Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eSchool News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

How to teach coding and robotics from home

When our school shut down in March, initially, it was for a two-week period. I thought, “Well, this isn’t too bad, we can do a few coding activities from Code.org or maybe put together some Google Slides presentations for when we return.”

Then, two weeks turned into the end of April and my plan had to change.

As the technology teacher in our district, I felt I was adept at communicating with my students online (we are a Google Apps for Education school, and I’ve been a Google Classroom user since its beginnings), but I knew others in our district weren’t quite as tech savvy. I put together a few tutorial videos on how to use Google Classroom, Google Meet, and Zoom for our staff members to use to reach out to their students.…Read More

A plan for teaching coding and robotics from home

When our school shut down in March, initially, it was for a two-week period. I thought, “Well, this isn’t too bad, we can do a few coding activities from Code.org or maybe put together some Google Slides presentations for when we return.”

Then, two weeks turned into the end of April and my plan had to change.

As the technology teacher in our district, I felt I was adept at communicating with my students online (we are a Google Apps for Education school, and I’ve been a Google Classroom user since its beginnings), but I knew others in our district weren’t quite as tech savvy. I put together a few tutorial videos on how to use Google Classroom, Google Meet, and Zoom for our staff members to use to reach out to their students.…Read More

Case Study: Read How Skaggs Schools Embrace BYOD with Google Apps

Skaggs Catholic Center in Utah comprises of a high school, middle school, elementary school, day center and church, all requiring fast, reliable and secure Wi-Fi to keep up with growing device density.

“We decided to embrace BYOD rather than resisting it”, explains Jim Duane, Director of Educational Resources.

Xirrus Wi-Fi empowers them to adopt Google Apps for Education. The Xirrus EasyPass solution enables their two-person IT team to simply and quickly enable single-sign-on (SSO) via Google login.…Read More

Curriculum Foundry integrates with Google Drive, Google Apps for Education

Growing number of schools using Google’s programs can now share learning resources created in Curriculum Foundry

Learning.com‘s Curriculum Foundry, a solution for seamlessly accessing, organizing and sharing digital content, is now fully integrated with Google Drive and Google Apps for Education.

The growing number of schools that use Google Apps for Education and Chromebooks will be able to share the learning objects, lessons, units and courses they have created in Curriculum Foundry through Google Drive.

According to Google, more than 50 million students and teachers around the world use Google programs and, according to Futuresource Consulting, more than 50 percent of the devices sold to U.S. schools in the third quarter of 2015 were Chromebooks. With Curriculum Foundry’s new integration with Google Drive and Google Apps for Education, thousands of schools and districts around the country now have a seamless end-to-end solution for digital learning.…Read More

12 ways to adopt Google Apps for Education

A new digital resource offers tips to safely use Google Apps for Education

google-appsA new resource from Gaggle and Amplified IT offers technology facilitators 12 tips to help ensure that Google Apps for Education safe for teachers and students to use.

In any implementation, it’s important that school and technology leaders identify benefits and value associated with the implementation.

“Without the right strategies in place, most software and web-based tools–whether free or paid–are under-used in education,” according to the guide.…Read More

Google Apps spur rise of new ed-tech market segment

Many companies now sell products aimed at making Google Apps even more useful for schools

Google
Some of these companies were on hand at CUE’s annual conference to demonstrate their products.

Student use of Google Apps is on the rise, and Google Chromebooks have exploded in popularity within K-12 education. In response to these trends, a new niche market has emerged in ed tech, as many companies now sell products aimed at making these tools even more useful for schools.

Some of these companies were on hand at CUE’s annual conference in Palm Springs, Calif., last week to demonstrate their products.

The Toronto-based company Synergyse offers what it calls an “interactive training system” for Google Apps. The product gives schools an easy way to improve the productivity of staff and students by delivering user-friendly, guided instruction in how to use these tools, said Synergyse founder and CEO Varun Malhotra.…Read More

Google gives schools, organizations “walled garden” approach to email

Many schools have hesitated to adopt Google Apps for their students, citing security and privacy concerns. Gmail, as the core of Google Apps, is a tool that, by its nature, allows relatively unfettered access to anyone in the world with an email address, reports Christopher Dawson of ZDNet. Although extensive spam filtering, virus protection, and blacklisting are available through Postini, for some schools and organizations, the risk of inappropriate or dangerous use of email was a significant reason not to use Google Apps.Today, however, Google announced that it has provided Google Apps administrators with the ability to limit groups of users to internal contact only via email…

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Over 10 million students now use Google apps for education

Just about four years ago, Google launched Apps for Education – a version of Google’s online productivity tools (including Gmail and Google Docs) that is geared towards K12 schools and colleges. Now, Google just announced, there are over 10 million students, staff, faculty and alumni that are actively using Apps for Education, reports ReadWriteWeb. With the beginning of the new school year, Google must have added about 2 million new users, as the company cited 8 million users until just a few weeks ago. Just a few weeks ago, our own Audrey Watters pointed out that the number of states and school districts that are thinking about moving to cloud-based offerings like Google Apps for Education continues to increase. Moving to the cloud can provide these colleges and school districts with significant savings…

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