Posted by Gloria Musto, Social Studies Teacher and Director of Student Activities, Fontbonne Hall Academy

Editor's note: Today’s guest author is Gloria Musto, Child Development and Economics teacher and Director of Student Activities at Fontbonne Hall Academy in Brooklyn, New York. She’s passionate about letting students guide their educational journey and think beyond the typical means of learning.

Students often read textbooks to learn about changemakers and historical events, but interactive experiences can often have a more profound impact on students’ learning. To celebrate Women’s History Month this year, the 19 students in my Intro to Child Development class created a project in which they worked in small teams and took on the persona of a prominent woman in the field of child development. The project had three goals: encourage students to work together in different ways, challenge them to solve problems creatively and inspire them to take initiative and drive their own learning through individual research and collaborative use of collective research.

Before they launched the project, the students needed to find a platform to host it. The students experimented and unanimously found that Google+ met the needs for the project for its interactivity and collaborative elements. But they needed to figure out how to get the pages to interact. Working together, the students resolved that they should create Gmail accounts for each “character.” Using Google+, the students created an interactive project that allowed them to respond to questions and react accordingly as a team to comments from other “characters.”

Once they created the pages, I posted questions on our group’s Google+ page, and students responded in the voice of the child development leader they chose. Students researched the background and theories of women like Maria Montessori, Melanie Klein, Mary Ainsworth, and Anna Freud to build the appropriate point of view. Each student group created a Google+ page for the woman they chose, then posted content that included photos, videos, facts, quotes and journal entries.

The project encouraged students to think creatively and expand their learning beyond the textbook — some of the women my students chose, such as Mary Ainsworth, weren’t even mentioned in the chapters we’re reading. The students also discovered a web of connections between different leaders in the child development world. Many of the personas strongly agreed or disagreed with the others’ perspectives, so students portrayed those interactions in their posts.

Students worked on the project both in small groups and individually. In order to clearly acknowledge the contributions individual students made, they used a hashtag system to take credit for the post, for example #byvictoria. This simple system held students accountable for their work while fostering teamwork.

Typically, students think of social media as a platform they use in their personal lives and not in the classroom. Now, my students see social media — specifically Google+ — as a learning agent as well. As Maria Montessori said, “the greatest sign of success for a teacher is to be able to say, the children are now working as if I did not exist.” This project would have made Maria Montessori proud. The students were simply given a framework (a well-prepared classroom in a Montessori mindset), and then independently created a unique and sophisticated social media experience.

Posted by Jason Markey, Principal, East Leyden High School

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

Editor's note: Jason Markey is the Principal of East Leyden High School and was one of the panel members discussing student empowerment as part of Education on Air last Friday. We received a lot of questions about this topic and the approach at Jason’s school so we asked him to write this blog post to share more.

At Education on Air I connected with amazing educators and leaders, and learned from sessions like Jennie Magiera’s “Power to the pupil,” Michael Fullan’s “Three ways to drive system-wide change,” and Laszlo Bock’s “Making work rule.” These sessions offered everything from system-wide ideas on implementing change to building a culture for our teachers resulting in more successful schools to the steps we can take to further empower our students. I enjoyed speaking on the student empowerment panel on Friday and wanted to share a bit more about our approach at East Leyden High School.

Over the past several years, Leyden has introduced a 1:1 program with one Chromebook per student and Tech Support Internship (TSI) to support our technology initiative and offer real-world learning experiences. Having a 1:1 program means that students now have a direct line to their teachers and administrators. They write emails and Tweets to share their opinions, preferences and questions. We’ve seen our students, with the support of school administration, unite through a hashtag.

I believe that student empowerment is about introducing more choice into the classroom and opening up more opportunities for students to share their voices. My experiences at Leyden have affirmed something I’ve always believed: education, at its core, is about relationship-building and community-building. Students, like everyone else, want to feel that they’re part of a community. They want to be active participants, choosing to learn and think about and discuss the things they find relevant.

Every TSI student pursues an independent learning pathway, with options including computer programming, app development, web design or a project of her choice. TSI students have made the course their own, and often come up with new programs, like a new student orientation to introduce first-year and transfer students to Chromebooks and Google Apps. In addition TSI students volunteer their time for tech support — they’re learning skills that range from troubleshooting to communicating professionally. Here’s a video to give you a flavor of what goes on in TSI.



They also use our school hashtag, #leydenpride, to share news about our school — from athletic successes to club events and academic achievements. Twitter has become a way for us to spread positivity, share and listen, and build community and student ownership. As an example, here’s a student perspective from East Leyden Senior Maja Bulka.

As teachers and administrators, we’ve made a concerted effort to empathize with our students and see through their eyes. We do this in informal ways — through #leydenpride, for instance — as well as through more formal programs. For instance, the assistant principal and I (along with all new teachers) shadow a student for one day each year so we can better understand what it’s like to go straight from gym to an AP calculus test. Aside from shadowing, I spend as much time as I can talking to students and sitting in on classes. If we don’t understand what students have to say, we won’t be able to build the environment to engage, support and empower them.

If you want to hear more ways that educators are empowering students you might want to check out some of the recorded sessions from Education on Air like Jennie Magiera’s session “Moving beyond Genius Hour: empowering students all day” or David Chan’s session “It’s all about students: student tech programs.”

Posted by Laszlo Bock, Senior Vice President of People Operations, Google

Editor's note: Leading up to Education on Air tomorrow, we asked what topics you’d like to discuss at the conference. The clear winner was “innovation in schools,” so here Laszlo Bock, head of People Operations (what others call HR) at Google shares his expertise on creating great workplaces. Laszlo will share findings from his new book, Work Rules!, in his Education on Air keynote Friday. Register for the free online conference today.

I’ve had the opportunity to study what makes a great place to work—including researching how people work and play together, what makes employees productive, efficient and happy, and what excites them about coming to work. Through working at Google and speaking with teams at other organizations, I’ve learned some really cool things about how we can make work better. We spend more time at work than anywhere else in our lives. So shouldn’t it be more positive and meaningful?

Laszlo Bock, SVP of Google People Operations, will share ideas from his new book "Work Rules" during Education on Air.

At Education on Air, I’ll be sharing what I’ve learned in the form of what I call “work rules.” Sure, people will debate which of these rules can apply to education, but in speaking with educators, I’ve learned that many of them do. Yes, schools face requirements and regulations, but that doesn’t mean they can’t innovate. For example, Eric Sheninger shares how digital tools can help educators lead 21st century schools. Ryan Bretag, the Chief Innovation Officer for Glenbrook High School District 225 in Illinois, has created space for innovation in his district. Ryan (along with hundreds of other educators) will share how they’ve implemented change in their schools throughout Education on Air. I’ll be sharing more “work rules” in my talk at Education on Air, but in the meantime here are some of my thoughts on building a strong culture.

Meaning is the foundation of your workplace

The first rule in my book is “Give your work meaning.” Everyone wants to find meaning in his or her work—no matter what it is—and strives to feel inspired by what he or she does. I’m awestruck by educators who spend their time finding ways to reach students with different needs, helping them learn, create, code and follow their passions. As an educator, you’re already doing some of the most important work that anyone can do, so you have a leg up on many other industries in finding meaning.

Mindset is so important here. Amy Wrzesniewski, a researcher at Yale University has shown that there are three ways for people to see their work: as a job (“a necessity that is not a major positive in their lives”), as a career (“something to ‘win’ or ‘advance’”) or as a calling (“a source of employment and fulfilment where you are doing socially useful work”). It’s not enough just to have an inherently meaningful profession, you are more likely to have higher well-being and performance if you have the mindset of your work as a calling. If you want to learn more about this research check out this talk from Amy.

If you give people freedom, they’ll amaze you

I strongly believe in giving people slightly more trust, freedom and authority than you’re comfortable giving. If you’re not nervous, you haven’t given them enough. Organizations that trust their employees build empowerment and success. Consider the regional supermarket chain Wegmans, which gives its employees full discretion to do the right thing and let no customer leave unhappy. Wegmans even encouraged an employee to start her own in-store bakery. It’s no wonder the company has lasted nearly a century — and has made Fortune’s list of the best places to work for the past 17 years, despite operating in the low-margin grocery business. You can learn more in this interview I did with Jack DePeters of Wegmans.

Educators can also benefit greatly from giving a little more trust to their staff and students. For example school technology director Kevin Brookhouser described how well students rise to the occasion when they are given 20Time (one day a week to work on a project of their choosing). Kevin and the many other teachers employing this technique have seen students become much more passionate and engaged in learning.

If you’re interested in learning more, you can tune in in for my Education on Air keynote tomorrow, May 8, and check out my book Work Rules. I’ll be sharing the lessons most relevant to building successful organizations which I hope give you some ideas whether you lead a system, district, school or classroom. But I’d also like to hear your stories. How has empowering educators or students led to great results in your school, organization or community? Head to Google+ and let us know.

Posted by Andrew Cunningham, Software Engineer

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

It’s teacher appreciation week here in the U.S., and for me, that means celebrating the teacher who has had absolutely the most impact on my life: Mike Zamansky. Mr Z, as he is affectionately known, has been making Computer Science cool at Stuyvesant High School for more than 20 years, and what I learned in his classes has put me on the path I’m still on today. So from me and everyone at Classroom to Mr. Z and every other teacher who inspires their students: Thank you for doing just that.

A year ago, we marked Teacher Appreciation Week in the U.S. by telling you that Google Classroom was on its way. This year, we’re excited to celebrate this milestone by adding some new Classroom treats in our mobile app that will make it even easier for you to keep track of your classes, no matter where you are or what device you’re on:

• Grade assignments from your phone or tablet, and add private feedback to give students guidance, encouragement, constructive criticism or personalized feedback. 

• You can create and edit assignments on the go, including the ability to make a copy for every student. 
• Just take a photo to create a post or assignment, so you can easily share those whiteboard notes with the class or assign the math problem that you jotted down on that napkin. 

You’ll see these new features rolling out this week, and you can find more about how they work here.

We also wanted to take a moment to look back: since Classroom became available, students have turned in more than 70 million assignments and we’ve added more than 20 new features that you told us were important: 

• The ability to have multiple teachers in a class, so that teaching teams can work together. 
• Prep for classes ahead of time with draft assignments and posts. 
• Autosaved grades allow you to grade in batches. 
• A mobile app for Android and iOS lets you access your classes anywhere, even without cellular data or a WiFi connection. 
• With the teacher assignments page, you can view all of your assignments and track student progress in one place. 
• Stream settings give you control over class discussions; plus you can mute individual students and view deleted items. 
• Archive your finished classes and save everything for next semester. 
• Download grades as a batch, easily exporting them to any gradebook.
• 48 new visual themes and the ability to upload your own so you can customize your class. 
• +mentions let you instantly add students or other teachers into a conversation, making it easier to follow a comment thread. 
• Students can mark assignments as “done” when they don’t need to submit anything online. 
• And many more... 

 Look for more updates from us soon. Now we’re off to (virtually) hug a favorite teacher. Join us!

Posted by Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist

(Cross-posted on the Official Google Blog)

When I was in 5th grade, I complained to my teacher, Mr. Tomazewski, that there must be more to mathematics than simple arithmetic. He concurred and gave me a 7th grade algebra book because he believed in me. I spent the summer working through every problem! With that simple act, Mr. Tomazewski had set me off on a career path that eventually led to the invention of the Internet.

Me at age 11 in 1954

As students, we have the potential to be or do anything—whether and how we fulfill that potential is largely determined by the guidance and encouragement of our teachers.

That’s one reason why Google is so committed to improving teaching and learning through the use of technology. One year ago this week, we announced Classroom, a tool that helps teachers manage assignments, communicate with students and parents, and stay organized. Since then, we’ve continued to add features that teachers and students tell us they need, and if you stay tuned to the Google for Education Blog this week, you’ll hear about a few of our newest additions.

In the spirit of listening to our teachers, we’re also continuing to improve our CS First materials—free online computer science content developed by educators and computer scientists—to help introduce the art of programming to students in grades 4-8 through after-school, in-school and summer programs.

We also realize the importance of what teachers can learn from one another. So with that in mind, this week we’re hosting Education on Air—a free online event with 100+ sessions led by educators from 12 countries and 29 U.S. states. We’ll cover themes that include empowering students, practical innovation, CS and STEM, and building community. Speakers include LeVar Burton and Google Science Fair 2012 winner Brittany Wenger. We hope you can virtually join us May 8-9 for this online education conference, and make sure to register so you can catch recorded videos of all the sessions.

Our lives would be profoundly different without the Mr. Tomazeskis of the world. Please join us in saying thank you to our teachers this week—in person, online, in a handwritten note, or even a meme—for all that they help us to achieve.

Posted by LeVar Burton

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

Editor's note: Through his work with Reading Rainbow, LeVar Burton continues to inspire generations of students to love reading. Getting an early start on celebrating Teacher Appreciation Week, we asked LeVar about educators that inspired him. He shares some stories from his childhood in today’s guest post, and he’ll share more during his keynote, “The power of storytelling to inspire students,” during our Education on Air conference. Register today and tune in for LeVar’s talk on May 8th at 11:15am ET.

Teachers seem to run in my family. My elder sister, my son and two nieces are all educators, and my mother, Erma Gene Christian, was a high school English teacher before becoming my first teacher. I know firsthand how hard these unsung heroes work, and especially how important a teacher can be in a child’s life.

One of the most indelible memories from my childhood happened one day when I was learning to read. My favorite aunt Hope, my mother’s youngest sister, was visiting from Kansas City. We were sitting together in a chair in the living room and I was reading aloud while my mother listened from the kitchen where she was preparing a family meal. Things were going fine until I got stuck on a word. I stopped cold in the middle of a sentence. The word was one I thought I knew, but I didn’t yet have the inner confidence to know that I could read it. I will never forget the infinite patience that Aunt Hope displayed and the gentle nudges of support she gave me. “Go on,” she’d whisper, “You know this word. I know you can sound it out.”

I still remember the word —it was “pretty” — and when my aunt finally said the word to me it was a revelation. She gave me the confidence I needed to trust myself; to trust that I did know these words. I was a reader. This is what teachers do for their students every day.

It’s from my mother, Erma Gene, that I learned the allure of storytelling. Throughout my childhood, mom always had several books going simultaneously, switching from one to the other seamlessly, deriving pleasure from each turn of the page, no matter what the genre. I learned from my mom—and eventually from my own experiences reading, and from exposing children to the joy of books through Reading Rainbow—that storytelling is an elemental part of the human experience, regardless of whether the medium is a print book or a digital book. We know that kids are reading more than 200,000 books a week on the Reading Rainbow App. They are using their devices not just for games or movies, but to read.

Here's me with the first educator who inspired me, my mother.

Children are drawn to stories, and with good storytelling we can teach kids anything. I have seen the light go on in a child’s eyes when he or she falls in love with a story. I’ve seen that light get brighter when they realize that they can read the stories for themselves. This light is the beginning of a lifelong love of reading, and from there a lifelong love of learning. For me, literacy means freedom, and literacy begins with storytelling. You get a child’s attention when you give them a good story. If we fail to take advantage of this, we are letting the opportunity of a lifetime—of our lifetime and theirs—pass us by.

Hear more about the power of storytelling from LeVar Burton during his Education on Air keynote on May 8 at 11:15am ET or check out his Reading Rainbow website.

Posted by Dianne Darlington, Director of Technology, Tullahoma City Schools

Editor's note: Today’s post comes from Dianne Darlington, a Google Apps Certified Administrator and director of technology at Tullahoma City Schools, a school district in Tennessee that includes four elementary schools, two middle schools and one high school.

Our teachers at Tullahoma City Schools have discovered (and fully embraced) the benefits of incorporating timely, interactive material into the classroom—whether it’s a recent YouTube video or a breaking news article. Recognizing that technology plays a key role in learning, we recently expanded our use of Google Apps and Google Classroom throughout our schools. Now, teachers across the district use Apps and Classroom to assign projects and provide feedback to students, and students in grades three through nine bring home Chromebooks to continue learning outside the classroom walls.

After passing Google’s IT Admin Certification program, I worked with our technology team to think about how we could further use Google Apps in our schools. Our superintendent, Dan Lawson, presented us with the perfect opportunity. The Tennessee Department of Education rolled out new standards for social studies at the beginning of last school year, and we needed to revamp our educational content for each grade level. His vision was to create digital textbooks that were highly shareable, modifiable and cost-effective. We decided the best way to accomplish this was by using Google Docs. Since teachers were already familiar with Google Apps through our 1:1 Chromebook program, the digital textbooks were a huge success.

A digital textbook is a textbook that lives on a desktop, laptop or mobile devices and is easily editable to provide educational content that is as timely and relevant as possible. Creating the textbooks is as simple as editing in Docs. Teachers often tell me they love creating interactive and engaging content by embedding YouTube videos, games, music and links to websites. For example, when the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, we upgraded our social studies textbooks to include a video of the rover landing from NASA and written content from media sources. Students are more engaged when they’re reading content in their textbooks about an event that happened within the past few days.

Digital textbooks are as fun and engaging for the students as they are for the teachers. The easy ability to edit encourages teachers to update the textbooks with pertinent information based on current events and new material. Whether a teacher wants to insert a recent video or make grammatical changes, she can update the digital textbook instantly. The new version is readily available to students via the textbook library on the class website. With Google Docs’ offline mode, teachers can even edit information when they don’t have access to WiFi.

Once other schools in Tennessee heard about our digital textbooks, they wanted to create them for their students, too. Six school districts asked to use our material, mainly to print physical textbooks at a price of $8 instead of paying a publisher $80, but some are also downloading them digitally and using a 1:1 model as well. Open-source digital textbooks reinforce our mission of relating content to the student, rather than teaching for a standardized test. With Docs, we’ve provided students more timely and engaging information, and we’re excited to roll out digital textbooks across all core subjects in the next three years.

Posted by Jaime Casap, Google for Education

Editor's note: During Education on Air, Google’s free online conference May 8-9, we'll be discussing how we can help prepare students for their future. One member of our opening panel is Jaime Casap, Google’s Global Education Evangelist. In advance of the conference, we asked Jaime to share some of his personal views about the power of high expectations to inspire students. For related resources, check out Reach Higher, the First Lady's effort to inspire all students to take charge of their future by completing their education beyond high school. Resources include a toolkit to host a College Signing Day, which many schools are doing May 1st.

I grew up in Hell’s Kitchen, New York, in the 1970s and ‘80s; it was a tough neighborhood that visitors avoided. I wanted out, and while I was the captain of my high school basketball team, I was way too short and slow to make it in the NBA. Despite the challenges of being a first-generation American raised by a single mother on welfare, I had help and support from amazing teachers like Ms. Riddick who encouraged me to work hard to develop the skills I needed to finish high school, attend college and graduate.

Research indicates that low-income minorities are less likely to finish high school, attend college and get a degree. Only 15 to 19 percent of minorities attend college and fewer than nine percent graduate with a Bachelor's degree. There’s a direct correlation between the level of education attained and income level. In other words, education disrupts poverty. While many issues are embedded into the conversation about poverty and education, I can personally relate to something called “Low Expectation Syndrome.” Low Expectation Syndrome is fed by the conditions surrounding low-income minority students. They see failure all around them. They see their childhood friends drop out of high school, and they see more of their friends go to jail than college.

What’s my response to Low Expectation Syndrome? As part of my role I talk to as many students and educators as possible. I don’t ask students what they want to be when they grow up. Instead I ask students to think about what problem they want to solve. I then challenge them to think about the knowledge, skills and abilities they’ll need to solve that problem. What classes can they take? What blogs and journals should they read? Who should they meet and collaborate with? What educational path will prepare them to solve that problem?

I tell students they have amazing capacity and potential. I tell them to ignore the negative and disregard the impossible. I tell them to use stereotypes and statistics as motivation. I tell them not to be ashamed of who they are and where they come from. I tell them they’ll one day be the person in a meeting who has a different and valuable perspective. To put themselves in that position, they need to work hard and get the education to solve the problem that motivates them.

I wouldn’t be writing this post if not for my experience with higher education, which is why I support the First Lady’s Reach Higher effort & hope many schools will consider hosting College Signing Days to celebrate students. As First Lady Michelle Obama says: “Education is the key to success for so many kids. And my goal specifically is to reach out directly to young people and encourage them to take charge of their futures and complete an education beyond high school.” As I tell students every day, the antidote for Low Expectation Syndrome is to have impossibly high expectations for themselves and each other — and then reach even higher.

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.