Posted by Cameron L. Fadjo, Project Faculty Lead, EngageCSEdu

Once students have their first experience with computer science (CS), how do we keep them engaged so that they will continue to pursue CS, particularly at the undergraduate level? This year, 53 CS faculty and instructors from colleges and universities in 24 U.S. states will implement classroom-based programs and solutions to help them answer that question as part of the Google CS Engagement Small Awards program. Each award – an unrestricted gift of $5,000 to the award recipients’ institution – will be used by the faculty members and instructors teaching introductory (CS1 and CS2) courses to identify and implement solutions for increasing student engagement and reaching retention goals within their own classrooms.

At Google, we believe in the importance of preparing the next generation of computer scientists. We’ve created and supported the development and implementation of numerous CS education programs and resources on the basis of research that links persistence in CS studies with engaging and personally relevant learning experiences.

To help faculty and instructors identify engaging and relevant Open Educational Resources (OER) for their introductory undergraduate CS courses – and in partnership with the National Center for Women in Information Technology (NCWIT) – we created EngageCSEdu. This collection of high-quality instructional materials contains 1,400+ assignments, labs, and projects that any faculty member can use to identify and implement activities containing pedagogical practices and strategies (Engagement Practices) that increase student engagement and retention.

EngageCSEdu is a great way for recipients of the Google CS Engagement Small Award program to identify, modify, and share the activities, projects, and labs they’ll create to engage their students. Google has selected the following faculty and instructors to receive a CS Engagement Small Award:

• Jim Conrad – Boise State University 
• Jadwiga Carlson – Bowling Green State University 
• John Clements, Michael Haungs, Zachary Peterson, Zoe Wood – California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo 
• Carl Kingsford – Carnegie Mellon University 
• Chris Starr – College of Charleston 
• Matthew Whitehead – Colorado College 
• Lonnie Bowe – Concord University 
• Kathleen Tamerlano – Cuyahoga Community College 
• Keith Tookey – Eureka College 
• Lee Spector – Hampshire College 
• Sean Joyce – Heidelberg University 
• Debra Duke – J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College 
• Juan Jenny Li – Kean University 
• Peter Drake – Lewis & Clark College 
• Richard Enbody – Michigan State University 
• Leo Ureel – Michigan Technological University 
• Ben Coleman – Moravian College 
• Heather Pon-Barry – Mount Holyoke College
• Clif Kussmaul – Muhlenberg College 
• Sarah Heckman – North Carolina State University 
• Jennifer Parham-Mocello – Oregon State University 
• Adam Groce, Jim Fix – Reed College 
• Florence Appel – Saint Xavier 
• Natalie Linnell – Santa Clara University 
• Cheryl Calhoun – Santa Fe College 
• Dominique Thiebaut – Smith College 
• Ravi Gandham – South Seattle College 
• Winnie Yu, Lisa Lancor – Southern Connecticut State University 
• Barbara Anthony – Southwestern University 
• Lindsay Jamieson – St. Mary's College of Maryland 
• Sen Zhang – SUNY Oneonta 
• Cynthia Marcello – SUNY Sullivan 
• Thomas Gibbons, Jennifer Rosato – The College of St. Scholastica 
• Martine Ceberio – The University of Texas at El Paso 
• Anastasia Kurdia – Tulane University 
• John Lusth – University of Alabama 
• Michael Ball – University of California, Berkeley 
• Adam Koehler – University of California, Riverside 
• Mark Heinrich – University of Central Florida 
• Victor Milenkovic – University of Miami 
• Kate Lockwood – University of St. Thomas 
• Rob Nash – University of Washington, Bothell 
• William Turkett – Wake Forest University 
• Richard Fry – Weber State University 
• Zijiang Yang – Western Michigan University 
• Helen Hu – Westminster College 
• Mark D. LeBlanc – Wheaton College (Norton, MA) 

We’re proud to support the efforts of these innovative instructors as they strive to create an engaging and relevant learning experience for all students.

Posted by Carlo D´Asaro Biondo, President Strategic Relationships, Europe, Middle East and Africa

Last November, Pope Francis interrupted his weekly Audience to embrace a man suffering from neurofibromatosis, a genetic disease that causes disfiguring tumors. The compassionate gesture touched the hearts of the thousands of people gathered at Saint Peter's Square and, within no time, images of the encounter had circled around the world. This week, the Pope will once again remind us that all it takes to connect with others is the will to reach out.

With the help of technology, Pope Francis will extend a virtual embrace to others around the world who have disabilities and special needs. He will host his second Google Hangout live from the Vatican, engaging in a conversation with children from Brazil, India, Spain and the U.S. The kids will share a glimpse into their lives and talk about their dreams with Pope Francis—and the world.

The dialogue will take place this Thursday, February 5 at 4:00 PM (CET) and can be followed live from Scholas G+ page. Scholas Ocurrentes is an independent organization that the Pope has entrusted with the mission of uniting schools worldwide, regardless of race, gender, class, religion or sexual orientation. Google has been working alongside Scholas, contributing tools and expertise to help Pope Francis' dream of a global network of schools for Peace come true.

Posted by Roxana Shirkhoda, K12/Pre-University Education Outreach

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog) 




When Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people need support, they turn to their daughters. No, really. In a culture whose history goes back 50,000 years, 70 young girls are using technology to give their families a new way to call for help in emergencies. Last year, Engineers Without Borders Australia taught a group of students to build an emergency response beacon using basic hardware and some code to transmit a user’s location and distress message via radio.

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people make up less than 3 percent of Australia’s population, and they’ve historically faced discrimination in society, including in education. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, dropout rates exceed 60 percent in certain regions and Aboriginal students are, on average, 2.5 years behind their peers in scientific and mathematical literacy. The problem is often compounded for girls, who tend to be left out of educational opportunities.

So Engineers Without Borders Australia (EWBA) set out to close the educational and digital divide, developing a program which brings together Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal how to create emergency beacons from scratch by coding a Raspberry Pi to work with an LED, GPS module and FM transmitter. It will also work through issues of stereotyping and discrimination, and help the girls to better understand each other’s worlds.

This is just one example of an organization doing extraordinary work to make computer science (CS) education available to women and other underrepresented minorities. Computer science has tremendous potential to make a real difference in the world—but only when more people can access and harness it.

That’s the idea behind Google’s RISE Awards, through which we support organizations in their work to inspire students around the world with CS. Since 2010, more than 200 organizations have received an award, and this year, 37 organizations are receiving a cumulative $1.5 million to keep this vital effort humming along. Our partners facilitate programs and activities including teaching girls about the intersection of coding and music production in California, promoting computational thinking through game-design in Mexico, and inspiring children in Brazil to program alongside their parents.
This year, three nonprofits will receive a new “RISE Partnership Award”—a grant to work with one or two partner organizations to help grow their CS outreach to a wider scale. One of the three is Engineers Without Borders Australia, which plans to work with MEET—an organization with expertise on how coding skills can build relationships and break down stereotypes—to integrate their curriculum to reach up to 2,000 girls across Australia, including in Aboriginal communities.

With access to hands-on CS education, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander girls are preparing themselves for the digital economy, contributing to the diversity of our future’s technology, and taking concrete steps to rise above the inequities their community has faced for decades. They’re not alone. We hope that through the RISE Awards and our other efforts to support diversity in technology, these girls and others like them can have an even greater impact. We can’t wait to see it. Posted by Roxana Shirkhoda, K12/Pre-University Education Outreach

Posted by Liz Sproat, Head of Education EMEA 

So much of education is about unlocking potential — nurturing students’ desires to discover and explore, giving them tools that match their unique learning styles, and challenging them to work more creatively and collaboratively.

Great schools know to balance what’s possible with what’s practical. That means protecting teachers’ time, managing the workload for the IT department, and introducing new tools when they enhance a lesson (not disrupt it).

We built Android tablets with Google Play for Education to make it practical for schools to find and share tools that help students achieve their potential.

Today we’re bringing Android with Google Play for Education to UK schools, giving more schools access to hardware and apps designed for the classroom, many of which have been customised for the UK curriculum.

Students at Isle of Portland Aldridge Community Academy work together using Google Play for Education

When you buy Android tablets from Google for Education you get a solution designed for learning:  

• Your choice of affordable tablets, starting with the Nexus 7 and the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Education 
• Set-up and management tools that make it easy to get your school up and running (simply bump tablets together to set up a whole classroom in minutes) 
• Easy student access to Google Apps that encourage teamwork and critical thinking, including Docs, Drive, and Google Classroom 
• Access to Google Play for Education, a content store designed just for schools that puts thousands of educator-approved apps like Book Creator, Pocket Code and BrainPOP at teachers’ and students’ fingertips. 
• Google Play for Education also includes apps designed specifically for the UK market, such as a series of GCSE apps from Revision Buddies. 

UK schools who have been piloting Android tablets are seeing deeper engagement from both teachers and students as a result:

“Teachers are able to look up apps independently on Google Play for Education, tailoring the apps they share to the needs of the students,” says Luke Scott, the IT Manager at Barclay Primary School. “Students love how easy it is for them to access the application once it has uploaded to their tablet. They get excited by the fact that something has just popped up onto the screen – they are instantly engaged and want to use it.”

The Isle of Portland Aldridge Community Academy (IPACA) has seen the adoption of Android tablets and Google Play for Education drive a culture of sharing and collaboration.

Year 9 pupil Shannon said, "Using the Google Tablets has made learning fun, it's been great to connect with other children from around the world and compare and contrast our location with theirs."

“We can’t wait to see what UK schools do with affordable tablets and the right set of tools. In the last year, we’ve seen classes across the US do great things – whether they’re mapping trails in Vermont or getting personalized reading help in New Jersey.

To learn more and start planning a pilot for your schools, visit our webpage.

Posted by Kate Howell, PMM, Education EMEA 

After the relaxing holiday period comes January – a month for new beginnings and planning for the year ahead. For educators, the place to be this month is at BETT, the world’s largest education technology conference. BETT is expected to draw over 35,000 attendees, including Ministers of Education, headteachers, educators and technology specialists in the education space. BETT is the home of technology in education, where innovative technology and thinking help to make learning accessible and fun for everyone.

For the fifth year running, Google will be participating at BETT, kicking off this Wednesday at ExCel London. We look forward to speaking at the BETT arena about our vision for the future of education and what role technology should play. We also have a much-anticipated launch announcement to make for the UK.

We invite you to join us at our Google for Education stand at BETT, located at site E240. Here we will be hosting presentations from inspiring educators – such as Academies Enterprise Trust (AET) – who have recently updated their technology solution. By Going Google, the Trust has managed to resolve a number of IT issues and save an estimated £7.7m over the course of five years.

Academies Enterprise Trust has made huge savings using Chromebooks

“We did not anticipate just how easy it would be to make the switch or just how many opportunities the move to Google Apps would provide. In addition to enhancing our students’ education, we are also able to manage the devices they are using in a much easier way.” - Chris Meaney, Director of ICT at Academies Enterprise Trust.

The Google for Education stand will showcase the full range of devices for all visitors to experience first hand. There will be product demonstrations, along with talks at our on-site teaching theatre, (schedule here) where educators will share their experiences of using Google tools for teaching and learning.

For those not at BETT, school leaders can learn more about Chromebooks for Education by visiting our website.

Posted by Jen Holland, Program Manager, Google Apps for Education

Teachers and students in Toronto are embracing technologies that make it easy to learn anytime and anywhere. Delighted by their creativity and innovative drive, we’re highlighting two schools that are leading the way in on-the-go learning with technology, including the Google Classroom app. The new app allows students and teachers to work on the go with new mobile-only features that enhance the experience.

More learning in and out of the classroom 

Teachers at York Region District School Board (YRDSB) noticed that students often missed assignments due to disorganization, and spent valuable class time rummaging through their desks to find the papers they needed. Since the district introduced Google Classroom in 2014, students spend more time learning and less time digging through documents.

YRDSB also began piloting the Google Classroom mobile apps and found that mobile technology breaks down the barriers between life inside and outside the classroom. Teachers create assignments in Classroom, and students turn in their papers and receive feedback within minutes. Students don’t have to worry about printing assignments or keeping track of old papers.

Technology allows teachers to be creative with their lesson plans. Julia Waiser, an eighth grade and special needs teacher at Forest Run Public School, takes students on field trips around campus to take photos and videos using their phones and tablets, then discuss how math concepts apply to real world situations.

Making learning more interactive and student-driven

With digital education as a top priority, Upper Grand District School Board (UGDSB) knew it was time to replace the existing course management system with a newer, more integrated solution. They were already using Chromebooks and Google Apps for Education, so Google Classroom seemed like a natural choice.

The schools saw a rapid uptake in adoption after the pilot started in August 2014 with four teachers. Today, more than 1,200 teachers — half of the district — use Classroom. One of the reasons UGDSB chose Classroom is because it works so well with the suite of Google tools the schools have already embraced. “The Classroom app is the starting point,” says Paul Nethery, a grade 7-8 teacher at Erin Public School. “From there, we use Drive for sharing, Docs for writing, and Chrome for researching. It’s streamlined.”

Since students can access learning resources regardless of their location, they take more ownership of their learning and are empowered to engage and act as teachers themselves. “We’re all learning together, and it’s the teacher’s job to act as a catalyst rather than the sole source of knowledge,” says Bill MacKenzie, IT liaison at UGDSB. “Students have the opportunity to teach their peers and their teachers.”

As schools across North America continue introducing digital learning, more students have the resources to learn from teachers and peers via their smartphones and tablets. We’re excited to see how these schools will continue to innovate and enable students to learn wherever they are.

Posted by Jorge Lugo, Software Engineer, Classroom

(Cross-posted on the Google for Work Blog)

While it’s a new year on the calendar, many teachers and students are just midway through the school year. They’ve clearly been hard at work, turning in more than 30 million assignments with Classroom since it launched six months ago. If those assignments had been on paper instead of Google Docs, they would stretch from New York to Los Angeles when laid end to end. If every assignment had taken just one minute to print out, Classroom saved 57 years that would have otherwise been spent waiting for the printer.

Today we’re launching a native Classroom mobile app for both Android and iOS (also available in Google Play for Education) to help teachers and students connect from wherever they are, and save even more paper and time. We’re also launching two new features to help teachers stay organized as they head into the second half of the year: a teacher assignments page and the ability to archive classes.

With the mobile app, students and teachers can:

• Snap a photo: Right from the assignment page in the mobile app, students can snap a photo and attach it to their assignment — whether it’s the experiment they just did for a science class, or a drawing they made of their family tree. And if they’ve forgotten their homework, they can ask someone at home to snap a photo, text it and then turn it in with the app. Of course, if the dog has actually eaten it, Classroom can’t help you. 

• Share from other apps: Students can also easily attach images, PDFs and web pages from other apps to their assignments. For example, when you’re in a drawing app, you can create a graphic for an assignment. When you click “share” in that app, Classroom will come up as an option, and you can attach the graphic to an assignment. 

• Offline caching: Even when Internet access isn’t available, students and teachers can get information about their assignments in the Classroom mobile app. Class streams and assignment information are automatically cached every time you open the app with an Internet connection, so that you can see them when you don’t have a connection. 

For the best experience using the Classroom app, make sure you (or your students) also have the Google Docs, Drive and Slides apps. We’re looking forward to adding new features to the app on both iOS and Android in the coming months, so that students and teachers can get more done from any device they have.

Teacher Assignments Page

We’ve heard from many teachers that they want one place to keep track of all the work they assign across all of their classes. On Classroom for desktop, we’re launching a teacher assignments page. Teachers will have quick access to any assignment, track which ones they’ve reviewed and see how many students have completed their assignments.

Archive Classes

We also know that classes don’t go on forever. You don’t want to have to scroll through old classes to get to the ones you’re teaching or attending now, but you’ll likely want access to the valuable information in previous classes and work from them. That’s why today we’re launching the ability to archive classes. Archiving a class will remove it from the home page and make it read-only — teachers and class members can still view archived classes, but can’t make any changes or turn in assignments. We hope the new mobile apps and features for teachers will save you some time and paper this semester. Please keep sharing your feedback with us, and stay tuned for more new Classroom goodies before the school year is over.