Posted by Tia Lendo, Head of North America Marketing, Google for Education

Editor's note: Carrying on with a key theme from Education on Air, we continue our series of blog posts about student empowerment. Twenty thousand educators from around the world will share ideas for engaging students when they gather at ISTE, one of the largest education technology conferences in the world. If you’re coming to Philadelphia, stop by and see us in the Expo Hall at #1808. You can check out any of over 50 short sessions that will share more ways to engage and inspire students.

When I was a teacher I always looked for ideas about how to make my lessons more engaging for students. As summer officially begins for us in New York and many other parts of the world, it’s a good time to reflect on the best lessons from the past year to help inspire us as fall approaches. We asked students from around the world to think back on the past nine months and describe their favorite lessons and experiences at school. We quickly received submissions from six countries from students aged 5 to 18. Hearing their responses, three common themes quickly emerged — students enjoyed self-directed learning, educational games and learning through experimentation.

Student-directed learning 
Students love to lead lessons, especially when they involve a group activity. “The best lessons for me are open and filled with discussions,” said Jack, 16. “Revising or collaborating with my friends is so much more effective — bouncing ideas off of each other and speaking out loud with friends.” Similarly, Chloe, 16, enjoyed the chance to debate ideas with her peers. “Usually people are so caught up in the way they see the problem, but when someone else expresses their side, you understand them better,” she explained. “You understand the situation better. Your mind is opened up more.”

A number of students valued the ability to create their own learning experiences. For instance, Ty-Shia, 14, enjoyed making and sharing an online magazine about protein for health class. Ben, 15, made a film for English class and showcased his hard work on the big screen. Keona, 18, designed his own statistics project, then conducted the experiment and presented his findings. “It was nice to be in charge of something,” he said. “It forced us to excel and try our best, not just because of the project but because it was our own research and we felt very connected to it.”

Educational games
Technology is opening up new ways of creating, exploring and working together. Not everyone likes competition, but for many students games were a highlight. Students like 11-year-old Ashwath enjoy using tablets “to play educational games and learn all about a topic,” like history or math. “It’s competitive and a good way to enhance what we’ve learned,” he added. “The best time I ever had in a lesson was playing Kahoot in math class,” said Andrew, age 11. “It’s like an online Jeopardy — lots of fun.”

Learning through experimentation
The most frequent theme we heard was that students love to learn by doing. Eleven-year-old Aryan told us about her favorite lesson in science class. “We cooked a marshmallow on a heat plate so we could see how conduction and convection worked,” she said. Observing the radiation and differences in heating and cooling helped her understand the concepts. “It stays in your mind for a while,” she said.

This type of simulation excites high school students, too. Eighteen-year-old Sydney described an epic AP Physics lesson that involved launching rockets. Daniel, 17, described a math class that taught him about the limit of functions — and the best technique for reaching top speeds on a rolly office chair. “We had someone push us down the hallway, made our own functions and calculated our own limits on certain points and intervals,” he said. “It was really interesting and pretty entertaining.”

Sydney might have put it best when she said, “let's go actually discover and experiment what we're learning, be active in our learning and then from there take notes about why that happened the way it did.” Hear more about the favorite lessons of students around the world in this exclusive video from the Education on Air Student Voices series. Check out the Student Voices playlist to view them all.

Posted by Dan Gundrum, Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Google Docs blog.)

When you’re working with spreadsheets, it’s important to turn your raw data into a story. With today’s updates to Google Sheets on the web, you’ll find even more ways to visualize and analyze your data.

Customized charts, made easier 
Charts can make even the largest data sets digestible, so we’ve made a few improvements to help you highlight what’s most important.

Starting today, you can add data labels to display the exact value of bars or points. And when you’re using line or scatter charts, you can change the shapes of your data points. Choose from stars, triangles, pentagons and more.

Your data, your way
Today’s update also includes new tools for analyzing your spreadsheet data. For example, you can:

• Preview formula results—instantly—as you type. This feature is especially useful for catching formula errors quickly and is unique to Sheets. 
• Filter rows and columns by conditions, including “greater than” and “text contains.” This way you’ll only see the numbers, dates and text you need. 
• Add calculated fields to pivot tables when you want to apply formulas to pivot table data. 
• Use the GETPIVOTDATA function to more easily retrieve data from your pivot table. 

Collaborate, confidently 

The more the merrier when it comes to collaborating in Sheets, but sometimes you need to take extra steps to preserve your hard work from accidental edits. With Sheets, you’ve been able to restrict editing to a specific set of users and a specific range, but now you can also warn folks who try to edit certain cells. This way you can collaborate with others, and remind everyone (even yourself) to edit with care.
Try these updated Sheets features on the web today and start telling better stories with your data.

Posted by Kate Howell, Product Marketing Manager, Google for Education

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

Remember back in 2008 when the Google for Education team road-tripped across the US, visiting universities using Google Apps for Education? We hardly do, either, which is why we were itching to get back out on the road. This time in the UK. And we brought along a pop-up classroom instead of a bio-fuel bus.

In four weeks, we visited seven schools in England, Wales and Scotland that are doing inspiring and creative things with education technology. We wanted to hear more about how Google for Education tools are helping them to transform their approach to teaching and learning, and we wanted to provide an opportunity for other educators nearby to hear and learn from them, too.

Our pop-up classroom at Wigan UTC

And we weren't disappointed. We heard from Cramlington Learning Village in Newcastle, where Physical Education students have become more engaged by doing their own real-time personalized fitness tracking with Google Sheets on their Chromebooks. That’s what we call healthy competition!

Students of GSCE Physics were getting a last-minute helping hand with their study thanks to revision videos created by the science department hosted on Youtube at The Streetly Academy in Birmingham. “What’s great about them is that we’re used to their style of teaching and their voices – and our teachers know how we learn best,” says Jack Webb, a student of The Streetly Academy.

City Heights E-Act Academy in London also gave media teachers some great ideas, by showing us how their students utilized Google Drive when creating their BBC School Report and giving us a demonstration of their HTML writing abilities.

Students at City Heights E-Act Academy showed off their HTML writing capabilities

We also loved how inquisitive students at the Horsforth Campus of Leeds City College used Google Draw to document and track changes to nearby wetland areas over time, based on their hypothesis about how a nearby motorway is affecting the surrounding ecosystem.

Students at Preston Lodge High School working collaboratively in our pop-up classroom

We toured the world’s first controlled-environment agricultural facility using a Vertical High Density Growing system in an educational institution at Wigan UTC. There, budding food technicians can get hands-on with technology that can help to combat current and future food production issues, working together to track production levels collaboratively with Google Sheets.

In East Lothian, the pipe band at Preston Lodge High School treated us to a roof-lifting performance to start the morning!

The Preston Lodge High School Pipe Band warming up

We heard lots of teacher tips along the way, but our favourite was from Assistant Headteacher David Beesley, who uses boomerang for Gmail to set his emails to send at times he knows his staff are at their desks.

Asst. Headteacher David Beesley sharing his favourite Gmail tips

Students at St. Julian's showed us their favourite apps on Google Play

One day Google for Education might pop up—or roll into—a town near you, but in the meantime you can check out a video of our pop-up classroom being built, captured by the impressive media students at St. Julian’s in Newport, Wales.

Posted by Ajay Surie, Product Manager

(Cross-posted on the Google Docs Blog.)

Google Slides helps you tell beautiful, meaningful stories. But sometimes, presenting these stories can be a hassle, especially when wires, cables and connectors are needed.

Now it’s even easier to share your presentations on big screens—whether you’re in a school board meeting, in charge of the slideshow at your best friend’s wedding or pitching your dream business idea.

With just your phone or tablet and the Slides app, you can present easily to any screen with Chromecast or AirPlay. So you can say goodbye to wires and set-up stress. When you’re up on the big screen, you can use your smaller screen to advance slides, view speaker notes and stay on track with a built-in timer. This way you can focus more on telling your story and engaging your audience...instead of on logistics.

Get the updated Slides app today for Android or iOS. And of course, if you want to cast from the web, you can do that, too. Let us know what you think!

Posted by Coby Parker & Claire Liu, seniors at Palo Alto High School & Editor-in-Chief of the Campanile

(Cross-posted on the Google Student Blog.)

Editor's note: One of the main discussion points of Education on Air, the free online conference from Google on May 8th-9th, was how we can empower students in their learning. Our guest author today, Coby Parker, is one of the students who shared views as part of the student empowerment panel at the conference. Coby and his classmate and co-author Claire Liu are the Editors-in-Chief of the Campanile, the student-created, award-winning publication at Palo Alto High School. Today they share more insights about how the journalism program at his school, led by educator Esther Wojcicki, motivates students. We hope this provides ideas for teachers as they head into summer and next year.

One of the most vital pieces of an education is student empowerment. Here at Palo Alto High School, students are given the opportunity to take complete control over their academic and creative journey through the journalism program Esther Wojcicki (or “Woj”) has created.

The journalism program and publications that Woj has built over the last 30 years are incredibly appealing to our student body, as demonstrated by the hundreds of kids who choose to enroll in “Beginning Journalism” each year. High school is a challenging time – young people are faced with the obstacles presented by academic stress, extracurricular commitments and changing social norms. For me, it was difficult to find something to spend my time doing that provided both intellectual stimulation and creative escape.

Joining Paul Kandell’s “Beginning Journalism” class sophomore year, and then enrolling in The Campanile, a school newspaper that Woj advises, has granted me the space to grow my academic independence and leadership ability. Our entire publication is headed by students only. Student editors like me lead story ideas, and staff writers pick and choose the pieces they feel passionate about writing. There are no limitations on story ideas – as long as a proposal is relevant, we give it the green light.
If you like what you see in this highlight reel for the Education on Air student empowerment panel, check out the full session.

After students submit first drafts, peers make edits on Google Drive, suggesting changes, marking grammar and AP style errors, and more. When “production” begins, the entire staff stays on campus in the Media Arts Center until 9 P.M. each night to design the tangible, paper product. The entire process is run by students, meaning it is the high schoolers alone who create the complex and sophisticated end product. We even sell advertisements to pay the bills. If a student needs help, he or she asks a high school peer – not Woj. Woj leads very much from behind – an approach that may be challenging for many educators, but one that is truly beneficial to the strengthening of student initiative.

Essentially, the only time Woj intervenes is if she has a specific design suggestion, brief lesson, or if a specific story may contain libel or is unethical in some way – this happens pretty infrequently. In my three years on The Campanile, Woj has never forced us to do or publish anything we did not want to. Her approach provides students the room to take on big projects and develop a self-confidence and desire to test boundaries, both personal and societal.

My colleague Claire Liu, another Editor-in-Chief, explained the impact the course has had for her. “As a staff writer, I have pursued a range of stories, standard and provocative. Whether I was documenting a sports game, addressing race relations or discussing gender roles and sexuality through the paper, I have felt Woj’s subtle but ever present support. In this rare, fast-paced and invigorating environment, we are allowed to fail, and encouraged to take risks and challenge the norm, all while being supported by a teacher who consistently has our back (even when she’s feeling a bit hesitant, and even if we mess up big time!). Students join The Campanile expecting to learn how to design a newspaper page and write articles. They gain not only those things, but an entire toolbox of powerful character traits and skills that will last them a lifetime.”

In psychology class I recently learned the difference between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. Generally in the education system, students work hard to get good grades and please their teachers – extrinsic motivation. In The Campanile, the motivation is more intrinsic. The threshold to get an A is the bare minimum, and anything above and beyond that has to come from the individual student’s efforts. The reward is much more basic than an A on the report card; it’s being able to hold a newspaper and point to the real impact that he or she made.

Our advisor, Woj, truly plays the role of advisor and not teacher. She’s there for us when we need her, but when we don’t, she doesn’t impose on us or make us do anything we don’t want to. In the end, we are responsible for our actions, the dime stops with us. I hope more schools can implement programs like The Campanile and empower students to take charge of their own education.

If you’re interested in learning more about Esther Wojcicki’s approach to teaching check out this interview with her in which she talks about her recent book “Moonshots in Education: Launching Blended Learning in the Classroom” or read more on her website.

Posted by Chris Harte, John Monash Science School

Editor's note: Today’s guest author is Chris Harte, lead teacher for personalised learning at John Monash Science School (JMSS). Chris was a key member of the team that implemented Google Apps for Education for the school’s Emerging Sciences Victoria (ESV) initiative. ESV brings advanced science courses to students across the state of Victoria.

Emerging Sciences Victoria (ESV) is a virtual school that offers advanced science classes to students in Victoria, Australia. We developed our curriculum to include courses on astrophysics, quantum physics, biotechnology and nanotechnology in order to get students excited about careers in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). While ESV is based out of the John Monash Science School (JMSS) on the Monash University campus in Melbourne, our students are distributed throughout the state.

When we launched the program in 2014, we had the teachers, the technological know-how and the webcasting studio we needed to get started. What we still needed to figure out was how to deliver virtual lessons to students across Victoria, and how to coordinate with teachers operating on multiple devices and in schools with limited resources.

Google Apps for Education offered a number of benefits: a suite of products made for easy collaboration, unlimited free storage and an attractive price—$0! We knew we wanted collaboration and communication to be at the heart of ESV, and Google Apps gave us the incredible opportunity not only to connect students to expert teachers and working scientists, but also to each other.

Today, our ESV students can participate in live webcast lessons or view videos after the fact in a private-access YouTube account. They can then work with fellow students on experiments and reports using Google Apps, which allows them to collaborate on documents, spreadsheets and presentations, wherever they are and in real time. Teachers can review their work and give personalised, live feedback.

In one experiment, students modeled the decay of radioactive atoms by using M&M's® to explore the concept of half-life. They entered data in shared Google Sheets simultaneously, did homework in Google Docs, discussed findings via Gmail and Google Chat, and created and shared presentations in Google Slides.

We already have 156 Year 10 students at over 30 schools in our program, and we can easily expand our capacity to accommodate up to 250 students per semester. We’re extremely proud of ESV, but the best part about the program is how replicable it is. We believe the future of education lies in connecting students, teachers and experts together online, and we’d love to see other states and even other countries do what we’re doing so that more students can benefit from connected learning.

You can read full the full case study on ESV here.

(Cross-posted on the Google Docs Blog.)

Editor's note: Alice Keeler is a mother of five children, a Google Certified Teacher, and the author of the book “50 Things You Can Do With Google Classroom.” Recently we sat down with the self-proclaimed “Queen of Spreadsheets” to learn more about how she relies on (and pushes the boundaries of) Google Docs both in the classroom and in her busy everyday life. 

We want to know how you use the Google Docs family of products, too, so share your own examples at +GoogleDocs or @googledocs with the hashtag #mygoogledocs. -Ed. 

Tell us about yourself, the self proclaimed “Queen of Spreadsheets.” 
I am a mother of five children, have a master’s degree in educational media design and technology and am working on my doctorate in EdTech with an emphasis in games and simulation. While working on my masters degree in 2009, I realized the power of games to motivate students, so I’ve been working on applying gamification techniques and games in my instruction, built with Sheets. 

I’m extremely high energy and I really enjoy innovating and sharing with teachers. I also have a unique talent: I can make people love data and spreadsheets. When you can get the information you need in the format that you need it, it’s truly exciting.

How does Google Docs fit into your teaching? 
Google Docs is essential for my instruction. I’ve been paperless for years and Google Docs makes that possible. If I were to choose one word that is most important when choosing tools for student use, I would say collaboration. Google Docs transforms group work from one student doing most of the work to a truly collaborative endeavor. Each student is able contribute concurrently to a single document; enhancing, adding, and editing work.

Tell us about one unconventional way you’re using Google Docs to teach. 
I use gamification techniques to motivate students. Rather than assignments, students have quests they can choose from, in a Google Sheet. Once a student selects a quest, they use a Google Form, linked in the spreadsheet, to turn in their quests. The ability to collect quests and have it neatly organized in one place saves me hours and hours of time.

Collecting work this way allows me to give students choices in what they learn and to be more flexible with due dates, and grading and feedback become immensely easier. When having a classroom discussion, it’s important to give every student a chance to participate and have their voice heard. This is nearly impossible with a verbal discussion. Having students respond to discussion prompts in a spreadsheet not only allows me to hear from every student, but allows the entire class to hear from every student.

What are the three best tips you can suggest for teachers that are using Google Docs? 
First, give feedback via comments to students before they submit their work. I highly recommend learning the keyboard shortcuts for inserting a comment (Control Alt M) and closing a comment (Control Enter) as this significantly speeds up the feedback process.

Second, a kid’s best day is when they can teach you something. Don’t be afraid to try something you do not know, embrace and celebrate help from your students. Challenge them to teach you something new about using Google Docs.

And third, if you use Google Slides or Google Sheets as a collaborative document with all of your students, this gives you only one document that you have to assess. Look for opportunities to do collaborative activities using Sheets and Slides.
You have a big family and a ton of extracurricular activities—do you also use Google Docs to take care of things outside of school? 
I use Google Docs for everything. Woe to anyone standing next to me in the grocery line or driving me in a taxi—I will tell you all about Google Docs and how it will change your life. I have a passion for helping find creative solutions to whatever problem someone has—and educator or not, more often than not the solution is a Google Doc. I used to make wedding cakes and created a massive spreadsheet that calculates the number of servings, the supplies I need, how much to charge, creates the invoice and more. Really, what can you not do with Google Docs?

Do you have any handy docs to share?
Teachers may be interested in creating rubrics with Google Sheets. This template allows you to create a rubric on the second tab and set the percentages for each category. Insert your class roster on the first tab and use the “Create Rubrics” menu to create a copy of the rubric for each student in your class. This makes it easy to assess students using a rubric.