Posted by Chris Dibona, Director, Open Source & Science Outreach

Our involvement with Sci Foo Camp since 2006 has taught us that the best way to get people interested in science is to give them the opportunities and tools to further develop their interest. To do this, we aim to support scientists of all ages, museums, maker events, and science programs and encourage hands-on exploration through efforts like Google Science Fair and Maker Camp.

Today, we’re introducing a new way to share our love for science with even more people: Google Field Trip Days. Throughout 2015, 13 science museums across the US and London will open their doors to more than 35,000 students in resource-challenged public schools. Each museum will plan their own unique program – from Google Field Trip Weeks at the Museum of Science in Boston to sleepover Google Field Trip Nights at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry. Google Field Trip Days will often include free admission, transportation and lunches for kids who attend, as well as a welcome from volunteers from local Google offices.

The Pacific Science Center, Seattle Washington

We believe in the power of hands-on learning through meaningful educational programs, and the impact that one person can make on a student’s life. Through these wonderful institutions, kids will have access to interactive and highly visual exhibits, collaboration with experts, engineering workshops and even IMAX screenings. We hope that these experiences spark kids’ imagination and inspire them to discover and create with science!

Here’s the full list of participating museums. Featured exhibits and visit dates will vary. You can find details and updates about specific Field Trip Days on the museum websites.

California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco CA 
Children's Discovery Museum of San Jose, San Jose CA 
Computer History Museum, Mountain View CA 
Museum of Science, Boston, Boston MA 
Museum of Science and Industry, Chicago, Chicago IL 
National Air and Space Museum, Washington DC 
National Museum of Mathematics, New York NY 
National Museum of Natural History, Washington DC 
New York Hall of Science, Queens NY 
Oregon Museum of Science & Industry, Portland OR 
Pacific Science Center, Seattle WA 
The Tech Museum of Innovation, San Jose CA 
Science Museum, London, London UK 

We’re thrilled to support these incredible institutions, give students the chance to explore, and bring Field Trips to even more museums in the future in order to continue supporting making and science of all kinds, for all ages.

Posted by Adam Feldman, Product Manager and Pavel Simakov, Technical Lead, Course Builder Team

Over the past couple of years, Google’s Course Builder has been used to create and deliver hundreds of online courses on a variety of subjects (from sustainable energy to comic books), making learning more scalable and accessible through open source technology. With the help of Course Builder, over a million students of all ages have learned something new.

Today, we’re increasing our commitment to Course Builder by bringing rich, new functionality to the platform with a new release. Of course, we will also continue to work with edX and others to contribute to the entire ecosystem.

This new version enables instructors and students to understand prerequisites and skills explicitly, introduces several improvements to the instructor experience, and even allows you to export data to Google BigQuery for in depth analysis.

• Drag and drop, simplified tabs, and student feedback

We’ve made major enhancements to the instructor interface, such as simplifying the tabs and clarifying which part of the page you’re editing, so you can spend more time teaching and less time configuring. You can also structure your course on the fly by dragging and dropping elements directly in the outline.

Additionally, we’ve added the option to include a feedback box at the bottom of each lesson, making it easy for your students to tell you their thoughts (though we can't promise you'll always enjoy reading them).

• Skill Mapping

You can now define prerequisites and skills learned for each lesson. For instance, in a course about arithmetic, addition might be a prerequisite for the lesson on multiplying numbers, while multiplication is a skill learned. Once an instructor has defined the skill relationships, they will have a consolidated view of all their skills and the lessons they appear in, such as this list for Power Searching with Google:

Instructors can then enable a skills widget that shows at the top of each lesson and which lets students see exactly what they should know before and after completing a lesson. Below are the prerequisites and goals for the Thinking More Deeply About Your Search lesson. A student can easily see what they should know beforehand and which lessons to explore next to learn more.

Skill maps help a student better understand which content is right for them. And, they lay the groundwork for our future forays into adaptive and personalized learning. Learn more about Course Builder skill maps in this video.

• Analytics through BigQuery

One of the core tenets of Course Builder is that quality online learning requires a feedback loop between instructor and student, which is why we’ve always had a focus on providing rich analytical information about a course. But no matter how complete, sometimes the built-in reports just aren’t enough. So Course Builder now includes a pipeline to Google BigQuery, allowing course owners to issue super-fast queries in a SQL-like syntax using the processing power of Google’s infrastructure. This allows you to slice and dice the data in an infinite number of ways, giving you just the information you need to help your students and optimize your course. Watch these videos on configuring and sending data.

To get started with your own course, follow these simple instructions. Please let us know how you use these new features and what you’d like to see in Course Builder next. Need some inspiration? Check out our list of courses (and tell us when you launch yours).

Keep on learning!

Posted by Geeta Ajetrao, Head Teacher Digital Learning 

Editor's Note: Today’s guest author is Geeta Ajetrao, the Head Teacher of Digital Learning at Arthur Phillip High School (APHS). Geeta helped guide the successful adoption of technology at APHS and is currently responsible for implementing the school’s digital policies and overseeing digital curriculum.

At Arthur Phillip High School a public secondary school in Parramatta, Australia, we educate 1,500 students in grades 7-12. They come from 65 different countries, and over 90 percent of them speak a language other than English at home. Recognised for our long-standing commitment to digital education, administrators and teachers at Arthur Phillip wanted to make teaching and learning more fluid by improving and enhancing our ever – expanding digital education structure.

Our school first embraced digital education five years ago when the Australian Government's Digital Education Revolution (DER) provided all high school students in grades 9-12 with laptops. To build on this, our teachers designed interactive wikis hosted on school servers so students could communicate with them and other students. When our wiki environment exceeded the capacity of the school servers and DER was discontinued, we needed to find a cost-effective solution that would let our students continue to benefit from digital learning.

One hundred Chromebooks were purchased for a pilot group of students and teachers to test out Google Apps for Education, and both students and teachers alike were enthusiastic about them. Our teachers said Google Drive “made it easy for them to plan interactive lessons,” which would keep the students engaged for an entire period. In Ancient Egypt history class, students start up their Chromebooks in no time - unlike their old laptops. Students can navigate to the site their teacher created to watch and discuss a YouTube video or annotate a map in Google Maps. Chromebooks have created student-centred lessons, allowing students to move at their own pace as teachers provide them with immediate feedback.

Today over 600 of our students in grades 7-9 currently have Chromebooks, and in three years they will be available to every student. Our students now feel more empowered and confident in their abilities. This is especially true for our NSEB (Non English Speaking Background) students whose language literacy skills have improved since we started using Chromebooks in the classroom. Students get customised lessons based on their strengths, and allow teachers to provide them with resources, so they can improve.

Since we introduced a digital learning environment, suspensions have decreased by 50 percent, and attendance has risen significantly. What I’ve noticed most is that the school has a calmer vibe--more students are engaged and excited about their lessons, rather than being bored or distracted. Chromebooks have changed the way our students think about learning. Most importantly, they know it doesn’t have to stop once they leave the classroom.

Posted by Cyrus Mistry, Lead Product Manager, Chromebooks for Education 

When you’re focused on bringing students the best education possible, you count every penny and every second. Schools are often asked to work wonders with a limited budget and a small staff, and that’s especially true when it comes to technology. With Chromebooks and Android tablets, we want to help schools do more with less.

We’ve worked to make Chromebooks the perfect laptop for schools – sharable, secure, fast and easy to manage – and as a result they were the #1 selling device in US K-12 education last year. Today we're introducing a new line of devices that give students and teachers more choices at even more affordable prices. These new Chromebooks are fast and lightweight, with prices that start at $149. That means schools can get Chromebooks into the hands of 33 percent more students than ever before on the same budget.

The Haier Chromebook 11 (available at Amazon) and the Hisense Chromebook (available at Walmart) are available for pre-order starting today. Coming later this spring, the Haier 11E is a ruggedized model built just for education and tested with teachers and students in real classrooms. Schools can contact their technology partners for more details on pricing and availability.

Chromebooks get the latest updates every six weeks, and we continue to add the features that educators want most, like a lost/stolen device mode, faster updates that use less bandwidth and easier ways to manage apps and extensions.

The new Chromebooks come in a variety of forms, from laptop to desktop to all-in-one to a convertible. For more on what’s new, take a look at the Chrome blog. When a tablet is the right choice, schools are also embracing Android. Android tablets are intuitive for younger grades, and flexible enough to be used for creative projects, science experiments and project-based learning.

So today we’re also adding to the set of Android tablets available through Google for Education, with four new devices from ASUS, Dell and HP available to schools in the US and UK. Running Android 5.0 – Lollipop, and supporting up to five student accounts per device, these four new tablets make it easy for teachers to personalize each student’s experience.

The latest Android tablets for education

Just like Chromebooks, we’re focused on making Android affordable and easy for schools to manage at scale.

• The new 7” ASUS MeMO Pad is available for just $149 
• Three of the new tablets are 10” and meet PARCC requirements for state testing, supporting plug-in keyboards for easier typing 
• Schools have told us that they love the Nexus 7, so we’re keeping it available for educational purchase at $199 

Whether you go with Chrome or Android, it’s easy for your IT department to manage devices through the online Google Admin Console, and easy for teachers to discover and distribute educational content to students with Google Play for Education. You get access to both through a one-time $30 management license for each device.

Now schools have even more choice for devices students can use to learn, at even more affordable prices.

Posted by George Reis, Software Engineer

As more and more schools have started using Drive and Classroom, you’ve given us a ton of ideas about ways these tools can help you get more done, especially when it comes to who can share what within your school. So we’ve been working on some new settings for our Google Apps for Education and Drive for Work customers that we hope will take you to your collaborative happy place.

Coming Soon: Trusted Domains 

In the next few months, we’ll be adding a “trusted domains” feature that will allow schools to extend Drive sharing and Classroom participation to domains they choose. Schools that have already set up separate domains –  for example, one domain for faculty and another for students – will be able to use Classroom. It will be possible for students to join classes in other domains, like high school students taking college classes for advanced credit. You’ll also be able to configure your trusted domains for Drive, so you can better control sharing outside of your organization.

More changes are rolling out over the next several weeks:

Reset passwords quickly and securely 

When students and teachers get locked out of their account, we’ve heard that waiting for an IT admin – who often wears many hats within the school – to reset their account can take hours or days away from a busy study schedule. Admins will now be able to allow students and teachers to securely reset their passwords so they don’t lose any valuable time waiting.

Disable download and printing for Google Docs and everything else in Drive 

When what you’re sharing is only meant for a few select people, you can keep it for their eyes only by disabling downloading, printing and copying. This option to disable exporting from Drive will be available in the advanced sharing settings for each file, and it works for Docs, Sheets, Slides and any other files in Drive.

Set sharing settings by organizational units 

If your organization’s users are all in the same domain and you want teachers to be able to share outside the school with parents but only want students to share within the school, you can customize Drive sharing controls based on organizational units. 

Share outside your organization more easily 

When it comes to sharing – whether it’s group projects between students or information about Back to School night shared with parents – you want to make sure that recipients can see it whether they use Drive or not. Now, whoever is receiving that PDF, Google Doc, or video can see it without having to sign-in to their Google account. Admins can turn this on or choose to require recipients to sign-in before they see shared information.

Set up custom admin alerts to know when things change 

All Google Apps admins can now set up custom alerts for the things they care about, like a suspicious login from an account, and get an alert in the Admin console and through the Admin app on Android and iOS. Admins can set up alerts for all activity in Drive, and see when files are created, edited, printed, downloaded and previewed in Drive.

Here's a short video outlining all of the new sharing features coming to Drive for Work and Apps for Education:

Posted by Susan Herder, Instructional Technology Coordinator, and Gretchen Zahn, Curriculum Coordinator at Mounds View Public Schools

Editor's note: Today’s guest authors are Susan Herder, Instructional Technology Coordinator, and Gretchen Zahn, Curriculum Coordinator at Mounds View Public Schools. Susan is a Google Certified Teacher and Google Education Trainer. Gretchen Zahn coordinates the district’s hybrid program and helped develop the district’s teacher appraisal process.

Students aren’t the only ones learning at Mounds View Public Schools — teachers and administrators are also learning from one another with the help of Google Apps and Google Classroom. In 2013, we introduced the Teacher Development and Appraisal Program to support teachers’ professional development. Every teacher is part of a collaborative team, a group for feedback and knowledge-sharing. Because each team manages information in different documents, it’s a priority to keep them organized and easily accessible.

Google Apps and Google Classroom help our teams keep track of all documents related to goal setting, learning targets and other inputs. Teachers write agendas, take meeting notes and complete TDAP self-assessments in Google Docs, and use Google Sheets to analyze student data from the assessments we give every month. Teachers input assessment information in the same sheet, so they can see a student’s progress across multiple subjects. Collaborative teams also use Hangouts to have conversations about professional development and student progress without scheduling meetings. During these Hangouts, teachers can reference resources and student information stored in their team’s Google Site. Teacher development is now a team effort since everyone is learning from each other and discussing their progress.

Principals use Google Classroom to organize, send and receive teacher feedback, much like teachers do with students. Our teachers’ favorite feature is the ability to post questions based on the principal’s feedback. It’s a channel for two-way communication that previously would have happened much slower via email or in-person meetings. Classroom has also encouraged principals to provide feedback more frequently, since it’s so easy and widely used. Approximately 90% of our certified staff use Google Classroom as part of the Teacher Development and Appraisal Program.

Image courtesy of Dr. Jeffrey Ridlehoover, Principal, Mounds View High School

Google Apps for Education has streamlined what initially appeared to be a difficult process of sharing information, data and resources. Teachers and administrators are leaning on each other to improve their teaching skills and ultimately become better educators districtwide.

Posted by Kevin Brookhouser, Director of Technology, York School

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

Editor's note: Leading up to Education on Air, we asked you what topics you’d like to discuss at the conference. The clear winner was “innovation in schools,” so we asked Kevin Brookhouser, a Google Certified Teacher and director of technology at York School, to share his innovative practice of giving students freedom in what and how they learn. Kevin is the author of the new book The 20Time Project and will share his methods during an Education on Air session on May 9. Register here for the free online conference today.

The 20Time Project stemmed from the collision of several fortunate events: I met a number of inspirational teachers through the Google Teacher Academy, spent time at the Google campus, and read a book by Daniel Pink called Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us about how to encourage innovative thinking. Inspired by Pink and Google’s “20 percent time”— a practice that allows employees to take time out of their “day job” to work on a side passion project— I created my own version and applied it to the classroom.

Guest blogger Kevin Brookhouser speaks around the world about empowering students with time and choice. He'll lead a conference session at Education on Air on May 9th

20Time is a simple concept that anyone can execute, as long as you give students the choice to design their own learning experience and support them throughout. Give students one day a week to work on a project of their choosing — one that serves a real audience and solves a real-world problem. Help students discover great ideas, write a thoughtful proposal, blog about their progress, craft an elevator pitch, and demonstrate their work through a final presentation.

20Time affords students the opportunity to follow the three critical ingredients essential to innovation as described in Drive:

1. Autonomy: freedom in what they learn and how they learn it 
2. Mastery: the ability to track their learning growth 
3. Purpose: meeting the needs of an audience outside the walls of the classroom

When given the freedom to control their own learning, it turns out that students can come up with incredible ideas. The experiences they created are bigger than any I could’ve imagined — like Maria’s YouTube channel, which inspires young people to love books, or Maddie’s Recycling Closets project, which spreads awareness about sustainable consumerism. I’m fortunate to work at a future-oriented school that supported the experimental project from day one. But wherever they teach, I recommend that teachers who want to try 20Time give it a go — dive in and present the reasoning behind it. Transparent communication to parents, students and administrators can go a long way toward getting buy-in. For example, I send this letter to students and parents at the beginning of the year, and welcome other teachers to modify it to fit their needs.

I’ll be sharing more about what I’ve learned about innovating in schools during my session at Education on Air on May 9. Register here to get updates about the conference. You can find 20Time resources, including five steps to get started, at 20Time.org. The 20Time Project is now available on Amazon, and if you’re looking to purchase multiple copies for your school or would like me to speak about 20Time or Google for Education, I welcome you to contact me directly. See you on May 9!

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! 

Posted by Deborah Anyu Lai, Strategic Partnerships Development Manager

We’re thrilled to share the Google Bus Bangladesh project, an initiative to help equip and empower half a million college and university students across the country with the digital skills they need to take advantage of the Internet.

Bangladesh is a country that’s swiftly adopting technology at mass scale. In a population of 165 million, more than 116 million (70% of the population) use mobile phones. And although the number of Internet users is a comparatively low 10 million, Bangladesh has more Internet users than many other countries in the world. For Bangladeshi students who will help decide how Bangladesh thrives in a digitally-driven, global business climate, Internet access and wider information access are especially critical.

Over the course of 12 months, our digitally-equipped bus will visit 500 campuses in 35 locations, where instructors will conduct workshops. These workshops will introduce Bangladeshi undergraduates and the next generation of entrepreneurs to the technology tools that can empower them to start and grow their own passion projects and businesses. Students will learn the power and utility of the Internet, connect online with their peers, and learn how to most effectively use Google tools – including Google Search, Chrome, Apps, Maps, YouTube, Adwords and Google+ – to plan and collaborate in new ways. Each student will also have the opportunity to apply what they’ve learned on Android One devices and will have continued access to the the Google Bus Bangladesh Community to stay engaged and in touch with their peers.

The Google Bus Bangladesh project is already underway in Dhaka, and will soon make its way to academic institutions in and around major cities including Chittagong, Khulna, Sylhet, Rajshahi, Rangpur and Barisal. We encourage any and all Bangladeshi undergraduate students with interest in our workshops to hop on and join us.

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.