As part of professional development programme , GDGWS staff attended a Google CS First Workshop. The workshop introduced the teaching staff to ‘Scratch’ and how it can be used effectively through Google Classroom. It encourages blended teaching and at the same time ‘Scratch’ can be a very useful tool for students and teachers to implement/improve creative, logical and technical skills. ‘CS First’ has a very well structured curriculum and it is easy to teach and learn. The sessions gave staff an idea of the various Google tools that teachers could use to make everyday tasks a bit easier, such as – Google forms, excel sheets and word docs that enables teachers to work incollaboration. Teachers also explored Google Suite and the benefits of the tool ‘classroom’ that helps them to create assignments for the students in one place and helps in maintaining the records of the class. Google Visit session at Google campus was a brief introduction to CS first. CS first is a computer science curriculum by Google, that makes coding easy to teach and fun to learn. It empowers every teacher to integrate computer science with the core subjects using free tools and resources making their subjects engaging for their students and also giving them a platform to learn by taking initiatives. Signing in into this application is easy for both educators and students. Understanding the various tools and exploring different materials in this application was an enriching experience. This application can be used by students to create various Google doodles. The teachers can use the various applications in CS First to cater to the differential learning abilities among the students and also to encourage an engaging classroom scenario.
The workshop was one of the most interesting workshops attended by teachers. It gave everybody the chance to learn new techniques and be aware of the ones that they have also been using.
