Tuesday Ten

Ten Great Things About the Google thingie (and it hasn't even happened yet)
(Copied from my post on the official blog for the event, where, as you can imagine, I am a willing participant)

1. Through the application process, I learnt that I do a lot more than I realised. When I first saw the form I almost gave up straight away, but in the end I struggled to keep my word count down. I was also reminded of my favourite teaching moments, including my favourite kid comment ever: "Thanks for everything Miss, you taught me never think I cannot learn."
This is a good motto for life, I think.

2. I got a mini cardio workout when I got the acceptance email through. It set my pulse racing, followed by much jumping up and down; that has probably lengthened my life by several minutes at least.

3. I have started using Twitter more regularly, and found several extremely useful networks aside from the other participants. Thanks to this, I found a speaker for a conference I ran in June.

4. I have started plotting new strategies for parental communication for my job next year, with an online GDocs questionnaire and Gcalendar of events instead of the usual meeting/handout. Since my county network is looking for ways to feed back to parents more effectively, I know they're going to want to know more.

5. When I've shared what I've been doing or new things I've discovered, I really feel like the other participants are as excited as me. At school, my enthusiasm is often met with the confused, slightly pitying look that tells me I need to rein it in. I'm looking forward to not seeing that look at all this week.

6. I've connected with local teachers who aren't coming, but are interested and motivated and want to collaborate.

7. My school is working towards achieving international schools status, and with 23 participants at Google coming from abroad, I'm excited about the potential for making worldwide links which will broaden my pupils' horizons.

8. This Posterous blogging lark I've been introduced to is very helpful. I've blogged this from my phone in a coffee shop. I feel a new tutor group blog coming on.

9. It's already been so much fun. I've had fun watching other people's videos, reading their blogs and following their tweets, and we're not even there yet.

10. I was so inspired, I thought I had better start trying to be more innovative right away, which led to some of my favourite activities of the year, all crammed into the last week of it. I don't think I have ever been so energised in the dog days of the summer term before. If this is the impact it has had before I even go, I can't wait to see what's going to happen in September.

It is tres exciting, if we're thinking about it. Hence cross-posting to here, because I want to remember how energised I feel at this moment and how happy I am in my job. How sickening! Especially since it's the summer holidays. I am enjoying them, by the way, and I'm also quite excited about the impending trippage to Malaysia and Prague, but this comes first.