Posted by Saurabh Gupta, Product Manager

Google Forms is a free and simple way to collect information--from quickly collecting preferences for the next field trip location, to having students provide peer feedback.

Over the last few months, Forms has been getting a bunch of updates to help you make good looking surveys, like new theme choices and the ability to create your own personalized themes.

To give you even more flexibility and options, we’re introducing add-ons for Forms—new tools, created by developer partners, that deliver even more features to your surveys (just like add-ons for Docs and Sheets).

Add-ons bring handy extras to your survey building experience, like setting a survey end date, sending custom emails based on responses, storing lists of choices that you frequently add to questions, and more.

You can access add-ons from the “Add-ons” menu in Forms, or by directly visiting the Forms add-on store.

Here are just a few of the growing list of add-ons that you can use today with Google Forms:

• formLimiter: Close your survey automatically, after a maximum number of responses is reached, or at a date and time of your choosing.
• gMath: Create both simple and complex mathematical equations along with graphs and statistical displays directly in your form.
• Form Values: Store and pull from lists that you use regularly in Forms, like a list of staff, students, rooms, resources or anything you want.

We hope these new tools make your Forms creation process even easier and more helpful--and stay tuned for more--our developer partners will be launching even more add-ons in the coming weeks.

PS: If you’re a developer with ideas for creating your own add-on for Forms, here’s some documentation to get you started.

Posted by Sidnie Davis, University Programs Specialist

The annual Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing wrapped up last week, and as attendees from all over the world head back to their schools, universities, companies, and organizations, we want to reflect on what our commitment to this Celebration means to Google.

What started as a vision and a blank piece of paper shared between Anita Borg and Telle Whitney over dinner in 1994, has now become the single largest gathering of women in computing. From the first conference in Washington DC with 500 attendees, the Grace Hopper Celebration has grown exponentially to the massive number of over 8,000 attendees this year.

Google has been attending the Grace Hopper Celebration for over a decade, and we are proud to show our long-standing dedication to this conference by partnering at the highest level as a Visionary Platinum Sponsor. Google has been working with the Anita Borg Institute (ABI) since 2004, and Alan Eustace, Senior Vice President of Knowledge, has been a member of the ABI Board of Trustees since 2006. To Google, Grace Hopper is more than a conference, it's an opportunity to invigorate and unite technical women.

20,000 glowsticks lit up the final night's celebration at GHC 2014

We experienced many highlights this year and encouraged attendees to post about their experiences as they happened using the hashtag #GoogleGHC14. These posts most accurately capture the exhilaration of GHC on-the-ground; excitement over seeing the self-driving car, reunions between interns, chatting with Megan Smith, the new Chief Technology Officer of the United States, and students pleased to demo Cardboard and get their very own to bring home.

Grace Hopper also reminds us of the work we have left to do to welcome future generations of women to the tech field and to retain those already here. GHC serves as a setting for women to share their experiences--and talk honestly about technology--the amazing, the awe-inspiring and even the extremely challenging aspects.

When we talk with faculty on college campuses, they frequently tell us how important the Grace Hopper Celebration is for their students, and that Grace Hopper can often serve as a game-changer for younger students in solidifying their interest in Computer Science. For that reason, Google was proud to sponsor travel scholarships for over 100 students, as well as invite and fund over 200 of our interns to join the celebration at Grace Hopper. These students came from all over the world; as far as Kazakhstan and South Africa. One travel grant recipient, Brianna Fugate, class of 2018 at Spelman College had this to say about her experience at Grace Hopper:

“Thank you so much for the opportunity and grant to attend Grace Hopper. When I share my stories with young girls considering tech I always tell them how important it is to have a strong network of social encouragement. It was an amazing experience to network with so many successful women in tech and gain insight as to what path I should be taking as a woman just beginning her journey in this industry.”

The Grace Hopper Celebration allows women in computing and their allies to connect, develop skills, and become invigorated as we - at Google and in the larger computing community - set our vision for bringing even more women into the technology industry. We can hardly wait for GHC 2015, and hope to see you in Houston!

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.