Posted by Madhav Bhagat, Software Engineer, Classroom

(Cross-posted on the the Google for Work blog.)

Primary school students in rural Australia are using Google Classroom to collaborate with astronauts on the Space Station. A school without any IT support in Mexico was able to go paperless with Classroom. And in the United Kingdom, a Holton, Oxfordshire school is exploring local historical villages and writing reports using Google Apps and Classroom.

These examples represent just a few stories from the more than 40 million students, teachers and administrators around the world who are using Google Apps for Education. Classroom launched this summer to make Google Apps for Education even simpler — saving teachers time and making it easier to collaborate with students. And today, we’re launching 5 improvements to Classroom, focusing on things educators and students around the world told us were most important to them:

Invite students more easily with Groups
If you already have a Google Group set up for your class, you can now use that group to invite students to Classroom. And if your school uses tools like School Directory Sync, your Google Apps administrator can sync your school’s class rosters from your student information system (SIS) into Google Groups, helping you use these groups to set up a class in seconds.

Teachers can create classes using existing groups

Mark assignments as “done”
Not all assignments require students to submit work online — like reading a chapter or conducting an experiment — so we’ve added the ability for students to simply mark assignments as "done" if there's nothing to turn in. We’ve also given the Assignments page a refresh, to make it easier for students to keep track of upcoming work.

Students can mark assignments as "done" if there isn't anything to turn in

Greater teacher controls
We’re also giving teachers greater control over their class stream. Teachers can now set permissions for whether or not their class can post or comment in the stream, they can mute individual students from posting or commenting and can even view previously deleted items in the stream.

Export all grades
Teachers will now have the ability to download grades for all assignments at once, making it easier to export assignments to any gradebook.

Sort by first or last name
And now teachers can also choose to sort students by first or last name, depending on their needs.

We hope that these updates make Classroom even more efficient and effective to use with your students. We'll be making regular updates throughout the year, so keep submitting feedback and stay tuned.

Posted by Marielena Ivory, Pre-university Education Specialist, Europe

The European Commission estimates that more than 900,000 high tech jobs will go unfilled in 2020. While digital competency is one of the most important prerequisites for getting a job, too few students are studying computing to prepare them with the skills they'll need. We want to help fill this gap. To help encourage more school age students to learn about computing, we’re participating in the European Commission initiative, Europe Code Week, which takes place Oct 11-17.

We’re providing small grants to organizations who are running events in nearly a dozen countries, from Spain to Slovenia. In Sevilla, Programamos is going to teach 100 students to code. In Athens, we’re supporting coding workshops for underprivileged girls with Greek Geekettes . Other innovative projects range from Atelier-Gouter du Code, which is bringing coding workshops to students in underprivileged areas of Marseilles, France, to Python for Everyone through the University of Ljubljana.

An important priority in this year’s event is encouraging girls to explore computer science. To that end, we are also coordinating Hangouts on Air interviews, hosting female Google engineers from across the continent to show children, especially girls, role models in the tech field. Tune in to Europe Code Week’s Google+ Page to watch the upcoming Hangouts on Air.

See Code Week’s events page to see all the different opportunities to participate in this celebration of computer science.

Posted by Stephanie Taylor, Open Source Programs

At Google, we are passionate about introducing students to open source software development. Since 2005, the Open Source Programs team at Google has worked with over 10,000 students and over 485 open source projects in a variety of fields to create more code for us all.

For students ages 13-17 interested in writing code that could make a difference in the world, we're excited to tell you about a program designed to introduce you to open source software development: Google Code-in.

December 1, 2014 kicks off the fifth consecutive year of this international, online contest designed to introduce pre-university students to the world of open source development. Open source projects are about more than just coding, and this contest highlights a variety of ways to contribute to open source projects.

You might be thinking to yourself:

• What is open source? 
• What types of work do open source projects do? 
• I’ve only taken one computer science class, can I contribute to an open source project? 
• I’m not really into coding, how else can I contribute to open source? 
• I’ve never participated in open source or an online contest before, can someone help guide me
• Open source sounds fun, how can I get started?

If you’ve wondered about any of these questions and are a pre-university student (age 13-17) then we hope you'll join in the fun and excitement of the Google Code-in contest starting Monday, December 1st.

For seven weeks from early December to mid January, the Google Code-in contest will have students working with up to 12 selected open source projects on a variety of tasks. The different categories of tasks that students will be able to work on include:

1. Code: writing or refactoring 
2. Documentation/Training: creating/editing documents and helping others learn more
3. Outreach/research: community management, outreach/marketing, or studying problems and recommending solutions
4. Quality Assurance: testing and ensuring code is of high quality 
5. User Interface: user experience research or user interface design and interaction

For more details on how you can sign up and participate, please visit the Frequently Asked Questions page on the Google Code-in site. On November 12, we'll also announce the the open source organizations that will be participating in the contest.

We look forward to welcoming hundreds of students from around the world into the open source family again this year, and hope you'll be a part of it this year.

Posted by Leslie Yeh Johnson, University Relations

(Cross-posted on the Google Research Blog.)

College students are more interested than ever in studying computer science. There has been an unprecedented increase in enrollment in Computer Science undergraduate programs over the past six years. Harvard University’s popular introductory CS course CS50 has recently claimed the spot as the most enrolled course on campus. An astounding 50% of Harvey Mudd’s graduates received engineering degrees this year. However, while the overall number of students in introductory computer science courses continue to climb, the number of students who go on to complete undergraduate degrees in this field, particularly among women and under-represented minorities, does not match this increase in individual course enrollment (2013 Taulbee Survey).

Recent findings show that while students may begin a CS degree program, retaining students after their first year remains an issue. Research indicates that one of the strongest factors in the retention of students in undergraduate CS degrees is early exposure to engaging courses and course material, such as high quality assignments that are meaningful and relevant to the student’s life or classroom activities that encourage student-to-student interaction. When an instructor or department imbeds these practices into the introductory CS classroom, students remain excited about CS and are more likely to complete their undergraduate CS degree.

At Google we believe in the importance of preparing the next generation of computer scientists. To this end, we’ve created the CS Engagement Small Grants Program to support educators teaching introductory computer science courses in reaching their engagement and retention goals. We’ll give unrestricted gifts of $5,000 to the selected applicants’ universities, towards the execution of engaging CS1 or CS2 courses in the 2014-2015 school year. We encourage educators who are teaching CS1 and CS2 courses at the post-secondary level to apply to the Google CS Engagement Small Grants Program. Applications will be accepted through November 15, 2014 and will be evaluated on an ongoing basis. If you’re interested in applying, please check out the Call for Proposal.

Posted by Sophie Healy-Thow, Emer Hickey and Ciara Judge, 2014 Google Science Fair grand prize winners

Editor's note: Last week, 16 year olds Sophie, Ciara and Emer, from Kinsale, Ireland, scooped the grand prize at the 2014 Google Science Fair. Today, they’re sharing more about their project and giving us a glimpse into their experience during the competition.

After working on our project for three years, we decided it was time to enter it into the 2014 Google Science Fair. Our project investigates a natural bacteria called rhizobium that’s found in soil and helps to speed up cereal crop germination. The inspiration for this project came when Emer was gardening with her mom. After pulling up pea plants, they noticed wart like nodules on the roots. Emer brought these into our science teacher, and it was here we learned that rhizobium bacteria lives in the nodules. We were told about the symbiotic relationship it formed with legume plants and we all found it to be an interesting bacteria.

At the same time, we were also learning about the African food crisis in our Geography class, which led us to wonder about ways we could help farmers whose crops die off before they even have a chance to grow in the soil. We thought, perhaps there is a way for us to use the science we’d learned about to help. And that was what sparked the whole project!

After carrying out many tests, our findings showed great potential. We found an increase in germination rate by up to 50% for barley and oat seeds, which could significantly decrease loss of seeds due to rotting. We also found an increase in dry mass yield of the crops by up to 70%. This could potentially mean the production of more food. It’s also possible that this reduces the amount of fertilizer needed, providing benefits for the environment. We believe that our project, along with our future work can really aid the food poverty challenge and the food crisis.

When we got through to the final 15 of the Google Science Fair, we were so shocked. The competition was an amazing experience — and we made so many memories during our time at Google’s headquarters in Mountain View, California. We met the other finalists who came from all corners of the globe, each with a different story to tell. It was great to have so many people with common interests in the same room! On one of the days, the display hall was opened to thousands of middle and high school students and it was great to speak to them and to see their enthusiasm for science. When we were announced as winners of the Google Science Fair we were incredibly surprised, yet over the moon!

We’re now going to embark on new phases of the project, including large processing trials and advanced analysis of the mechanism behind our discovery. We also intend to investigate the other potential applications of rhizobium bacteria aside from agriculture.

Our advice to any student starting out on a science project would be to choose a subject in an area you are passionate about and to never give up. There's more than one way to answer the same question, and if you have to change the direction of your investigation once or twice (or even more!), that's okay.

Posted by Mo Fong, Director of K12 Education Outreach

There’s been a lot of talk about the importance of students learning computer programming and coding. While these are indeed skills that will continue to become more critical, it’s important to note that Computer Science (CS) is much more than just writing code. It’s also the study of computers and algorithms including their principles, their hardware and software design, and their impact on society. Computer Science is about the way of thinking needed to solve complex problems and drive innovation, not just in tech, but also in fields as diverse as medicine and music.

Yet, despite the importance of learning CS, there simply aren’t enough students who understand the power and creativity that it holds. Even fewer have role models in the field or have access to opportunities to learn CS. There will be 1.4 million new computing-related jobs created in the US this decade, and if current trends don’t change significantly, the US will only produce enough undergraduates in CS to fill 32% of these jobs (NCWIT). This is a problem Google cares deeply about.

To address this, Google is focusing on where the greatest gaps are in attracting and retaining more students in Computer Science -- particularly girls and minorities, who have historically been underrepresented in the field. Today, women hold only 27% of all CS jobs (NSF). While the number of women studying STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and math) in college is generally on the rise, fewer are studying CS: women earning bachelor’s degrees in CS has dropped from 37% in 1984 to 18% in 2009.

Reversing this trend will be a collective effort. As Chris Stephenson mentioned in her recent post on Supporting CS Education, “achieving systemic and sustained change in CS education is a complex undertaking that requires strategic support that complements both existing formal school programs and extracurricular education.”

source: NSF

Google is committed to ensuring that all groups -- regardless of gender, ethnicity, geography, or socio-economic level — have equal access to CS opportunities because it is the right thing to do. In order to gain a deeper understanding of the issue, we commissioned a research study, Women who Choose Computer Science, to identify the drivers that motivate young women to pursue CS. Our findings show that 61% of these factors are determined before college. This means we’ve got to start early, at the K-12 level, and make sure students get the right exposure to CS, as well as encouragement from teachers, parents, and peers along the way. In addition to partnering with key organizations working to increase access to CS education, we’ve also launched initiatives such as CS First, an after-school and summer CS program for grades 4-8; Google Code-In, open source projects; Blockly Games, a series of educational games that teach programming; and CS4HS, a program that supports professional development for high school and middle school teachers.

Sustained interest in CS at the university level is also critical, and we’ve developed programs including Computer Science Summer Institute (CSSI) to help recent high school graduates transition to college CS classes and Engineering Practicum, which provides summer internships for rising sophomores and juniors. Beyond the classroom, we’re also working to change the perception of CS through Made with Code and a $50 million commitment to increasing young women’s access to CS. As Geena Davis says, “if girls can see it, they can be it.”

Through tailored programs based on research and ongoing support for the ecosystem, we can help students understand the promise of Computer Science and use its limitless possibilities to help solve the world’s problems.

Posted by Ben Schrom, PM Google Apps for Education

(Cross-posted on the Google for Work Blog)

In a little over two years, Drive has become the cloud storage and sharing solution for more than 190 million people worldwide who use it regularly at home, work and school. For many of the 30 million students and educators using Google Apps for Education, Drive has even replaced their bookbags. Why lug around piles of paper or overstuffed binders when every type of document or file can be retrieved from the nearest Chromebook, tablet, smartphone or browser?

Earlier this year, we introduced Drive for Work—a premium version of Google Apps for Work—and now we’re bringing that same power to schools. Today we’re announcing Drive for Education, an infinitely large, ultra-secure and entirely free bookbag for the 21st century.

Drive for Education will be available to all Google Apps for Education customers at no charge and will include:

• Unlimited storage: No more worrying about how much space you have left or about which user needs more gigabytes. Drive for Education supports individual files up to 5TB in size and will be available in coming weeks. 
• Vault: Google Apps Vault, our solution for search and discovery for compliance needs, will be coming free to all Apps for Education users by the end of the year. 
• Enhanced Auditing: Reporting and auditing tools and an Audit API easily let you see the activity of a file, are also on the way. 

All of this comes with the same world-class security that protects all Drive users. Every file uploaded to Google Drive is encrypted, not only from your device to Google and in transit between Google data centers, but also at rest on Google servers. As always, the data that schools and students put into our systems is theirs. Classroom, which recently launched to Google Apps for Education users, makes using Drive in school even better by automatically organizing all Classroom assignments into Drive folders. And Google Apps for Education remains free to nonprofit educational institutions with no ads or ads-related scanning.

We want educators and students who use Google Apps for Education to be able to focus on the learning experience—not the technology that supports it. With Drive for Education, users can put an end to worries about storage limits and more easily maintain a safe, effective and compliant learning environment.