Posted by Erzsi Sousa, Product Marketing Manager

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

Editor's note: We’re jumping into our Delorean to explore how some of our favorite historical figures might have worked with Google Apps. Today, on the anniversary of Isaac Newton’s knighthood, we imagine his research in a Google Apps universe.

In April 1705, Isaac Newton was knighted for his many accomplishments. Since we’re self-admitted history nerds (how better to appreciate the advancements we enjoy now?) we asked ourselves: what if the Isaac Newton of 1705 used today’s Google Apps?

Newton was one of history’s foremost masters of mathematical formulation. What if he had been able to archive and automate his complex formulas in Sheets? We imagine he might have used the product function, =PRODUCT(factor1, factor2), to test different values for his second law of motion: force equals mass times acceleration (f = ma) — showing how apples of different sizes fall with different rates of acceleration from a tree.

While writing his famous Principia, Newton might have solicited feedback from his colleagues, like mathematicians Isaac Barrow and John Collins, by creating a Google Group and inviting them to edit in Docs. Working in Docs would have been helpful for keeping track of his notes while developing calculus — it might even have helped to avoid a heated debate with Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, who claimed he discovered it first. There’s no dispute over who first documents an idea when there’s access to revision history.

Newton famously feared criticism and was no stranger to controversy, so we imagine he would have been a strong advocate of using technology to keep his research secure. Should he have any concerns about a collaborator secretly passing sensitive information to his rival, Robert Hooke, he could adjust the sharing settings. He could even restrict the ability to view, share, download or print his treatise on optics after he’d already shared it.

Newton communicated through writing by hand — it’s estimated that he left behind about 10 million words of notes, letters and manuscripts — but we think he might have used Hangouts for urgent conversations. If Newton needed to speak with his colleagues at the Royal Society about whether Leibniz was guilty of plagiarism, he’d meet with them face-to-face on a Hangout. Or, if his wig wasn’t looking particularly great that day, he could’ve started a group chat and shared pictures of his calculus notation as evidence (maybe even including a few emoji to lighten things up).

As a professor at the University of Cambridge, Newton lectured about optics and presented his research about the properties of light. He might have shared illustrations of prisms to explain rainbows and the color spectrum, uploading the images to a shared Drive folder rather than passing around delicate hand-drawn sketches. Using Drive’s Optical Character Recognition, he could turn his handwritten notes into searchable text. Old notes he wrote on refraction and diffraction would be easy to find and reference as he developed new theories on the nature of light. As one of the most important thinkers and scientists of all time, how valuable would it have been for him to so easily archive and pull up his every great thought and idea?

Sir Isaac Newton’s findings changed our understanding of the world around us and are still relevant to our lives 300 years later. But even more inspiring is the way his curiosity and intellectual daring influenced generations of thinkers to be relentless in pursuing new ideas — a principle (pun intended) that drives us here at Google.

Posted by Vidya Nagarajan, Product Manager, Chrome for Work

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

Editor's note: Chromeboxes help businesses and schools update employees and students with timely information and create a sense of community. To learn more about using Chromebox for digital signage and how it can help your business or school work smarter, join Chrome Live today.

Schools and universities across the country use digital signage to share announcements, news and schedules. Chromeboxes give students waiting in dorm lobbies for friends or standing in the cafeteria line for lunch the opportunity to learn about campus events on the go. And digital signage apps for Chrome built by Rise Vision, one of our content partners, power many of these digital experiences that go beyond traditional campus fliers.

Here are three ways academic institutions are using Chromeboxes for digital signage to better engage and inform students:

Personalizing content at Siena College

Siena College, a private liberal arts college in Loudonville, New York, prizes its close-knit community of 3,000 students. In this intimate class setting, individual departments manage their own content featured on Chromeboxes for display. IT and display managers don’t have to be involved in day-to-day content updates, and each department is nimble and flexible with their content. For example, the Student Senate features content from the athletics and academic departments on several of its screens and those departments directly update their content to ensure it’s relevant and timely.

Cutting IT costs and time at University of Toronto Mississauga

The University of Toronto Mississauga uses its 25 digital signage displays to profile professors, highlight research projects and market events to their more than 12,600 undergraduate students. Their previous display technology required extensive IT time to configure and update. Since Chromeboxes automatically update with new features and security fixes, IT can spend time on other tasks. Chromeboxes have also freed up the University’s budget, since they’re much more affordable than their previous display equipment, which cost $1,300.

Reducing power use at Manor Independent School District

The 20 digital signage displays in the Manor Independent School District notify the 8,000 K-12 students about announcements, lunchroom menus, upcoming events and recent posts from a live Twitter feed. Previously, the schools relied on netbooks to power their screens, which consumed a lot of power, were noisy and crashed often. Chromeboxes, which don’t have fans or spinning hard drives, were a natural fit as the district sought more eco-friendly display solutions. As universities and school districts continue improving their digital display technology, they’re finding better ways to deliver informative and entertaining content to teachers and current and prospective students. Join Chrome Live to learn how to use Chromebox for digital signage at your school.

Posted by Hugh Lynch, Software Engineer

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

We built Classroom to help teachers spend less time on paperwork, and more time with their students. Since we launched, we’ve also heard from teachers and professors that they’d love to be able to use Classroom to collaborate with other educators.

Teach together: Whether it’s a substitute, a teacher’s aide or a department chair, almost every teacher and professor is supported by other educators. So starting today, you can have multiple teachers in a Classroom class. To try it out, just go to your class’s About page and click “Invite teacher.” Additional teachers can do almost everything the primary teacher can do: they can create assignments or announcements, view and grade student submissions, participate in the comments on the class “stream,” invite students and even get email notifications – everything except delete the class.

Dani Raskin, a special education teacher at Clarkstown High School South in New York, has been helping us test out this new feature. “It’s really important for me to be able to work closely with other teachers who also teach my students, but we don’t always have prep time together,” Dani said. “We are now able to split the workload: both of us can provide direct feedback via comments and grading. It really fosters an authentic sense of teamwork and collaboration."

Prep for your classes in advance: We know how much planning goes into every class you teach, and now we’re making it a little bit easier to do some of that planning in Classroom. You can save announcements and assignments as “drafts” and wait to send them to students until you’re ready. And similar to Gmail, any time you start creating a new announcement or assignment, it’ll be automatically saved as a draft. This works with multiple teachers as well, so all the teachers in a class can collaboratively prep assignments in advance, and even make changes to each other’s posts on the fly.

We’re also making some other updates you’ve told us will make Classroom easier to use:

• Autosaved grades: If you can’t get all of your assignments graded in one session, but still want to return them to students at the same time, grades will now be auto saved as you enter them. You can choose when to return them to students.
• Better notifications: Teachers and students will now receive email notifications when a private comment is left on an assignment. 

For schools here in North America and in Europe, we know you’re working hard as you round the corner into the end of the year. We are, too, and we’ll have more Classroom news for you before school’s out for summer.

Posted by Zoe Tabary, Editor-Thought Leadership, Economist Intelligence Unit

(Cross-posted on The Google for Work blog)

Editor's note: During Education on Air, Google’s free online conference May 8-9, we'll be discussing how we can help prepare our students for their future. To investigate this issue in more depth, we commissioned The Economist Intelligence Unit to conduct global surveys of senior business executives, teachers, and students, ages 11-17 and 18-25. Editor Zoe Tabary will share the findings during the kickoff session for Education on Air, but here’s a preview.

As technology becomes more pervasive, traditional trades disappear and the world of work becomes more globalised, the skills considered to be valuable for the future are shifting.

Problem solving, team working, and communication (a trifecta commonly known as “21st century skills”) are the most-needed skills in the workplace, according to our recent surveys of business executives, students and teachers. Digital literacy and creativity— and the latter’s close relative, entrepreneurship—are expected to grow more important in the next three years.

Business survey: Which of the following would you say are the most critical skills for employees in your organisation to possess today? Select up to three.

Source: Economist Intelligence Unit

Incorporating these skills in existing education systems, however, is far from straightforward. Teachers report that lack of time in a strictly regulated curriculum is the biggest barrier to teaching 21st century skills, while digital literacy is one of the areas where they would most like further training (31%).

Meanwhile, the young have become more comfortable learning on their own, especially on topics of interest: 62% of teachers report that students are becoming more independent and able to gather information themselves. As one expert interviewed for the report puts it, “young people have an innate affinity with technology, and it would be a shame not to utilise that effectively”.

Countries all over the world are devising new innovative approaches to teaching and learning based on these changing trends. For example Singapore’s ‘Teach less, learn more’ initiative aims to help schools and teachers to engage more effectively with students, so that they connect with what they are they are learning and how and why they are learning it.

To hear more about the full research findings, register for the free online conference.

Posted by Tia Lendo, Head of North America Education Marketing 

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

Last month we announced Education on Air — our free online conference taking place May 8-9, 2015 — and asked what you wanted to hear about. Today we released the schedule of sessions, based largely on what we heard from you. We’ll emphasize innovation — 44% of you voted for this — as well as how to empower students and use Google tools effectively. It was clear from our second poll that you also want practical examples, so our speakers will go beyond theory and share their specific advice for enacting change.

Here’s a look at what you can expect over the two-day conference:

Friday, May 8: Leading for the future

Tune in from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. ET to hear from educators, business and policy leaders, students and researchers, whose keynotes will challenge you to innovate and improve education. In our kickoff session, panelists will tackle the question “What are the skills of the future?” and will touch upon results from an Economist Intelligence Unit survey. You’ll also hear panels of different perspectives about some hot topics for educators, including how technology is transforming learning and how students are guiding their own learning.

In addition to these panels, our keynote speakers will share their personal passions for the future of education. You’ll hear from Actor, Education Advocate, and Host of Reading Rainbow LeVar Burton, Google Senior Vice President of People Operations Laszlo Bock, education leader and Order of Canada honoree Michael Fullan, and Sir Michael Barber, chief education advisor to Pearson and former Chief Adviser to the Secretary of State for Education during the first term of British Prime Minister Tony Blair. Educators and school leaders like Ryan Bretag, education researcher and Chief Innovation Officer of Illinois’ District 225, and students like Brittany Wenger (2012 Google Science Fair winner) will also share their perspectives.

Saturday, May 9: Shaping the classroom today

Over 100 sessions will be led by educators from 12 countries and 29 U.S. states, all specifically designed to offer practical advice and examples. Whether you’re interested in the track for educators, administrators, IT or “anyone,” we invite you to join for the sessions that are most interesting to you. 

Presenters will discuss tools and techniques that you can implement easily, affordably and immediately. Many sessions highlight how Google tools like Google Apps, Earth, Chromebooks and Android tablets can support learning and help educators save time. Others will relate to themes including collaboration and community, computer science and STEM, creation and creativity, digital citizenship, literacy and professional development.

Here’s a flavor of the range of sessions:

• Guy Shearer, Head of IT for the David Ross Education Trust in the UK will lead “Create impact by rolling out Chromebooks across a network of schools” at 8:30 a.m. ET
• Kim Meldrum, Pedagogical Consultant for the Lester B. Pearson School Board in Canada will lead a session on “Developing literacy with Google Apps” at 11:00 a.m. ET
• Sean Beavers, Digital Information Specialist at the West Morris Regional High School District will lead "Fostering student genius: empowering student leadership through technology" at 12:15 p.m. ET
• Tonia Dousay, Assistant Professor at the University of Wyoming will lead a session called “Bringing the maker movement to your classroom” at 12:30 p.m. ET
• James Sanders, Director of Innovation for the EdTechTeam will lead “How to survive a zombie apocalypse using Google Apps” at 3:00 p.m. ET

Visit the Education on Air site to see the full line-up of sessions and make sure to register; because even if you can’t join us live, if you register we’ll notify you when the recordings are available to view.

We hope to “see” you there!

Posted by Liz Sproat, Head of Education EMEA

Across Sweden, teachers are discovering how Google Apps for Education and bringing technology into the classroom can free up their time for teaching and help students learn.

The stories we’re hearing from Swedish schools that have gone Google show that when equipped with the right tools, students and their teachers are excited about learning. They’re also able to work better together since Google Apps enables collaboration between students, while teachers are able to help guide along the way with real-time feedback. Not only are they able to learn basic skills faster, students also continue to find imaginative ways to work and research with Apps and Chromebooks. Here’s a taste of what we’re hearing from Swedish educators about the changes happening in their schools:

City of Gothenburg: Today, 8,000 students in the city’s secondary schools use Google Apps for Education, and in the 2015-2016 school year, 40,000 primary school students will also have access to Google Apps. “Teachers tell us they save time because they can share documents or even entire folders with their classes in just a few clicks,” says Fredrik Breitholtz, group manager of IT for Gothenburg. “They also say the comment features in Google Docs are a better way to support students as they write their assignments.”

Sollentuna Municipality: The city’s schools began to use Google Apps in 2011, at the same time city government did. “When we started using Google Apps, we went from sitting in computer rooms working alone to this new platform a platform for collaborative learning and sharing,” says Andreas Cassne, Information and Communication Technology Strategist for Sollentuna’s Education Department. “When everyone in the school organization is just a click away, it’s so much easier to work together to achieve higher learning goals.”

City of Malmö: Every school in the city has used Google Sites to create its own website, including calendars and document folders – all through Google Apps. “It makes it easy for teachers, students and parents to access the information they are looking for,” says Mats Johnsson, Head of the Information and Communication Technology Unit for Malmö Compulsory Schools. “For our schools, this means that all material is available for students and educators – no more lost papers, and the easy access and visibility has been praised by teachers and students.”

Simrishamn Municipality: After spending a few frustrating years managing expensive PCs and software licenses, the city switched to Google Apps and Chromebooks and now offers one-to-one devices to all students in grades 4 and up. “Google Apps for Education has changed the way teachers and students can work together in different school projects,” says Lotta Persson, development manager for Simrishamn. “The ‘share’ button has made all the difference. The possibility to give instant feedback in a document or presentation has also greatly improved how teachers help students.”

Teachers at Simrishamn give students real-time feedback as they work

The good news for Swedish schools that want to bring similar transformation to classrooms is that the country’s Data Inspection Board has approved the use of Google Apps for Education in a recent review conducted with Simrishamn Municipality. This approval will open doors for other schools and municipalities in Sweden that want to use Google, and we’re looking forward to even more success stories about sharing knowledge in classrooms.

Posted by Rick Borovoy, Product Manager, Google Play for Education

(Cross-posted on the Google Canada Blog.)

Every day students are learning in new ways, with technology and tools we could only dream of back when we were in school. But with more educational apps available than ever before, a busy teacher or admin can use some help choosing the right digital resources for their students. That’s why today, we’re launching Google Play for Education along with Android tablets to Canadian schools.

Built just for schools and educators, Google Play for Education is a “one-stop shop” for engaging, educator-approved and instantly shareable content for classrooms, offering access to thousands of curated, teacher-approved apps as well as hundreds of free classic books. Canadian schools will also be able to choose from five classroom-ready Android tablets that come with access to Google Play for Education for students of all ages.

Bill MacKenzie and a student from Upper Grand District School Board team up with Google Play for Education

The teachers of Ontario’s Upper Grand District School Board (UGDSB) were among the first in Canada to use Google Play for Education. UGDSB subscribes to the philosophy called universal design for learning, which aims to give each student an equal opportunity to succeed and empowers teachers to reduce barriers to learning in order to meet the individual learning needs of students. The district realized the potential for technology to enable students to access learning, express their ideas, and demonstrate their understanding in new ways.

Bill MacKenzie, IT-Program Liaison for UGDSB, says that introducing the Android tablets to staff and students has been seamless: “Teachers noticed that the students felt comfortable using the devices and that it made the classroom more interactive. The technology and breadth of resources has accommodated the different learning styles of our students.”

Each tablet holds up to five student log-ins, so students have control and ownership over all the content in their own accounts. The tablets also come loaded with an additional selection of Google apps like Docs, Chrome, Gmail and Earth.

Google Play for Education has apps for both Android tablets and Chromebooks, for students in grades from K-12. In addition to a wide range of flexible digital tools, schools can find subject-specific apps ranging from English Language Arts and Mathematics to World Languages and Science. Teachers can browse content by grade, subject or educational goal, and read tips from other teachers to get new ideas for classroom activities. Once selected, teachers can purchase using a school PO, then instantly distribute apps to student devices.

According to Bill, the tablets have provided UGDSB students with new ways to enjoy learning: “Students love sharing their photos and documents in Google Drive across devices by bumping one device to another, what students call ‘high fiving.’”

Canadian schools already using managed Chromebooks can turn on Google Play for Education by visiting play.google.com/edu. To talk to an expert about setting up Android tablets and Google Play for Education for your school, visit the Google for Education website.

Posted by Rick Borovoy, Product Manager, Google Play for Education 

Posted by Deborah Hsieh, Product Manager

As an IT admin you want your organization to be free to focus on getting stuff done. But part of your role is also to make sure you stay on top of legal compliance. Today we’re making it a little bit easier to do both with two new Hangouts features.

Over the next few days, we’ll roll out an admin option that lets you manage Hangouts chat history in your organization, so that you can make certain that it’s either on or off. People in your school or university can have the freedom to chat with whomever they want — whether that person is part of your organization or not — and you can be sure that new employee conversations stay personal and private, because they’ll disappear shortly after taking place.

We’re also adding Google Apps Vault support for Hangouts chat. With Vault support for chat, organizations of all sizes can quickly find and preserve chat messages. This is a great way to safeguard business-critical information for continuity, compliance and regulatory purposes.

Find out how to tailor Hangouts to best suit your organization's compliance needs.

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.