Hi students,

This video is arriving a bit late since I had a very busy day at the academy.  However, I do have some answers to your questions about the academy and London.  Just an FYI, this post and video were created after Day 2 of the academy and I have so much more to share with you about Day 3.

Question #1: What sites did you see in London?

Although the majority of my time has been spent in the Google Innovator Academy and networking with other educators, I was able to go see a few sites before the academy began.  The easiest way to view the most famous sites of London was by taking one of the “big bus tours” around London.  The tour was only a few hours but I was able to see Big Ben, Tower of London, London Eye, Westminster Abbey, and several other famous sites.  As I mentioned, I wasn’t able to do very much sightseeing since I was attending the academy but it was great to see some of the famous London landmarks.

Question #2: Did you meet any famous people?

No, I did not see any famous people in London.  There were quite a few plays being featured around London that had some famous actors but I did not have the time to see any plays on this trip.  Altho

ugh I didn’t meet any “famous” people, I did get to interact with a lot of educators that I have been following on Twitter.  So, I definitely had some nerdy moments when I was able to meet them in real life.

Question #3: What kind of training/fun activities did you do?

Yes!  We participated in quite a few fun activities, as well as helpful training.  In relation to the fun activities, I participated in several icebreaker/team building games while at the academy.  (AVID – I have some ideas for new games!)  We also had a really interesting activity where we at
e an entire apple.  Yes, you heard me right.  An entire apple.

Besides the activities, there were also many sessions led by the leaders and coaches of the academy.  These sessions helped guide us in our design process for our innovation project.  We also had a lot of time to start developing the ideas for our innovation project through breaking down the problems, creating story boards, and collaborating with others.

I’ll be talking about this a lot more in a future blog post – so keep your eyes out for another post soon.

Question #4: What was your favorite part?

It’s hard to pick just one favorite part of the Google Innovator Academy – so, I am going to give you two.  First, I have really enjoyed the sessions by the leaders and coaches of the academy.  They have sparked many ideas that I will take to the classroom when I return.  These sessions have been inspirational but also meaningful.  Honestly, I could write so much more on this topic but that will be for my next blog post.  Second, I have enjoyed going through the design thinking process to breakdown and refine my project and solution.  If you are in my AVID class, this is very similar to our 20Time projects – just on a much larger scale.  I wish I had gone through this process before our project because it has given me a million ideas.  As I mentioned in my last post, I am very passionate about this problem and finding a solution to support teachers in developing more rigorous and tech-based curriculum.  So, working on my Innovation project over the last two days has been an amazing opportunity.  More importantly, I truly feel like I understand my problem, my users, and the likelihood of implementing my solution.

Question #5: Are the other teacher at the academy working in different project like you are?

Yes, all of the teachers are working on their own projects.  Each teacher had a problem that they discovered in education and a solution to solve this problem.  As we went through the design thinking process, many educators saw these solutions start to change.  For myself, my solution is similar to what it was originally but it is starting to adjust and extend beyond what I had initially planned.  Just like myself, all of the educators are going through the design thinking process and are in the process of developing some amazing projects.  If you are interested in checking out these projects, visit this link: Google Innovator LON17 Cohort.

This post is a part of a series of titled “Adventures in Innovation” and focuses on the release of my Google Innovator Project: BoostEDU.