Getting 2 Google Educator Certifications in One Day — Essential Skills Checklist
How I prepared for and passed both Google Educator Level 1 and Level 2 certifications in a single day, after just two days of prep. Includes study resources and a hands-on skills checklist to help you get ready.
· 9 min read
About Google Educator Certifications
I only found out Google had an Educator certification four days before I took the exam XD
As the name suggests, these certifications are designed from an educator’s perspective — verifying that teachers can confidently use Google for Education tools in a professional and practical context.
Levels and Exam Fees
There are two core levels:
Educator Level 1: Free, renewal required every 3 years
Demonstrates foundational knowledge of Google for Education products.
Educator Level 2: Free, renewal required every 3 years
For educators who can apply Google tools fluently in the classroom — demonstrates advanced technology integration skills.
The certifications are currently free, though renewal is required every three years (which makes sense, since Google’s products keep evolving). Worth thinking about whether it’s the right fit for your goals.
Beyond these two, there are also assessments like the GFE Trainer Skill Assessment — I’m still looking into those and will share updates when I know more.
Level 1 vs. Level 2
If you’re wondering how different they really are… honestly, the gap isn’t huge. But if I had to describe it: Level 1 tests your basic conceptual understanding of the tools; Level 2 focuses more on applying them flexibly.
If you use Google products every day like I do, you can probably skim the practice questions and just go take the exam.
If you’re less familiar with the tools, use the checklist in this post — once you can confidently tick off everything, you’re probably ready :)
Building Your Knowledge Base
Google Educator certifications require fluency with Google for Education tools. Here are the main ways to prepare:
Google’s Official Training Courses
For both Level 1 and Level 2, Google provides well-organized official training courses. If you’re unfamiliar with certain tools, follow along at your own pace — or if you’re already comfortable with most things, just skip to the practice questions at the end.
I personally find their multiple-choice questions a bit unpleasant (the questions are oddly worded and the answer explanations aren’t great XD), and completing the full course doesn’t actually boost your exam score. That said, drilling the practice questions does help.
How long this takes depends on your familiarity with the tools. If you use Google tools daily, each unit might only take 5–10 minutes to skim through and note any unfamiliar questions. If you’re new to many of the tools, working through everything step by step takes more time — but building a solid foundation is always worth it in the long run.
Other Helpful Resources
I didn’t use much supplementary material beyond a quick search for exam formats and experience writeups, but here are some resources that look genuinely useful:
Teacher Yeh Chung-ju’s YouTube channel: I haven’t watched these myself, but someone mentioned them at an event and when I looked them up, the explanations were really clear and thorough. Great starting point if you’re not yet comfortable with the tools.
Teacher Yujen Lien’s YouTube channel: Regular posts on digital teaching tools — anything Google-related in his library is worth watching (last-minute binge-watching totally counts XDDD)
GEG Taiwan | 呷飽沒 🍍: A Facebook group where you’ll find lots of practical info and community discussion.
Teacher Yeh Guan-jun’s posts: Honestly, after seeing Teacher Yeh’s two writeups in the GEG Taiwan group, I just drilled a few practice questions and went straight to the exam XD She shared reflections on both Level 1 and Level 2, which gave me a good sense of the exam format and included a very helpful summary of the subject knowledge component. Highly reassuring.
The official materials and supplementary resources above cover the conceptual side in plenty of detail — I won’t repeat what they do well (and it’s not my strongest area anyway XD).
My recommendation: work through the official content once, write down anything you’re uncertain about, and that’s your study list. The rest of this post focuses on hands-on skills.
Google Educator Essential Skills Checklist
One thing that becomes clear from the Educator course is how much emphasis is placed on problem-solving ability. If you’re going to teach students to use technology to solve problems, you as the teacher need to be able to do the same — flexibly and confidently.
My approach to building practical skills:
First master the fundamentals; then focus on integration and flexible application.
Fundamentals = the core, essential function of each tool Integration and flexible application = how the tools work together
Below is my checklist of skills for each tool. Since it’s honestly hard to draw a clean line between Level 1 and Level 2, I’ve combined them. Go through these before your exam — can you do all of them?
Google Chrome | Google Search
Open Google Chrome
Browse the web using Google Chrome
Open and close tabs
Pin tabs
Switch user accounts
Sign in and sign out of a user account
Use Incognito mode (and understand why you’d want to)
Create different chart types from spreadsheet data
Customize charts (title, labels, colors, etc.)
Link a Google Form to a spreadsheet (sync form responses)
Share a spreadsheet with editing permissions
Google Slides
Create a new presentation
Add text content
Insert an image
Insert a YouTube video
Add animations and transitions
Share a presentation with editing permissions
Install add-ons
Google Sites
Create a new Google Site
Change the site template
Set the site name
Set the site header/title
Insert a text block
Insert an image
Insert a hyperlink
Insert a YouTube video
Embed a file from Google Drive
Configure site settings (custom URL, privacy, etc.)
Add pages
Rename pages
Google Classroom
Create a Google Classroom
Invite students to join
Post an announcement in the Stream (with sharing settings)
Create an assignment in Classwork
Google Maps
Search for a specific location
Find distance and travel time between two locations
Add a third stop between two locations
Share search results with others
Google Meet
Create a Google Meet (instant and scheduled)
Share your screen in a Google Meet
Create a Google Meet through Calendar and Google Classroom
YouTube
Create your own YouTube channel
Search for content by keyword
Create a playlist
Add videos to a playlist
Share a playlist with others
Upload a video
Edit a video’s title, description, and privacy settings
Blogger
Create a Blogger site
Set the blog title and content
Write a new post
Insert an image
Insert a video
Insert a link
Add co-authors
Configure advanced settings (custom URL, etc.)
My Takeaways
The skills above cover the core functionality of each tool, along with some basic integration scenarios (Forms + Sheets, Calendar + Meet, etc.). I hope they’re useful as a prep checklist.
Once you’re comfortable with all the fundamentals, you really shouldn’t run into too many surprises on the exam.
The main difference I noticed between Level 1 and Level 2 is that Level 1 gives you more step-by-step guidance in the tasks, while Level 2 drops most of that scaffolding — so being more fluent with the tools before you sit Level 2 is definitely worth it.
There are also a few more specialized features to be aware of, like Google Earth — those are worth exploring on your own when you have time!
If you have questions or want to add anything, feel free to leave a comment. I hope this helps :D
Thanks for reading :D
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