Posted by Chris Meaney, Director of ICT, Academies Enterprise Trust

Editor's note: This post is written by Chris Meaney, Director of ICT for Academies Enterprise Trust, the largest sponsor of academies in the United Kingdom.

With 42,000 students at 76 schools spread across the United Kingdom, we at Academies Enterprise Trust work hard to broaden access to information. However, some of our legacy technology made it cumbersome for students to share classwork and for teachers to share ideas for improving learning. Google Apps for Education and Chromebooks helps us come together as one large team— and they’re projected to save us £7.7 million in hardware and maintenance costs.

We began using Google Apps for Education in 2012, and soon after, brought 1,200 Chromebooks to many of our academy classrooms. We saw immediately that Google Apps and Chromebooks made learning more interactive and showed students the potential of learning with technology.

At the beginning of the school term in Maltings Academy in Essex, every student writes a 500-word story on subjects they’ll study for the rest of the year. They now write their stories in Google Docs, and use Google Drawings, Forms and Sites to add material like illustrations and surveys. Since they can share their stories with other students, they can edit each other’s work and offer suggestions.

We see similar collaboration across our academies and even between different schools. We’re using Google Sites and Google+ to create a storehouse of lesson plans and learning materials — a virtual support community that’s available anytime. One Google Site shows pictures of corridor displays to inspire teachers to use common spaces more creatively. The academies’ eLearning specialists regularly post ideas to a Google Group about digital learning and encourage other teachers and administrators to share their knowledge.

The easy setup of Google Apps and Chromebooks spared time and headaches for our ICT professionals. We moved nearly all of our academy websites over to Google Sites without hiring web developers or paying hosting fees — an easy move that’s already saved us £33,000.

In fact, we’re spotting significant cost savings in many areas, including maintenance, data storage and hardware. For example, by replacing traditional laptops with Chromebooks, we saved about £100,000. We expect to save millions over the next five years, which we’ll put into improving how students learn and how we teach them.

To learn more, read their case study here.

Posted by Carol Smith, Google Open Source team

If you’re a university student looking to earn real-world experience this summer, consider writing code for a cool open source project with the Google Summer of Code program.

Students who are accepted into the program will put the skills they have learned in university to good use by working on an actual software project over the summer. Students receive a stipend and are paired with mentors to help address technical questions and concerns throughout the course of the project. With the knowledge and hands-on experience students gain during the summer, they strengthen their future employment opportunities. Best of all, more source code is created and released for the use and benefit of all.

Interested students can submit proposals on the website starting now through Friday, March 27 at 19:00 UTC. Get started by reviewing the ideas pages of the 137 open source projects in this year’s program and decide which projects you’re interested in. Because Google Summer of Code has a limited number of spots for students, writing a great project proposal is essential to being selected to the program — be sure to check out the Student Manual for advice.

For ongoing information throughout the application period and beyond, see the Google Open Source Blog, join our Summer of Code mailing lists or join us on Internet relay chat at #gsoc on Freenode.

Good luck to all the open source coders out there, and remember to submit your proposals early — you only have until March 27 to apply!

Posted by Mariette DiChristina, Editor in Chief, Scientific American

Editor's note:Today's guest author is Mariette DiChristina, Editor in Chief and Senior Vice President of Scientific American. She’s the first female to assume this post since Scientific American was founded in 1845. Scientific American is a partner of the Google Science Fair, where Mariette serves as chief judge. She’s passionate about developing science-education activities and supporting initiatives to effectively advance how we teach and learn, for all ages, everywhere.

To really change the future of education for the better, we need a combination of creative vision powered by the social entrepreneurship of education leaders and teachers. This is why the annual South by Southwest EDU (SXSWedu) conference is so unique and valuable -- a time when thousands of entrepreneurs, educators, policy makers and thought leaders from all over the world convene to learn, discuss and tackle some of the largest issues facing education today, together.

At this year’s SXSWedu, Scientific American and Macmillan Education co-hosted a “Science of Learning" panel with Harvard professor Robert Lue and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Tim Stelzer to discuss how we can use emerging technology and data analysis to improve efficacy and apply more rigor to instructional methods in school. We then partnered with Google for Education to continue the conversation at the Austin Fiber Space after-hours with more teachers, ed tech visionaries, media and developers. Hands-on demos from Google Translate, CS First, Classroom, and the Edu teams working on Chromebooks, Android and Google Play for Education made the evening both insightful and fun.

The Google Translate app helps SXSWedu-ers learn local eats

During the evening, Professor Lue demonstrated his Visual Synthesis animations in Macmillan’s LaunchPad, an online learning space for the textbook How Life Works. Each animation allows biology students to interact, zoom and explore biological processes. And Professor Tim Stelzer demonstrated FlipIt Physics, which enables college instructors to flip their classroom by redefining the interaction between students, instructors and course content. Stelzer also gave us a sneak peek at IOLab, a new technology he developed to let students watch their physics experiment and data graphed in real time.

Here I am! Between Professor Lue (left) and Professor Stelzer (right)

As an experimental twist to create a living collaborative resource for the community, we took a digitized version of the visual notes taken during our Science of Learning panel and opened this up to public commenting and editing. I hope you’ll find these notes useful and that you’ll add your own insights, videos, and citations so that we can all continue the learning. And if you aren’t with us at SXSWedu this week, you can still listen and add your voice to the conversations. Inside these Google Drive folders, you can view, comment, and collaborate in the fun and lively SXSWedu discussions (here’s a great one on Diversity Needs in Technology).

Another example of how we can use online tools to power student-centered initiatives for kids anywhere in the world is the Google Science Fair, going on now for the fifth year. I’m particularly fond of this program, for which Scientific American is a partner, along with LEGO Education, National Geographic, and Virgin Galactic, and I’m also honored to be the chief judge. This year, we’re challenging students around the world to try something. Something imaginative, or maybe even unimaginable. Something that might just change the world. From now through May 18, students ages 13-18 can submit projects online across all scientific fields, from biology to computer science to psychology and everything in between. As always, I’m really looking forward to seeing this year’s submissions, which continue to impress me year after year.

Another big online learning moment coming up in May that we can all create together is Education on Air. This free online conference from Google will take place May 8-9 and will feature more than 100 educator speakers and focus on leading for the future and shaping the classroom today. Hope you can tune in, so make sure to register today to get the best seat in the house (your own!).

There’s no end to what we can achieve if we all start sharing, working, and learning together, to help prepare our students for a future that is ever changing. I, for one, can’t wait to see what we’ll come up with next—together!

Posted by Tia Lendo, Head of North America Education Marketing

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

When I was a teacher 15 years ago, I loved my students, teammates and the work, but I wished I could work more closely with other teachers and observe their classrooms. Luckily, technology helps us connect more easily, and educators don’t have to feel isolated. We have tools, many of them free, that allow us to share with each other.

We’ll put these tools to work on May 8-9, when we host Education On Air, a free online conference about leading for the future and shaping the classroom today. All you need is a web browser and an Internet connection to join from the best seat in the house — your own. Whether you’re a school leader, teacher, administrator, parent, student or just someone who cares about education, we hope you can join us.

Here’s what we have planned:

Day 1: Leading the future
On Friday, May 8 from 10am-3pm EST, hear from educators, students and business leaders on the topic of leadership in education. Short keynotes and panels will help answer the question “how do we prepare our students for a future that is ever-changing?” Topics will include creating student ownership, leading change and fostering innovation in schools.

Day 2: Shaping the classroom today
On Saturday, May 9, join any of the 90+ sessions, run by educators for educators and held throughout the day across time zones. These sessions are designed to help you immediately in your school. We’ll have tracks for four groups: teachers, leaders, IT and general interest. Topics will include supporting literacy in early learners, successful device deployment and empowering digital citizens.

Even if you can’t attend on the scheduled dates, do register to stay informed. We’ll share the conference schedule and list of speakers in April. We’ll also be recording the sessions, so you can check out anything you missed.

In the meantime, tell us what sessions you want to see by responding to this Tweet or this Google+ post using #GoogleEduOnAir.

Posted by Vance Vagell, User Experience Prototyper

In every classroom around the world, teachers spend time decorating their rooms by tacking up fun decorations and outstanding student work. Starting today, teachers can bring those same personal touches to Classroom by uploading their own images to use as themes. That’s just one of the little surprises we’ve sprinkled throughout Classroom to brighten your winter (or sweeten your summer, for our Southern Hemisphere friends).

If you have an image you’d like to use as your theme, Classroom will help you crop it to the perfect dimensions, and automatically pick a matching class color. And in case you don’t have a great photo to use, we’re adding 18 new images and 30 pattern themes to our gallery, so teachers have lots of options to make their classes look great. If you don’t have time to browse all the themes, Classroom will even try to automatically match a relevant theme to the class title — it works well for common topics, but it might not find a perfect theme for topics like History of the Peloponnesian War or Quantum Computing 401.

Today we’re also making updates to the mobile app for iOS and Android, which we launched a month ago:

• Students and teachers can now view the About page in the mobile app for quick access to their class materials and resources 
• On iOS, students can now add images, videos, and any other files to assignments from other apps 
• Your favorite emoji are now available on the Android app [insert smiley face here] 
• We’ve made overall changes that will increase the speed of the app’s performance, so you can get your work done even faster

You’ll notice a lot of other small updates that we hope will bring some delight and productivity to your February classes, and as always: please keep the feedback coming.

Posted by Miriam Schneider, Google for Education team

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog.)

The 2015 Google Science Fair starts today! To learn more about entry details, prizes and more tune in to today’s Hangout at 2pm EST and follow along on Google+.

Science is about observing and experimenting. It’s about exploring unanswered questions, solving problems through curiosity, learning as you go and always trying again.

That’s the spirit behind the fifth annual Google Science Fair, kicking off today. Together with LEGO Education, National Geographic, Scientific American and Virgin Galactic, we’re calling on all young researchers, explorers, builders, technologists and inventors to try something ambitious. Something imaginative, or maybe even unimaginable. Something that might just change the world around us.
From now through May 18, students around the world ages 13-18 can submit projects online across all scientific fields, from biology to computer science to anthropology and everything in between. Prizes include $100,000 in scholarships and classroom grants from Scientific American and Google, a National Geographic Expedition to the Galapagos, an opportunity to visit LEGO designers at their Denmark headquarters, and the chance to tour Virgin Galactic’s new spaceship at their Mojave Air and Spaceport. This year we’re also introducing an award to recognize an Inspiring Educator, as well as a Community Impact Award honoring a project that addresses an environmental or health challenge.

It’s only through trying something that we can get somewhere. Flashlights required batteries, then Ann Makosinski tried the heat of her hand. His grandfather would wander out of bed at night, until Kenneth Shinozuka tried a wearable sensor. The power supply was constantly unstable in her Indian village, so Harine Ravichandran tried to build a different kind of regulator. Previous Science Fair winners have blown us away with their ideas. Now it’s your turn.

Big ideas that have the potential to make a big impact often start from something small. Something that makes you curious. Something you love, you’re good at, and want to try.

So...what will you try?

Posted by Zachary Elkins, Director, Constitute Project

(Cross-posted on the Google Docs Blog.)

Editor's note: Today's guest author is Zachary Elkins, Director of the Constitute Project. The Constitute Project was launched in 2013 as a way for constitution-makers, scholars, and everyday people to explore alternative ideas in constitutional design. Teachers, read on to learn how you can empower your students with constitution-making

Constitutional reform happens more often than you might think. On average, countries around the world replace their constitutions every 19 years and amend them every two years. It’s not an easy task, even if it’s common. Constitutions are often the result of deliberation, discussion and discovery—discovery that often comes from writing together.

But collaborative writing can be challenging. It’s hard to write something with other people and still make it cohesive, harmonic and readable. These pitfalls are particularly salient for constitutions—documents that are supposed to represent the aspirations and principles of a people.

That’s where Constitute comes in. A project of the Comparative Constitutions Project and seeded by Google Ideas, Constitute allows anyone to read, search and compare every constitution in the world, indexed by topic. Constitute is built for people to analyze text, but they can move from analysis to drafting by exporting constitutional excerpts directly to Google Docs—a shared space to create and debate a new “founding” document.

Today a new set of exhibits at the National Constitution Center helps bring this hands-on approach to the general public. Created in 1988, the NCC is an interactive museum in Philadelphia dedicated to the U.S. Constitution.

The Constitute exhibit has two components. The first is an installation of Constitute that invites visitors to view the U.S. Constitution (and other Constitutions) in comparative perspective.

In the second component, select visitors can use this analysis to work in a space we’re calling the “Drafting Lab.” There, people can use Constitute and Google Docs to participate with fellow drafters in each of the stages of Constitution-making—from research to deliberation to drafting.

The Lab might be the first of its kind in the world: a space for citizens and drafters of all kinds to imagine, rethink and rediscover constitutional ideas. We don’t really know what happens when drafters work simultaneously on the same piece of “parchment” (a Google Doc) and share the same workspace. So the sessions in the Drafting Lab may be illuminating for both scholars and for participants.

If you're unable to visit the NCC and do some drafting in person, you can always give it a try at home by visiting constituteproject.org.

May the constitution-making begin!