The national parks are our shared cultural inheritance, passed on from generation to generation for all Americans to enjoy. We believe everyone should have access to these national treasures, which is why we’ve worked to bring the National Parks online with Google Maps, make National Park Service historical artifacts accessible via Google Arts & Culture and created a National Parks immersive documentary.

Today we’re also announcing our sponsorship of the National Park Foundation’s Open Outdoors for Kids Initiative, providing funding to enable roughly 1,700 children  to attend immersive education programming at national parks across the country - many experiencing a national park for the first time. Through our Field Trip Days program, we’ve sent more than 150,000 under-resourced students to museums, science centers, planetariums, and aquariums.

We’ve made it a priority to help students discover the world using technology like Google Expeditions that enable classrooms to travel to places a school bus can’t reach via virtual reality. And through this sponsorship, we take an additional step forward in supporting outdoor education by helping students experience parks in person across the country. We’re proud to support the National Park Service, especially during this centennial anniversary year and give students the opportunity to explore their cultural inheritance online and in person.

The sponsorship was announced by Secretary Sally Jewell of the Department of Interior over the weekend at a “Campout” on the Google Kirkland campus, hosted in partnership with the  Department of Interior as part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! initiative and the YMCA. The campout was complete with s’mores and outdoor educational programing from the Woodland Park Zoo, Pacific Science Center, National Park Service, Fish & Wildlife Service, REI and former Google.org grantee NatureBridge, who will help us to facilitate many of the Field Trip Days across the country.

We hope that programs like these inspire more students to visit our parks in the future and protect them for years to come.

Editor’s note: As part of the ExploreEDU series, schools are working with Google for Education Premier Partners to throw open their doors and invite neighboring educators to learn first-hand from their own experiences using Google tools to innovate and improve. To see if there is an event near you visit the ExploreEDU site. For those that aren’t able to join these events, we’ll also share the schools’ experiences here. Today’s guest author is David Schneider, assistant superintendent for instruction and technology from Bethpage Union Free School District. Their district is hosting an event on November 1 with CDW.

About four years ago we set an ambitious goal to enable each individual student to create an individualized learning pathway, and we determined the best way to meet that goal was through providing the right technology to our students and teachers. We selected Chromebooks and G Suite for Education (formerly Google Apps for Education) primarily because of their simplicity and collaborative capabilities. In order for the rollout to be a success, we knew we needed the support of students, teachers and parents. We had to teach everyone in the district how to get the most out of the new technology. Based on our experiences here are my tips to successfully introduce new technology in the classroom:

1. Bring in outside expertise

We invited several Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES) trainers on campus for our summer teacher training. BOCES offers programs to help teachers integrate technology in the classroom and meet New York education standards. 75 percent of our teachers took this initial professional development course. While all participants felt better prepared to begin the school year, our teachers were particularly inspired by the way one BOCES trainer taught the pedagogy and gave practical advice.

Throughout the year, we invited her back numerous times to provide a wide variety of professional development, from 30-minute one-on-one sessions to professional training workshops both during and outside school hours. As our district became familiar with the technology, teachers and administrators started training their peers on the basics of Google Docs and other foundational topics.

2. Encourage teachers to share insights

Before we introduced Chromebooks at Bethpage High School, many ninth grade teachers didn’t know how to use them effectively. Rising ninth grade students had been using Chromebooks for a year, and we realized we needed to level the playing field in the classroom.

Our district organized collaborative meet and greets for eighth grade teachers to share Chromebooks advice with their ninth grade colleagues. They discussed how they’re using Chromebooks in the classroom and best practices to engage students through technology. When teachers share their experiences and offer advice on ways to overcome challenges, our teachers gained a much better understanding of how the devices could make their lives more effective and efficient.

3. Turn resistors into advocates by solving their pain points

When we introduce new teaching resources, there are always some early adopters and some resistors. To win over the resistors, I decided to share a few examples of how technology can improve the teaching experience.

For example, for formative assessments such as Exit Tickets, many teachers typically printed 120 copies of a question, cut each question into separate strips, had the students fill them out, collected them and kept them organized until they read through each answer. I showed how with Google Forms, they could simply send the question and receive the responses organized in a Google Sheet. When teachers hear examples like these, it encourages them to embrace new technologies.

4. Include student training in orientation programs

Training students and parents on how to use Chromebooks is equally as important as training teachers. We wanted to deploy the Chromebooks with as little interruption of instruction as possible and give everyone a basic understanding of Chromebooks and Google Docs.

We included a technology workshop in the sixth grade orientation program, which started three years ago. We did the same workshop for seventh and eighth graders in our first year rollout. Similar to the teacher peer training, the workshops were run by students and teachers. We asked 15 early adopter teachers and returning eighth graders in the National Honor Society to lead the sessions. We taught parents how to use the devices and how to teach their children to use them. We also gave Chromebooks to every middle school student a week before school started to give them time to get comfortable with the technology.

5. Show parents the value of technology

Aside from the orientation program, we introduced a parent academy to show parents the technology in action and the true impact it has on their child’s education. For example, I once gave a presentation via Google Slides, while two principals in the audience live-edited the document. Parents were amazed by the power of real-time collaboration with G Suite for Education.

My advice to other educators rolling out new technology is to leverage your internal resources and recognize when you might need to bring in outside help. When your teachers and students share their knowledge and insights with their peers, they inspire them to find new ways to build on what’s already been done.

Editor’s note: This post comes from Maria Vitória, a 2016 Google Science Fair global finalist who is a high school student from Londrina, Brazil. Her teacher, Mr. Fabio Bruschi, won the 2016 Google Science Fair Inspiring Educator Award, which acknowledges an educator who goes above and beyond in encouraging his students to achieve great things. In honor of Mr. Bruschi, Maria wrote a letter to say thank you for everything that he does. This is part of our ongoing series sharing stories that celebrate our teachers around the world, leading up to our global online gathering of educators for Education on Air on December 3. Join the movement by sharing what teachers mean to you with #ItTakesATeacher.

Dear Fabio,

Sometimes people ask me, “What makes Fabio special as a teacher?” Every time I try to think of a response, there isn’t just one reason to point to. In a nutshell, you are exactly what the award you received says: an inspiring teacher. Without a shadow of doubt, you are an educator who inspires, motivates and encourages me. You truly care about seeing your students happy and you carry a sense of pride for what we accomplish.

What makes you an amazing person is the gift of making us, students, believe that we can achieve anything we put our hearts and minds to. No matter how old we get, where we came from or what we like, you show us that our willpower can take us anywhere we want.

What makes you an inspiring teacher is your ability to coach, the love you give while working, the way you guide students, the simple gesture of seeing bad situations in the best light possible, the ways you’ve shown me that studying can be fun and that learning new things is the best part of each new day.

Thank you for believing so much in my potential, for encouraging me to enter the Google Science Fair, and believing my project was good enough. When the deadline was coming up, I didn’t have enough time to send it in but your motivation and encouragement inspired me to make it a top priority. Thank you for enabling me to have experiences and achievements that I couldn't ever have imagined.

Thank you also for being both a teacher and a father to me. You care about not just what I am doing in the lab, but also how I feel about things and how I’m doing in my personal life. If I win a contest, you cheer as if you’re cheering for a daughter who’s been successful. If I don’t win, you comfort me with advice that encourages me to move on, telling me that I’m a winner for everything I’ve already accomplished.

You deserve this award for a thousand reasons. For me it was an honor to be part of this moment with you! Congratulations on your achievement - showing all of us in Brazil that it is possible to make a difference, that while education can be sometimes be undervalued, it is still worth it. The world would be lucky to have more teachers like you.

Love,

Maria Vitória