West Michigan Teacher Wins Google Contest

In case you missed the story on TV last week, a West Michigan teacher was the winner of a Google contest and earned a proverbial "trip of a lifetime."  And, all it took was a tweet.

Our news partner, WZZM TV13 reported last week about teacher Andrew Vanden Heuvel who entered a Google contest.   The idea behind Google's competition was simple, tweet a message about how you would use Google Glass.  Andrew's tweet said that he wanted to use the device to make every moment a teachable moment, and Google liked his tweet so much that they chose him the winner.

Google Glass is essentially a computer that you wear on your head. It takes photos and videos, can search, and shows an image right into your eye, however it has not yet been released to the public.

Andrew Vanden Heuvel isn't your ordinary teacher. He says that he is teaching online.  The students  log into a computer and do everything remotely.  He is their online physics teacher.

Google called Andrew to say he had won, but said they had an extra surprise. He was getting a chance to fly to Switzerland to visit the LHC or Large Hadron Collider, and teach an online class from that location. Google would follow him and make a commercial on his adventure.

In his trip he had the opportunity to be one of the few people in the world to ever bike around the collider, and connected with students from South Christian High School, to show them what he was doing.

Is that cool, or what.  When he returned, Andrew visited South Christian to meet the students he had taught from thousands of miles away and give them the chance to use Google Glass.

Now you're asking, where are my Google Glasses?  Not so fast.  They're still in development stage and have not come to market, yet.  Soon.....we can only hope, soon.