AI Tools, Certificates, and Training
In August 2025, Governor Gavin Newsom announced California signed agreements (see summary of the Google + California Community Colleges agreement here) with four of the largest technology companies in the GenAI sector (Google, Adobe, IBM, and Microsoft), as the state continues to speed forward as the global leader in technology, with the goal of training California’s workforce for a wide range of jobs in AI.
The California Community Colleges Chancellor’s Office and Google have collaborated to provide over 2 million students, faculty, and classified professionals across California's 116 community colleges with free access to AI training, Google Career Certificates, and some of Google's cutting edge AI tools including Gemini for Education and NotebookLM. Chancellor Sonya Christian and the Board of Governors have established a goal to make a variety of AI tools available to all California Community College students, in an effort to prepare them for an AI-powered workforce.
There are no costs associated with access to the AI tools (Gemini and NotebookLM), AI certificates, and/or training provided via the MOU between the State of California, the CCC system, and Google.
Google AI Tools Early Adopter Program
The Digital Center invites Founding Partner districts and colleges, along with any California Community College districts, colleges, or regional consortia that are ready, to participate in a Google AI Tools Early Adopter Program. Participating districts, colleges and regional consortia will:
- join the Digital Center's Google AI Tools Early Adopter community
- benefit from support from the Google team
- help optimize the implementation process for other colleges in the system
- identify, create or improve resources related to implementing or using the Google AI Tools
If interested in participating, please complete the interest form to answer questions about the current Google Workplace for Education environment(s) at your district and/or college(s). This will help the Digital Center and Google teams identify what information and support you will need to move forward.
Google AI Certificates and Training
The following certifications and training resources are available for colleges:
- Getting Started with Google AI in Higher Education - complete this interactive training to discover ways to use Google AI as an assistant in your professional practice to save time, inspire creativity, and assist with research. You will explore how to use the Gemini app, Gemini for Google Workspace, and NotebookLM to boost your productivity and accelerate learning.
- 50+ Ways to Use Gemini in Higher Education: This guide is designed to help higher education faculty, researchers, administrators, leaders, and students discover how to use Gemini for Education and NoteblookLM to enhacne learning, accerlate research, and improve institutional effectiveness.
- Generative AI for Educators - complete this interactive training to learn how to use generative AI tools like Gemini and NotebookLM to help you save time on everyday tasks, personalize instruction, enhance lessons and activities in creative ways, and more.
- Teaching responsible use of AI - download and review this PDF to create a lesson plan with Gemini-powered activities for students
- Prompting Essentials certification - complete this Coursera course (<6 hours) to discover 5 easy steps to effective prompt writing that will work with different AI tools and models
- AI Essentials certification - complete this Coursera course (<5 hours) to explore how to integrate AI tools into your daily workflow and increase your productivity.
- Gemini Academy - complete this comprehensive training program designed to equip educators with the knowledge and skills to effectively utilise AI tools, particularly Gemini, in their day-to-day. The programme aims to enhance AI literacy, promote the safe and responsible use of AI, and explore the potential of AI to transform education.
- Custom Professional Development Partners - review this PDF to identify additional professional development partners that work with Google
While some of the content in the resources presented above contain K12 focused examples,
the principles and messaging are valid and applicable to Higher Education use of AI
tools.
Implementation, Data Privacy and Security
Please click this link for detailed information regarding implementation, data privacy, and security. If you have additional questions, email info@cccdigitalcenter.org.