Santa Maria Bonita School District Holds Workshop For Teachers

To kick-start the school year, the Santa Maria Bonita School District hosted a technology workshop to teach elementary and middle school teachers different ways to incorporate technology in classroom.

The workshop is called the Google Summit.It is designed to showcase innovative tools teachers can use with Google, the popular search engine, to increase productivity.

Shannon Verbryke teaches sixth grade in Santa Maria.She tells KCOY/KKFX that she is leaving the seminar with new ideas for the coming school year.

“There was one thing called Google art project which gave the capability of just looking at different paintings, so that will be very good for social studies,” said Verbyrke.

To help bring this two-day forum together, tech experts from Google for Education split the teachers up into smaller group settings to give them hands-on training.

The district has 5,600 Chromebooks for students to use this year. Brian Rieke, technology coordinator for the district, says he organized the event to make sure teachers are prepared to use them in their classrooms.