PRPS Teacher Takes Home Trio of Prestigious Awards this Spring

Cammie Kannekens, an Instructional Coach with Prairie Rose Public Schools, is having a great spring. Not only did she earn an International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Certification, but she also won a 2024 ISTE 20 to Watch Award and was accepted into a Google Innovator Academy. These are all milestones Kannekens has hoped to achieve for several years, and this is the year it’s all coming together for her.  

ISTE is the largest education technology organization in the world and the ISTE Certification involves taking courses for five weeks with a cohort followed by six months of putting together an individual portfolio. Before the pandemic, the course was only offered as a three-day intensive at locations in the USA and it never worked out for Kannekens to attend. After the pandemic, much of the certification was moved online, which removed the location barrier. Last year, there was an opportunity to do the course for free through TakingITGlobal, a Canadian tech company who partnered with ISTE.  

To earn the certification, she needed to show competency in seven categories that are broken into 25 different criteria. “ISTE is the gold standard of technology and there are schools across the USA, Canada and globally who refer to ISTE standards and use them as the goals one would aim for,” explained Kannekens. 

In 2018 she attended her first ISTE conference, which one of her colleagues describes as Disneyland for people who are interested in education technology. “Upwards of 15,000 people attend and there is an immense vendor hall with all the latest related to technology. It’s about making connections and learning and through that I became an ISTE Community Leader,” said Kannekens. “It’s all volunteer and about supporting their programs and being involved in things so it made sense because of that connection to work toward ISTE Certification.”  

This is not the first time she was nominated for the ISTE 20 to Watch Award, but it is the first year she completed the application process, which is intense. Several international colleagues Kannekens is connected to have won the award. “I thought since I was doing many of the same things as them, maybe it was worth the work of putting the application together. When I go back and look at winners from previous years, it’s lots of people who are colleagues and doing really neat things in the world of education technology.” 

Kannekens doesn’t attend the ISTE Conference every year but will make the effort this year as, in addition to being one of the 2024 ISTE 20 to Watch, she is also presenting some sessions at the conference. “That is one of the hardest conferences to get accepted to present at. Lots of people apply and most don’t get accepted so I’ve been lucky enough to present there a couple of times.” 

For Kannekens her biggest achievement this year is being accepted into a Google Innovator Academy. “The Google certifications in the education technology world are probably some of the most recognized. I’ve been a Google Certified Trainer and Google Certified Coach for several years, which is a portal to this whole learning network of the top people in education.”  

Google Innovator Academy is different from the certifications as there is a global application process where only small cohorts are accepted. The last time Kannekens applied was prior to the pandemic and Google hasn’t run an English Innovator Academy since then. “It’s been a long time; they’ve done Innovator Academies in other languages, but they haven’t done an English one. This year they announced there were some English academies coming and after years of not having one there were hundreds of applicants.”  

Her number one choice was the academy being run in Chicago in July, but Kannekens felt it was a long shot and put another application together for the one in Seoul, Korea in August this year. Her acceptance email came through for the Chicago academy just before she was going to submit the second application.  

“It was, honestly, the hugest thing. I danced little jigs for days. This one (Chicago) is slightly bigger than some of them, but there were still only 50 people selected,” stated Kannekens. “When you apply to Innovator Academy you need to have an issue or something you are passionate about in education. For this academy they are running five streams and are pairing with non-profits. I applied under the AI strand and I’m excited because the non-profit partner is ISTE. ISTE had nothing to do with the applications or anything, it just happened to be them, but I’m excited because ISTE is a leader in education technology and they’ve been a real leader in AI also.” 

The Academy will be a three-day intensive with a schedule that runs from 8 a.m. until 10 p.m. each day. “We’ve all heard about Google and their push the envelope atmosphere and that’s what it will be like. Every single person that I know that has gone to an Innovator Academy says it was the most amazing experience of their education career by far.” 

By Samantha Johnson, Prairie Rose Public Schools Content Writer