Google Apps For Education

google apps for education

Google Launches Redesigned Education Site

January 30, 2012 | 1:00 PM | By Tina Barseghian

Google

Google has revamped its site for educators, creating a redesigned repository for all its educational tools and resources for teachers, schools, and students.

The newest feature is News and Calendar, a listing of all events and deadlines for Google’s education endeavors.

Google also created an online booklet called Google in Education: A New and Open World for Learning, which lists the company’s initiatives and programs within the education realm, such as the Computer Science for High School program — university-created workshops for local high school and middle school computer science teachers teachers.

“We’re hoping educators will use this year-round for ideas on how to enhance teaching and learning,” said Google spokesperson Rachel Durfee.

And for those who jumped on the Google+ bandwagon, a specific Google+ page for educators.

The main Google in Education link offers much of the same content as before, but it’s better organized and redesigned. The Teachers site leads to Google’s many apps that can be used for teaching specific subjects, as well as design and collaboration tools. It’s divided by K-12, higher education, and examples of how education systems across the country are using the tools. The site also offers a list of professional development links, including webinars, online workshops, and tutorials, which are primarily centered around Google products and services. The Student Showcases link lists student-created material, such as worldwide panoramas using Google Earth and Sketchup models of homes, towns, and robots.

Schools and districts can find links to YouTube for Schools, which allows students to access YouTube EDU while blocking non-educational videos; App Engine, which hosts school web apps on Google’s system; and Google Apps for Higher Education, a free suite of hosted email and collaboration application.

For students, the site offers a list of awards and competitions — think YouTube Space Lab and Google Science Fair; programs like Summer of Code, which offer stipends for student code Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, Google, google apps for education

Where Does Disruption Begin? With Teachers Who Teach Teachers

August 16, 2011 | 12:05 PM | By Tina Barseghian

Getty

Disrupting the entrenched education system is daunting. There are 7.2 million teachers in the U.S., 76 million students, and more than 98,000 public schools, according to a government census (as of 2008).

So what’s the most effective way to unshackle the current archaic system from ineffective tactics that no longer work in the digital age?

Google, the world’s go-to for answers, has an idea for the most impactful place to start. Last week, the company’s educational overseers organized the Google Faculty Institute, to which they invited the faculty from California State University (CSU) schools of education. The mission: to show those who teach teachers the most effective, useful, and helpful digital tools.

Why the focus on CSU teachers? Simple math — 60% of teachers in California and 10% of teachers in the U.S. — are trained through the CSU system.

“You get the attention of hundreds of these faculty members, then you make a real change in California.”

“We want to make California a model for the rest of the country,” said Maggie Johnson, director of education and university relations for Google. “We wanted to find a mechanism for talking about education technology and all the ways of using it in transformational ways — not just ways to support teaching as it’s always been done.”

Over the course of three days, the 39 attendees — mostly faculty who teach at the CSU schools of education — were tasked with coming up with proposals that would demonstrate the use of technology in new and inventive ways. They had to show how the proposal could be scaled and how it could go viral. For its part, in addition to hosting the event and providing experts and resources at the workshop, Google will donate $20,000 to each group, which has six to nine months to implement their ideas.

Here’s what they came up with:

The Math of Khan: Documenting, testing and disseminating the process by which a teacher can flip their classroom using Khan Academy videos.
Making Teachers ‘Appy’: Encouraging a “maker” philosophy with pre-service educators (teachers-in-training) by teaching introduction to programming in an educational technology course. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Learning Methods, Teaching With Tech, California State University, Google, google apps for education, Khan Academy, schools of education

5 Ways Teachers Are Getting Inspired This Summer

July 27, 2011 | 10:30 AM | By Sara Bernard

Flickr: jlongstocking

Summertime is typically spent unwinding, unplugging, and for many educators, untangling from the daily rigors of teaching. But summer is also the perfect opportunity to get more familiar with ideas and tools that might take time to understand and use during the school year.

We asked a few teachers how they’ve been spending their summer months to get inspired. We heard from educators from Alaska, Utah, Puerto Rico, Georgia, and California.

PLAYING WITH TECH TOOLS. “This summer I’m playing with many of the tools we want kids to use more of next year – things like ShowMe and InClass, as well as other apps for the iPad, iPod, and iPhone. I’m also experimenting with more Google apps for learning, trying to get more paperless for next year. I’m reading up on many ideas that others have tried to help incorporate mobile devices and social media into classrooms and do so in a way that is safe but engaging to kids. I’m looking at more ways to ‘flip’ teaching so class time is more productive. Finally, I’m hiking, biking, and having lots of fun so I am refreshed and ready to go back!” – Debbie Brewer, Math/Science teacher, Lumen Christi High School, Anchorage, AK

FINDING THE BEST HISTORY VIDEOS. “I took a few weeks to just relax and then spent the last month rewriting my course to get it how I want it for next year, making sure I make all the changes necessary to make it better. I also watch a lot of history videos. I watch them and I’m like, ‘I love history! History is so great!’ I want to make sure every student loves it, too.” – Jennifer Klein, World Civilizations teacher, Open High School of Utah

READING, REMODELING, RECHARGING. “This summer, I went to Dallas, Texas and traveled alone by trains and buses to find my way around. It was a first experience for me since I have always traveled in my own car since I was 16. Reading everything that falls into my hands has also been a worthwhile experience this summer. I read Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese. Excellent reading! I have a stack of books waiting for me for the rest of the summer. I’ve also started to knit and looked into every nook and cranny of my house, cleaning, discarding, refreshing things. I’ve made dozens of plans to remodel the living room, renovate the terrace, and paint the house in the next two weeks. These four simple things have done wonders to refresh and relax me for the incoming semester.” – N. Vargas, 7th grade English teacher at an all-girls’ Catholic school in Puerto Rico Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Culture, Facebook, google apps for education, InClass, showme, The Great Turning, Twitter

Does Apple’s New iCloud Offer Anything New for Education?

June 8, 2011 | 10:25 AM | By Audrey Watters

Apple is holding its big developers’ conference this week in San Francisco, and the event kicked off on Monday with a keynote unveiling some of the new products and features Apple has in store. This includes upgrades to both its Mac and mobile operating systems.

Apple also introduced a new product, iCloud that will store users’ music, photos, apps, calendars, and documents online and then push them to all Apple devices, whether they’re iPhones, iPads, iPod Touches, or Macs. The service includes 5 GB of storage for free.

Apple is hardly the first company to make a foray into online storage. But with the popularity of Apple’s products — with consumers in general and with educators in particular — it may be that Apple’s new offering will help popularize the idea of cloud computing, a term that’s familiar in tech circles but still unclear to a lot of consumers.

CEO Steve Jobs took to the stage at the World Wide Developers Conference on Monday to explain Apple’s new service, saying that iCloud was the company’s “next big insight.” Contending that the PC is no longer the “digital hub for your digital life,” Jobs predicted that with iCloud, the company will “demote the PC and the Mac to just be a device” and instead that our digital hub will be “in the cloud.” And if nothing else, iCloud offers a way to demonstrate what cloud computing means: it’s online storage, accessible anywhere from any device over the Internet. All that data will in fact be stored in massive data centers instead of locally on your hard drive.

But what does iCloud mean for education? Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, Android, Apple, Google, google apps for education, iCloud

Is Your School Ready for Google’s Chromebooks for Education?

May 12, 2011 | 3:41 PM | By Audrey Watters

At Google IO this week, Google announced a “new kind of computer” and a new program aimed at schools: Chromebooks for Education. These new devices look like laptops, but they run on Google’s new operating system Chrome OS and are truly Web-based and Web-centric. There is no local storage and there is no software. In other words, everything runs through the (Chrome) browser and everything is stored online.

Google’s new Chromebooks for Education program will offer these devices to schools for $20 per user per month. This service will include enterprise-level support, device warranties and replacements, and hardware refreshes upon contract renewal (every three years). Included as well is a cloud management console that will allow IT administrators to remotely manage users, devices, applications, and policies. Although the price tag for these devices may not seem like a huge cost-savings — equipping every student with a laptop for the school year is always an expensive proposition — the ability to bypass software licensing, the promise of a virus-free device, and the power to control all these devices and their various permissions remotely all make this a very attractive deal for schools that are interested in one-to-one computing. And as the hardware will work well with Google’s Apps for Education productivity suite, the program means Google can offer schools both hardware- and software-as-a-service, eliminating a lot of the need for schools to build out their own IT infrastructure.

But regardless of whether Chromebooks are a good deal for schools and whether or not schools can afford such an offer, there are other concerns that schools will have to face.They’re not just financial issues, but technological and cultural ones as well.

1. What’s Your Acceptable Use Policy?

The Chromebooks will have the option for 3G and for wireless connectivity. The 3G will, of course, require more expenditure. But either way, handing students a device that is, in Google’s words, “nothing but the Web,” will force schools to consider what their Internet Acceptable Use Policy looks like. The Chromebooks are designed to give students 24-7 access to Web technology — both at school and at home. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: Teaching With Tech, Chromebooks for education, Google, google apps for education

Weekly News Roundup

March 18, 2011 | 6:00 AM | By Audrey Watters

Flickr: WilliaC

The Sesame Workshop and the Joan Ganz Cooney Center released its study on children’s media usage. Among its findings, television is still popular, but children are engaging in a variety of other media platforms. Almost 25 percent of young children under age 5 use the Internet at least once a week, and just under half of those under the age of 6 play video games.

The social learning platform Xplana released its report on digital textbooks in higher education, calling the industry at a tipping point and contending that by 2015, one out of every four textbooks will be e-books.

Google rolled out some changes to its Google Docs enhancing its collaboration features. Google Docs has allowed comments for almost a year, something that makes the apps great for classroom – for teachers and for students giving feedback. This week, Google expanded those comments into “discussions,” making them editable, making them appear in threaded conversations, and letting collaborators use the @ symbol to refer to each other by name. Google Wave lives on!

A complaint was filed against Northwestern and New York University, charging that the schools’ use of Google Apps for Education violated the Americans with Disabilities Act. According to the National Federation of the Blind, Google’s educational suite is not fully accessible. Google has responded saying it has “a strong commitment to improving our products,” but the company did not offer any details.

Microsoft released an update to its video game development platform for kids, Kodu. Kodu is an icon-based development environment, requiring no programming skills but teaching some of the basics of computational thinking and used to build games for PC and Xbox. Microsoft also announced the Kodu Cup competition for students age 9 to 17.

A new education-focused startup incubator launched this week. ImagineK12 will provide a 3-month accelerator program, with funding and mentorship, for early stage ed-tech startups. Founded by startup veterans Geoff Ralston, Tim Brady andAlan Louie and modeled after the very successful Y Combinator program, ImagineK12 aims “to effect positive change in the K-12 education space.”