My previous blog post was about video overlay options in iMovie and, since then, I’ve received lots of additional questions about iMovie from enthusiastic educators. Now more than ever, teachers are crying out for free professional development regarding technology upskilling and integration. I have been directing people to the Apple Teacher Learning Center and encouraging them to get certified. I thought that I’d write about it on here too.
What is the Apple Teacher Learning Center?
The Apple Teacher Learning Center is rich with fantastic professional development content, such as project guides, videos, tutorials, updates and more. Popular sections include ‘Support for Remote Learning’ and ‘Everyone Can Create’. From the Learning Center, you can also work towards Apple Teacher certification, designed to support educators with their Apple technology integration and celebrate their achievements.
Even if you don’t plan to pursue Apple Teacher, it’s still worth exploring and bookmarking the Apple Teacher Learning Center for meaningful, on-demand professional learning.
How to gain Apple Teacher recognition
Apple Teacher is a free online course for educators to work through at their own pace. There are two avenues available, iPad or Mac, each containing six badges to collect. Both routes include badges for Pages, Keynote, Numbers, iMovie and Garageband, with an additional badge for general Mac/iPad skills. Each badge includes entry-level learning materials with more advanced options available. To be recognised as an Apple Teacher, you must earn all six badges for either iPad or Mac.
To earn the badges, you must take quizzes and pass them with a minimum of 80% accuracy. If you make mistakes, you will be advised on where you can find specific help. Then, as soon as you’re ready, you can try again. No problem.
For those who are already comfortable with Apple tools, it’s tempting (and totally acceptable) to go directly to the quizzes, but I’m glad that I didn’t because I still learnt a lot from the course content despite my reasonable level of familiarity.
Going further: Apple Teacher with Swift Playgrounds recognition
After gaining recognition as an Apple Teacher, you will notice the Swift Playgrounds badges become available. These four badges offer professional development on Swift Playgrounds, coding and classroom integration. With these additional badges, you can add Swift Playgrounds recognition to your Apple Teacher certification.
The community of Apple Teachers and Apple Distinguished Educators is, in my experience, made up of highly supportive and encouraging people. In addition to these courses, I suggest that you get connected. A great way to do this is to join #AppleEDUchat on Twitter. More information can be found in the Apple Teacher Learning Center.
I hope that this quick overview of Apple Teacher was useful. Please let me know if you have any further questions or require assistance. Happy to help!
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