I have been a leader of the GEGNZ (Google Educators' Group New Zealand) for over 10 years; I think I may have even been a part of its inception. I love the idea of connecting educators that have a passion for something - I am very passionate about Google Workspace for Edu, and love to share good ways for people to use them.
do a simple application with a 1 minute video about what we hope to do. I suck at doing videos, I never believe in myself and just hate video/ audio of me (even though almost everyone hates this for themselves as well...). Today, I just got on with it. I am not going to post it here, as it is still too "cringe" as my students would say. And it was easy. A few notes, 2 takes and that was it, pain over.
GEGNZ is not a huge group (about 800 members, not all of them very active), which reflects the fact we are a small country. And yet, there are educators here doing some stunning and inspirational stuff - at one point, we had more Certified Innovators per capita than any other country (except Iceland, which with a population of less than 400,000 people, even one Innovator will tip the numbers!)
I see our GEG growing and progressing - I want to see these educators championed and their work shown off. They are people we can all learn something from, and I think that needs to be the strength of our GEG - we need to have these people talking to others about what they do and how. We no longer have a nationally-run education technology conference, uLearn has closed down. However, we are going back to having a Summit this year (hooray!) with Deploy Learning leading the charge. This is exciting. Another place for our fabulously clever people to showcase what they do.
Here's to many more years of GEGNZ, whether I am here with them for the journey, or somewhere else. It has been an important part of who I have become, and will stay with me as well.
