Google's Gemini Academy Trains 2,000+ Balikpapan Teachers in Practical AI Skills
To mark National Teacher's Day, Google Indonesia, the Balikpapan Education and Culture Office (Disdikbud), and the Balikpapan City Government ran the Gemini Academy for more than 2,000 local teachers. The focus: safe, ethical, and classroom-ready AI skills that make teaching more effective.
"The Gemini Academy is here to help teachers understand how AI can become a safe, intuitive tool and help them teach more effectively," said Isya Hanum, Government Affairs Manager of Google Indonesia.
This initiative supports national efforts to improve education quality and strengthen Indonesia's talent. Since launching in 2024, Gemini Academy has reached over 286,000 teachers across 38 provinces-Balikpapan is the latest step and a key part of the city's strategy to speed up AI literacy in schools.
What Teachers Learned
- AI foundations and how generative tools like Gemini fit into teaching tasks.
- Responsible use: ethics, bias awareness, and practical guardrails for the classroom.
- Good practices for using Gemini: prompt patterns, verification, and feedback loops.
- Workflow upgrades: lesson planning, assessment drafts, rubrics, and differentiated materials.
- Integrating coding-based learning to build problem-solving skills.
- Personalized support for students while saving prep time and boosting creativity.
"We believe that meaningful education occurs when teachers are empowered, students are actively involved, and the technology used can be relied on and designed to improve the quality of learning," Isya added.
Why This Matters for Education and HR Leaders
AI literacy is becoming core teacher competency. The faster educators gain practical skills and clear guardrails, the faster schools see real gains in student outcomes, workload reduction, and curriculum relevance.
- Publish simple AI use guidelines for staff: acceptable use, privacy, copyright, and bias checks.
- Run short PD sprints (60-90 minutes) focused on one job to be done: lesson plans, feedback, or assessment.
- Create a shared prompt library and exemplars by subject and grade level.
- Pilot in a few departments, set baselines (prep time, student engagement), and review monthly.
- Require human-in-the-loop review for student-facing content and grading aids.
- Offer a coding-onramp (block-based to text) tied to real class projects.
- Appoint AI champions to coach peers and maintain resources.
For responsible practice frameworks, see Google's AI Principles. For classroom resources and training paths, explore Google for Education.
Program Snapshot
- Location: Balikpapan, East Kalimantan
- Partners: Google Indonesia, Disdikbud Balikpapan, Balikpapan City Government
- Participants: 2,000+ teachers
- Scale to date: 286,000+ teachers trained across 38 Indonesian provinces (since 2024)
If you're planning a district-wide AI upskilling track or role-based learning paths, browse curated options by job function here: Complete AI Training - Courses by Job.
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