Posted by Sunil Rao, India Developer Relations, and Suhair Khan, Chrome & Education Partnerships and Strategy.

According to READAlliance, many primary school-age children in India have low literacy rates. In one survey of children ages 5-16 in rural India, nearly half couldn’t form words from individual letters. In another survey of fifth grade children, two-thirds were unable to identify the main theme of a passage they read.

To help address this, we recently partnered with READAlliance, USAID, the Centre for Knowledge Societies (CKS) and 10,000 Startups India to pilot the Chrome App Developer Challenge for Education. Run by the Google India Developer Relations team, the program encouraged developers to build Chrome apps for India’s primary school children with the goal of improving their reading skills and getting on a path of lifelong learning.

On July 5, thirty top developer teams came together at our Bangalore office and remotely via Google Hangouts to kick off the eight-week challenge. The developers, selected from hundreds of applicants based on their success in past hackathons, worked with mentors over the course of eight weeks to build and publish their apps. Content providers including Pratham Books and the educational cartoon series Chotta Bheem contributed relevant open-source content for the apps.

These 30 apps are now available for free on the Chrome Web Store. They represent a variety of fun learning experiences including interactive stories, reading comprehension quizzes, timed word-matching games, and a racing app that involves building complex words from alphabet tiles.

We announced the three winning apps — selected by educators based on the quality of their content as well as technical merits — on October 28. We’ll also feature them on the Chrome Web Store for three months in the hopes that even more teachers, parents and students will be able to access them. USAID and CKS plan to extend the reach of the apps by introducing them to schools for lower income children in India this year.

Visit the +Google for Education page on Monday November 3rd at 10:00 am GMT (or 3:30 pm India Time) to join the live Hangout on Air featuring the three winning apps. Education expert and TED Prize winner Dr. Sugata Mitra, will be joining the Hangout. Known for the seminal “Hole in the Wall” learning experiments, Dr. Mitra won the 2013 TED Prize to build a new kind of School in the Cloud where children can explore on their own and learn from one another using online resources. 

Congratulations and thanks to all who participated in the pilot challenge, and we hope to see the rest of you on Monday’s hangout.

Posted by Lisa Davis, Vice President and Chief Information Officer, Georgetown University

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

Editor's note: Lisa Davis is Vice President for Information Services and CIO at Georgetown University, and former assistant director for information technology for the U.S. Marshals Service. She shares why the Georgetown Hoyas have gone Google using tools like Gmail, Docs and Drive for Education. Learn more about solutions for Higher Ed here.

There’s a reason “We are Georgetown” is emblazoned across our football field and even the Hoya food court: we take great pride in our identity as Hoyas, enriched by our diverse backgrounds, faiths and beliefs. Rooted in 225 years of history, Georgetown University makes a point of fostering an environment that supports ongoing innovation, open dialogue and intellectual inquiry in our teaching, learning and research.

Three years ago, we kicked off our five-year technology transformation strategy by moving our 20,000 students, staff and faculty members to Google Apps for Education. We saw an opportunity to pull our disparate IT systems into a unified suite and no on-premise solution could match Google Apps in collaborative features, storage, ease or cost-effectiveness. We also found that Google’s philosophy meshed well with our own cloud-first transformation strategy — anytime, any device collaboration and access for a seamless Georgetown experience, anywhere.

A Hoya works on-the-go outside Georgetown's Dahlgren Chapel

Since going Google, we’ve saved $120,000 per year on licensing costs. More importantly, we’ve created a connected learning environment that bridges the traditional and online classrooms. Professors hold office hours on Google Hangouts, classmates frequently collaborate on group projects with Google Drive, and busy students work better together on extracurricular projects using Google Calendar, Forms, Sheets and Docs.

The Corp, Georgetown’s student-run corporation and the largest student-run nonprofit, was one of the first organizations on campus to use Apps for coordinating schedules on the fly and planning events without in-person meetings. Now, student clubs and activities ranging from a capella groups to intramural sports teams use Apps to quickly and easily work together and communicate from any device.

Google Drive helps our faculty streamline communication with their students in and out of the classroom. Arnie Miles, a computer science adjunct faculty, runs his class on Drive. Each student adds the Drive app to his or her computer and shares a folder with the teaching assistant. Through Drive, TAs can collect and grade assignments, and provide step-by-step help from anywhere.

Google Apps has also allowed the university to deliver on the promise of “once a Hoya, always a Hoya” by extending Google accounts to all alumni for life. When students graduate, they keep their email addresses, calendars and all files stored in Drive, which now boasts unlimited storage.

Going Google played a critical role in our technology transformation strategy by enabling collaboration and information sharing across devices and helping us invest in a long-term vision for learning in the 21st century and beyond. We've come a long way in our journey, and look forward to continuing to enable innovation and intellectual inquiry at Georgetown through technology.

To learn more about Georgetown and how they’re using Drive and other Google for Education tools, join our webinar on November 13 at 12pm PST.

Posted by Bram Bout, Director, Google for Education

(Cross-posted on Google for Work blog.)

Universities and schools continue to tell us that they want learning without limits. So last month, we announced that Drive for Education would be coming to all Google Apps for Education schools at no charge. This week, we’ll be rolling out unlimited Drive storage to all Google Apps for Education users and free archiving with Google Vault will be coming later this year.

Schools have helped shape our products over time, starting in 2006 when Arizona State University (ASU) was the first institution to make the move to Google Apps for Education. Just two years later, we celebrated two million active Google Apps for Education users at thousands of universities and today, we have more than 40 million students and teachers worldwide actively using Google Apps—from Keio University in Japan to University of Delhi in India, Chile’s Universidad Viña del Mar to the University of Ghana.

Students at George Washington University take advantage of the brisk Fall weather and opt to work outside on campus

But, like any good teacher knows, success is not about numbers; it’s about quality and impact. Students are moving from paper and pencils to cloud-based learning, with information and tools at their fingertips anywhere they are. For them, learning doesn’t end in the lecture hall. From online courses to 1:1 tablets to lectures via Hangouts, innovation in education is removing barriers for students and widening their horizons. We’re grateful that higher education institutions have innovated right along with us and helped provide feedback to improve our products.

Throughout this week, top academic institutions like Georgetown University and UT Austin will share how they’ve been using Google tools, including Google Drive, for the past few years to save money, increase collaboration between students and professors and raise the bar on learning and working, anytime, anywhere, on any device.

To learn more, visit our website: www.google.com/edu/highered

Posted by Devin Sandoz, Google for Education marketing

Editor's note: Director Christopher Nolan shares his thoughts about education and the science behind science fiction to commemorate the upcoming release of INTERSTELLAR lesson plans. Read on for the interview.

Great art pushes our thinking in new directions. Robert J. Goddard became fascinated with space flight after reading War of the Worlds. Martin Cooper’s ideas for the cell phone were inspired by Captain Kirk’s Star Trek communicator.

Starting on November 5, the new film INTERSTELLAR from director Christopher Nolan will spark the imaginations of millions of future scientists. That’s why Google Play for Education is teaming up with Paramount Pictures and Google Certified Teachers to help middle and high school classrooms explore the mathematical, scientific, and literary concepts discussed in the film.

Schools can plan field trips now to see INTERSTELLAR, with group tickets available for screenings starting as early as November 3. When the film is released on November 5, we’ll introduce an INTERSTELLAR webpage for educators containing lesson plans related to the movie (tied to educational standards, of course).
We asked Christopher about his experiences at school and the research that went into the film.

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What was school like for you growing up? Where did you naturally excel and where did you have to put in the most work? 
I was a pretty good student as a kid, but my areas of strength definitely shifted over time: in elementary school my best subject was mathematics, but a couple of years into high school I had fallen behind in math and started to do better in English and Art.

Which parts of your education have been the most valuable in your career as a filmmaker? 
My degree was in English Literature, and has been invaluable to my understanding of storytelling at a fundamental level. As I make more and more films I find various aspects of my earlier education useful, sometimes in surprising ways. For example, my elementary understanding of geometry and mathematics was vital to the structure of Inception. Interstellar has taxed my early lessons in physics and astronomy. It all comes in handy, generally in ways I could never have foreseen.

INTERSTELLAR largely focuses on space travel. What drew you to choose this subject matter, and what were you hoping to explore? 
Space travel has always been the largest subject to take on visually. My hope with Interstellar is to bring a human perspective to cosmic elements that are often spoken of in purely abstract, theoretical terms.

What kind of research did you and your brother Jonathan do while writing INTERSTELLAR? Did any of the scientific findings you encountered along the way alter your approach? 
Jonah and I had access to a tremendous resource on Interstellar- renowned theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who is an executive producer on the project. Kip was the focus of most of our research, and many of the things he was able to open our eyes to, such as the relationship between gravity and dimensionality, and the true nature of black holes and wormholes were vital to developing the finished screenplay.

How did you come to collaborate with Kip? What surprised you about his perspective on the universe? 
Kip was involved in Interstellar before I was. I had regular, brainstretching conversations with Kip as I rewrote the script and started planning the actual production. I would send him narrative challenges in terms of what I felt the story needed, and he would always do his best to see if there was a scientific method whereby the story could take these turns. His truly scientific approach surprised me in its purity- he would take nothing for granted- even ideas that I threw at him from his own writings! Everything had to be examined afresh in the light of current scientific thinking.

What do you want students to get out of INTERSTELLAR? What are your hopes for INTERSTELLAR Lesson Plans? 
I hope that Interstellar will interest some of the audience in exploring the actual science behind some of the extraordinary events seen in the film. Ideally, the Interstellar Lesson Plans will communicate the fascination I found for much of the science that we got to explore.

What advice do you have for students interested in a career in film? 
Some filmmakers pursue an education specific to filmmaking. This was not my path, and I have found that a broader education has been important to the way I've worked (see answer above). If you love something, you'll learn about it on your own time- formal education is about being taught things you never would have known to seek out yourself.

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Start planning your field trip on the INTERSTELLAR site. If your school is using managed Chromebooks or Android tablets, make sure you’ve enabled Google Play for Education so that teachers can find and share apps, books, and videos that take INTERSTELLAR lesson plans even further.

Posted by Karen Parker, Education Program Manager and Jason Ravitz, Education Evaluation Manager

(Cross-posted on the Research Blog.)

Since 2009, Google’s CS4HS (Computer Science for High School) grant program has connected more than 12,000 computer science (CS) teachers with skills and resources to teach CS in fun and relevant ways. An estimated 600,000 students have been impacted by the teachers who have completed CS4HS professional development workshops so far. Through annual grants, nearly 230 colleges and universities have hosted professional development workshops worldwide.

Grantees use the funds to develop CS curriculum and professional development workshops tailored for local middle and high school teachers. These workshops expose teachers to CS curriculum using real-world applications that spark students’ curiosity. As feedback from those teachers rolls in, we want to share some highlights from what we’ve learned so far.

What went well:

• 89% of participants reported they would recommend their workshop to others
• 44% more participants reported a “high” or “very high knowledge” of CS after their workshop vs. before
• More than half of participants said they would use “most” or “all” of the activities or resources presented during their workshop.
• In 2014 the number of teachers who took part in a CS4HS professional development workshop increased by 50%, primarily due to the funding of multiple MOOCs.

Ways to make a bigger impact:

• Just 53% of participants said they felt a sense of community among the other workshop participants. Research by Joyce & Showers (2002) and Wiske, Stone, & Levinson (1993) shows that peer-to-peer professional development, along with ongoing support, helps teachers implement new content, retain skills, and create lasting change. We’ll explore new ways to build community among participants as we plan future workshops.
• 83% of participants reported being Caucasian, which is consistent with the current demographics of CS educators. This indicates a need to increase efforts in diversifying the CS teacher population.
• Outcome measures show us that the most knowledge gains were among teachers who had no prior experience teaching CS or participating in CS professional development -- a population that made up just 30% of participants. While we see that the workshops are meeting a need, there remains an opportunity to develop materials geared toward more experienced CS teachers while also encouraging more new teachers to participate.

We know there are many challenges to overcome to improve the state of CS teacher professional development. We look forward to sharing new ideas for working in partnership with the CS education community to help address those challenges, in particular by helping more teachers teach computer science.

At the University of Sydney CS4HS workshop teachers are learning how to teach

Computer Science without a computer during a CS Unplugged activity.

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!