showed us were ways to do editing, look at analytics, and creating end-screens and cards. Many of these features are most useful if you plan to develop and use an active YouTube channel which I really don't see myself doing. However, some other relevant features he showed us had to do with "Blurring Effects" and "Subtitles". Knowing that there is a real concern for children's safety and protection from online predators, parents are VERY reluctant to allow their child's face to be seen on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube (to name a few). However, I love that there is a feature that allows you to set up a blurring effect where it will recognize faces and automatically blur them out for you. This would be very useful if I ever should have the desire to post images of my students on YouTube. Another GREAT editing feature that, were I able to insert YouTube videos for lesson content would certainly use, is the adding subtitles tool. I imagine this would be extraordinarily beneficial to both hearing-impaired students, as well as our ELL students.

CONFUSIONS / QUESTIONS: Although teachers in my school district have only recently been given access to YouTube, students are still restricted from it. Which leaves me in a bit of a quandary; my goal is to integrate more technology into assignments which means that students will need to be able to view them on any device that they may have access to. This is my challenge and, therefore, I will continue to use Google and its apps to deliver instruction and blended learning environments for my students.