Google for Education has announced the creation of a program to help support parents and educators teaching from home. The current global pandemic has caused schools around the world to close for in person instruction and almost instantly create lessons to be delivered virtually. Google’s Teach from Home program includes training materials for educators, schools, and parents including collaborating with educators, students, and families virtually, keeping students engaged, providing accessibility in lessons, managing virtual classrooms and much more. Teach from Home also provides weekly webinars, peer communities, and regular office hours to offer instant support for educators and families. Click here to access Google’s Teach from Home program.
With schools around the world closing as a precaution against spreading the coronavirus, Google has announced several ways to help educators create digital environments so learning can continue without being gathered together (source).
Google announced that Hangouts Meet will now be available for all GSuite users and can include up to 250 people at once. The new features of Hangouts Meet will also allow for the live-streaming of up to 100,000 people so schools can have county wide assemblies if needed (source).
Other ways Google can assist educators with distance learning is through utilizing their already collaborative tools like comments in Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides and implementing Google Classroom (source). Google has created numerous resources including EDU on Air and a teacher resource center to help educators get started with these products. You can read the entire article from Google by clicking here.
Next Steps
Interested in learning more? Check out the websites below for great information.
All sourced information is hyperlinked as applicable above.
TLDR (too long didn’t read):
With schools around the world closing as a precaution against spreading the coronavirus, Google has announced several ways to help educators create digital environments so learning can continue without being gathered together (source).
Google recently announced the development of software that will allow smartphones to detect and interpret sign language (source). The algorithms needed for a computer to interpret hand movements and deduct speech is quite complicated. Google has created this software and made it free and accessible to the public so developers can create programs (apps, etc) in order to allow this technology to be used by the public. “We’re excited to see what people come up with. For our part, we will continue our research to make the technology more robust and to stabilise tracking, increasing the number of gestures we can reliably detect,” a spokeswoman for Google told the BBC” (source). You can read the announcement from Google by clicking here and the article by BBC by clicking here.
References:
All sourced information is hyperlinked as applicable above.
Google’s Applied Digital Skills program is an online platform with project-based engaging lessons to teach middle school and high students, as well as adult learners, practical skills for work and life (source). These lessons include practical life skills of writing a business plan, creating and balancing a budget, managing a project, as well as digital training for everyday tasks using Google’s GSuite for Education products, among many others.
Why:
Implementing Google’s Applied Digital Skills program into your classroom is an easy and effective way to teach students practical life skills that are often overlooked in today’s tech-savvy world. The engaging project-based lessons for the digital training suite include instruction on data analysis, research and communication, as well as coding and literacy (source).
How to:
Using Google’s Applied Digital Skills is easy. Simply create an account using your Google account and create a class. Once your class is created, you can assign content and monitor student progress. You do not have to create any lesson plan or content because Google has already done that. Simply “signup, teach and encourage, evaluate students, and foster collaboration” (source).
Next Steps
Interested in learning more? Check out the websites below for great information.
All sourced information is hyperlinked as applicable above.
TLDR (too long didn’t read):
Google’s Applied Digital Skills program is an online platform with project-based engaging lessons to teach middle school and high students, as well as adult learners, practical skills for work and life (source). These lessons include practical life skills of writing a business plan, creating and balancing a budget, managing a project, as well as digital training for everyday tasks using Google’s GSuite for Education, among many others.
“Google Photos has grown into an awesome service. From automatically backing up your phone’s pictures to letting you easily share your photos, there’s a lot to love for anyone who works with photos. Whether you want to make a mini stop-motion animation or just make a slideshow of related pictures, Photos can help. Select the Animation button under the Assistant tab, and you can choose from 2–50 photos to add. Once you’re satisfied, click Create and you’ll have a neat little GIF ready to share.” — Ben Stegner
“Google Home now has more than 200 third-party skills, also known as conversation actions. If you’re just getting started, or you want to really see what your virtual assistant can do, check out” this list from PC Mag. — Sascha Segan, PC Mag
Google Photos “takes your entire photo library — every photo you’ve ever taken on your phone, as well as screenshots and photos taken within Instagram and whatever else — and uploads it to the internet. The photos remain private, hidden behind your Google account information, but now you can access them anywhere. On your laptop? Yep. On a new phone? Yep. On your tablet? Yep, there too.” — Ben Gilbert, Business Insider
“The initiative, which the Mountain View giant initially launched almost two years ago, essentially leverages visual data from Maps and Earth to generate 3D models of the total amount of sunlight that reaches your roof.” – The Next Web
The Verge is reporting that “Pokémon Go has become wildly popular in the days since its release last week, but the app may be hiding a serious security issue. In many cases, users who sign into the app through a Google Account are often inadvertently granting broad permissions over all information linked to the account, including the power to read and send emails. At no point in the sign-in process does the app notify users that full access is being granted” (Source). Read more at The Verge.
Perhaps the app developer will correct this issue in the near future.
